REMARKS AT THE WALL
A TROOP
4 TH SQUADRON
12 TH U.S CAVALRY
OCTOBER 2004
COMMENTS BY EARL L SCHORPP
Fellow Troopers, families and distinguished guests, welcome.
Today, let us remember some moments in time.
Once they stood with us, now we stand with them in this place dedicated to their service, their honor and above all, their sacrifice.
At one moment in time, they are in our minds, young, hot, tired, dirty, and, like us all, fighting their fears.
But they stood with us, just as you all did those many years ago.
And suddenly, a moment in time, took them from us.
We will never know why it was their moment in time to join those whose names are here
recorded in granite, forever.
Here, on our National Mall, where there are memorials to others, to those heroes whose moment in time have left us all with an ache way down deep inside our hearts.
We knew them for only a brief moment in time, perhaps just a few intense weeks or months. But there are wives, children, moms, dads, brothers, sisters and other special loved ones who displayed then and now, an extraordinary courage to continue to live their lives with an emptiness and pain that time may soften but can never heal.
Theirs is a special courage that the veterans of A Troop see everyday. A courage found in the wives and families who share our sense of honor and dedication to each other and to the memories of our fallen Brothers.
At that moment in time when we lost one of our A Troop cavalrymen, we will forever wonder, what if we went to the left instead of the right, what if we were on that hill instead of this one, if we were a few feet on one side or the other ? Would it have made the difference ? Such is the nature of war.
But this we know. Those terrible moments in time did happen and our losses are forever.
We will continue to have moments in time when we remember. In the stillness of night, in the breaking of a dawn of a new day which we will see but our Honored Brothers will not, in the stars and the rain and in the faces of our loved ones.
As our Brothers names are carved in granite for eternity, so are they engraved in our hearts.
As we come together from time to time to reminisce, we will also always remember, and in humble gratitude, be forever thankful for having known them, young and strong, a part of each of us.
We'll see them again, on Fiddlers Green, when it is our moment in time, once again to respond to the call “ A Troop, Mount up And Move Out “
May your God watch over us all and grant us peace.