Automated bugles could replace boom boxes

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: August 09, 2004

Automated bugles could replace boom boxes

By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer


The Pentagon wants to banish the boom boxes that play “Taps” at more than 100,000 veterans’ funerals each year.
Replacing the CD recording is a special automated bugle that plays the melancholy tune even if the person holding it is not actually playing it.

The bugle was tested last year in Missouri and earned high marks, though in a few isolated cases the devices malfunctioned during burial services.

In its latest annual report to Congress, the Pentagon said it provided support for 118,998 funerals in 2003, up 6.5 percent from the year before.

The U.S. military, shouldering large troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, is struggling to pay the nation’s final respects to hundreds of thousands of veterans who die each year.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates more than 1,800 veterans pass away each day, many of them from the World War II and Korean War generations, for an annual total of 660,000. That is expected to peak in about four years at 1,850 a day, then begin to decline.

By law, families that ask for military funeral honors for a deceased veteran are entitled, at a minimum, to a team of two service members to fold and present the American flag, as well as the playing of “Taps” by live bugler or recording.

But with operational strains on active-duty forces, an increasing number of reserve personnel, veterans’ groups and contractors are taking part in funeral honors.

In 2003, about 64,000 honors were performed by active-duty units, compared to 55,000 by Guard and reserve units. About 42,500 veterans’ group members also took part, as well as 9,000 others — contracted buglers, ROTC cadets and volunteers not affiliated with a veterans’ group.

Live buglers are preferred, but played at only 16 percent of funerals last year. Another 6 percent used a contract bugler, and 77 percent used a recorded version of “Taps” played on a portable CD player or the electronic bugle.

The electronic bugle is an actual bugle. A cone-shaped device is placed in the bell and, when activated, plays “Taps” as recorded by a military bugler at Arlington National Cemetery. Families are told they’re hearing a recording. But defense officials say the electronic bugle conveys more dignity than a portable CD player.

“The continued use of the stereo or boom box rendition of ‘Taps’ at veterans’ funerals will decrease and eventually be eliminated,” the Pentagon report to Congress stated. The Army already has ordered 500 bugles — at a cost of about $250,000 — and has a need for 5,000 more.

The Defense Department last year tested 50 prototype electronic bugles in more than 950 burial ceremonies before making a pick.

“The system is reliable and endorsed by over 96 percent of the families surveyed,” stated the Defense Department report. Two National Guard units also tested the device in Panama’s extreme heat and humidity, with no glitches.

The report included sample comments from service members and family members who went to electronic-bugle ceremonies. Not everyone raved, but most comments were positive. “I was very impressed, one wrote. “My husband would have been proud.”

Another wrote: “It sounded so real and beautiful, and I appreciated it so much.”

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-MARINEPAPER-277972.php


Ellie

[Sgted]

Ahhh....the miracle of modern technology.

Aside from the playing of Taps at my funeral, I want a bag piper.

[TracGunny]

Sunday, September 19, 2004 Story last updated at 12:15 a.m. on Sunday, September 19, 2004

The Associated Press

DELTONA, Fla. - Bugler John Murphy is a keeper of a time-honored tradition. He also is a vanishing breed.

Live buglers are being replaced at military funerals across the country by "digital bugles" that play a recorded version of the classic tune.

There are those who think it makes a difference, having a person instead of a machine give military members their final send-off.

Murphy, 50, is one of them.

He doesn't do it because it's easy.

He attends six funerals a day, three or four days a week. He drives to cemeteries across the state, logging 28,810 miles last year alone.

He receives no pay, and after standing at attention all day in a buttoned-up uniform, he hops back into his truck and drives to his job as night manager for a Blockbuster video store. He often returns home to his wife and two sons long after his Deltona neighbors are asleep.

He doesn't do it for the recognition.

Sometimes families express thanks, but often his one minute of music is taken for granted in the whirlwind of prayers, rifle salutes and ceremonial gestures that mark a military funeral.

He has played at the graves of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, and for vets who served in World War II. He played for a fellow bugler, a Marine killed in Iraq.

Murphy spent 20 years in the Army himself, including active duty in Somalia and the Gulf War.

He knows what it's like to be sent to a faraway land to perform an exhausting and difficult job. Such sacrifices are made all the time by military folk, without fanfare.

So this is why he blows his horn for strangers in the hot sun or pouring rain.

Because they did the right thing. Now he has to do his part.

"I want the family to have the greatest feeling of all, the last time they're with their veteran," he said. "I want to make it the best. You're honoring somebody.

"This is their last call."

Murphy is a bugler. But he doesn't play a bugle.

He plays a trumpet because sometimes families have requests for songs such as "Amazing Grace," which the more versatile trumpet can handle.

His style of playing hasn't changed much during 30 years. Except in one way.

He no longer plays with his eyes open.

"When I first started playing taps, I would look at the family, and it would get to me, and I'd make mistakes," he said. "I'd crack a note or not be as confident, and I'd shake. So one of the guys that was with me said, 'Keep your eyes closed. It'll be the best you ever do.' So that worked. I never miss anymore."

It's a guilty secret for buglers - the better you play, the worse the family will feel.

"I have the hardest time with active-duty guys killed in action. But it doesn't matter, really. I've played for guys who got killed skiing, or in a car accident, or while he was riding his motorcycle in the rain. They weren't killed in combat, but you're still looking at a 25-year-old guy with young kids and a wife. It gets to you."

Murphy keeps his eyes on the road while he talks. He is driving his blue, beat-up Chevy S-10 pickup. There's a statue of the Virgin Mary in one cupholder, and in the other a sweating Coke.

Today he'll be fueled by the soda, and the slice of toast and sip of orange juice he took before running out the door. There are too many funerals today - at least six, plus more he hasn't heard about yet - to take a lunch break.

He pulls up to a curb at Florida National Cemetery, a 512-acre compound of manicured hills sitting in the wilds of the Withlacoochee State Forest, 50 miles north of Tampa in rural Sumter County.

In the distance, a bugle is sounding taps.

Murphy stops and listens.

"Fake," he said, and walks on.

Once, every military company had its own bugler. Then times changed.

But there was still a need for taps at military funerals.

So the U.S. Department of Defense found a device that could make anyone an instant bugler.

The gizmo holds a recorded version of the bugle call. It sits inside the mouth of a normal-looking bugle. When a button is pushed, the "player" has five seconds to raise the instrument to their lips and simulate bugling.

The government says it wasn't trying to silence human buglers.

"Unfortunately, 1,800 veterans die every day," said Department of Defense spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke. "Military funerals are held every day of the week nationwide. A live bugler is always preferred for taps. But that's not always possible."

Buglers say there are problems with the digital device. It can malfunction. It can sound tinny.

"And I've seen guys tilt their digital horns and the device falls out, so you've got taps on the floor," said Chicago bugler Tom Day. "It's embarrassing for the family, the guy holding it, and the military."

Day, 64, runs Bugles Across America, a nonprofit group that advocates for live buglers. Its Internet site provides families or funeral directors with a network of more than 1,500 volunteer buglers nationwide.

Day and Murphy have played together at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns - a rare honor for a bugler.

"There's few players who can play taps with the emotion John has," said Day. "He just has that desire and ability to go out there and do the job correctly for the family."

Murphy said the buglers organization has made inroads. But it's an uphill battle.

"Right now," he said, looking around at the rows of white tombstones on grassy hills, "I haven't heard any real bugles at all today. Except for me."

Arthur Nave, commander of the Marion County Memorial Honor Guard, is pacing and smoking cigarettes out of a brass case he keeps in his breast pocket.

He's waiting under a covered walkway for the first funeral of the day. As commander of the honor guard, he must shepherd his crew of 26 retired military members through 16 funerals this week.

His is one of several honor guards trying to provide the ceremonial trappings for the tide of funerals at Florida's national cemetery, which sees 40 a day.

"When I first started this nearly three years ago, I figured maybe we'd do one or two services a week," said Nave, 69. "But we're running the men ragged. We really are."

Murphy often works with the Marion honor guard. He enjoys the camaraderie of the group, a decorated battalion of mature veterans with decades of service. The men travel together in their own khaki school bus and possess a vast combined knowledge of all the nuances of conduct and protocol for any type of military funeral.

"We all know how to fire a rifle," Murphy said. "We all know how to salute. We all know how to march."

A hearse pulls up and a dozen family members walk up the sidewalk to a covered gazebo as the honor guard stands at attention.

Prayers are said. A poem is read.

Birds chirp in the trees. Frogs croak in a nearby bog. Three rifle salutes crack the air, and some family members flinch at the loud noise.

Tributes to the deceased, an elderly Navy veteran, are offered. A flag is folded with precision, then offered to the oldest daughter with a salute and whispered thanks from a grateful nation.

Then it is time. Murphy brings the trumpet to his lips.

He plays the 24 notes. It takes 56 seconds.

On the Net:
Bugles Across America: www.buglesacrossamerica.org

Copyright Associated Press.
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/apnews/stories/091904/D856G9CO1.shtml