Part 3 — Charlie Leads Again
Walter stood very straight, with a Marine on each arm. “Young lady, your grandfather Captain Henry Turner marched with me in 1944,” he said. “In Belgium, he refused an order to leave wounded men behind in a snowy ditch. He carried three of them a mile on a door. I have kept quiet for eighty years because he asked me to. He never wanted a medal.”
The mayor pressed her hand to her mouth. “He never told me,” she whispered.
“A man who carries the wounded would never take another man place at a parade,” Walter said gently. “I think you know that.”
Mayor Turner climbed down from the convertible. She took off her sash with shaking hands and laid it on the seat. She turned to me and apologized in front of the whole street. Then she asked if she might walk behind the veterans instead of in front.
The ones who march for others are never the ones who ask to lead.
The parade began again. I rode in Charlie convertible with Sergeant Walter beside me in his wheelchair, his medals catching the sun. The car dealer logo on the doors was covered by a large American flag, and a Marine band struck up the first march of the day.
Charlie photograph sat on the dashboard in his dress uniform. My grandchildren waved from the curb, holding their small paper flags.
At the next council meeting, a resolution passed unanimously. The Grand Marshal of the Veterans Day Parade would be chosen by the veterans committee, always a veteran or the family of the founder. The mayor sponsored it herself.
She also wrote to the Army records office on behalf of her grandfather. After a review, the Army awarded Captain Turner a posthumous commendation. It was presented in February to the mayor family, with Walter in the front row in his uniform.
I kept my five-dollar flag in the glove box of the convertible. When the last float passed, the whole street fell quiet, and a bugler played taps.
Walter squeezed my hand and said, “Charlie would have loved this.” I said I thought he was somewhere on Ohio Avenue, laughing in his dress blues.