A FOX News article illustrates how Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor was honored by his fellow Navy SEALs: they affixed 45 SEAL tridents on his casket before his burial at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, CA. Monsoor laid down his life in Ramadi, Iraq, when he threw himself on a grenade, saving the comrades on the same rooftop that they had been assigned to secure. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
UPDATE: I stand corrected - the number of tridents on the casket was just the beginning, and a SEAL who was present wrote to explain that many more were added. Here is what President Bush had to say during the Medal of Honor award ceremony on 8 April 2008:
"Perhaps the greatest tribute to Mike's life is the way different service members all across the world responded to his death. Army soldiers in Ramadi hosted a memorial service for the valiant man who had fought beside them. Iraqi Army scouts -- whom Mike helped train -- lowered their flag, and sent it to his parents. Nearly every SEAL on the West Coast turned out for Mike's funeral in California. As the SEALs filed past the casket, they removed their golden tridents from their uniforms, pressed them onto the walls of the coffin. The procession went on nearly half an hour. And when it was all over, the simple wooden coffin had become a gold-plated memorial to a hero who will never be forgotten."
3 comments:
I dont know where this mis information is coming from , but its time to set the record straight. I was at the funeral and my trident is one of the hundreds that adorn the casket. The photo in this article is not correct. I realize that this may seem petty to some folks, but I have read more than enough false accounts of the funeral. Here is how I remember it:
The service was standard military, short, to the point, family grieving, but with an obvious, underlying pride. A crowd of frogmen in service dress blues, tears flowing from behind Oakley sunglasses, Blackhawk helicopters flew the missing man formation overhead. After the retiring of the colors, we all followed the casket to the gravesight. When the casket was placed, the line formed and every SEAL in attendance removed his trident and, in his turn, hammered it into the wood box with his bare hand. When I placed mine, the whole top was almost full, for twenty minutes after that the ring of fists pounding on the hollow wood could be heard though the crowded cemetary. When it was done the top and all four sides of Monsoor's coffin were covered in gold tridents. The coffin was lowered and we walked out, many of the Team Three guys stopped at the gravesight of Marc Lee, who was killed earlier in the deployment, and we all went off to the memorial. I know that people writing about this are trying to be respectful of his sacrafice, but I think he deserves an accurate account of the story.
Thank you so much for the first-hand account. Having retired from the Army, I try to make this blog as military- friendly as possible. If I had a picture of the casket covered with tridents on all sides, I would not have hesitated one second to use it.
Why is there no picture that shows all of the medals? Surely someone must have taken one. What a beautiful tribute.
Donna Cook
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