A letter received by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers:
12:39 pm on June 3, 2012Appreciated your article. As an Army trumpeter who has performed Taps for over 1,000 funerals, I can agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. While the service itself, when done properly, is very reverent and moving, I have seen the deaths of young men and women exploited by the government in shameless self-promotion time and time again. Ironically, I intend to state in my will that I do not want Taps, or any kind of military burial when it is my time to go, for the exact reasons you so eloquently stated…
