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In Honored Glory

It's a privilege to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Russ Naden and Charlie Walker know how that feels.

A guard stands watch during the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ceremony in Washington D.C. during the latest Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight.

In one of America’s most hallowed spaces, it is the rarest of honors.

To stride behind the rope line, escorted at every footfall by the finest sentinels of the U.S. Army’s renowned Old Guard, is normally something of presidents and dignitaries. To place a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a privilege few will ever experience.

Earlier this fall, Vietnam veterans Charlie Walker, Fort Dodge, and Russ Naden, Webster City, did just that. The wreath they placed was adorned with a banner bearing the words, Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight, recognizing that Walker and Naden placed that wreath for all of the veterans they have served as long-time board members of the venerable Honor Flight.

Both Walker and Naden have served the Honor Flight since its inception in 2009. They have gone on about two dozen flights and escorted more than 3,000 area veterans to see the military and war memorials of Washington, D.C., always highlighted by the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

“We found out a few years ago that groups could lay a wreath at the tomb, and we were originally planning to do it last May, but the time slots were all filled,” Walker said.

The wreath presentations are limited to two people, so board members opted to choose among the four original board members remaining, including Ron Newsum and Mel Schroeder, with Naden and Walker selected for the final honor.

Arlington National Cemetery, which sprawls over more than 600 acres, is a place of quiet dignity. On any given day, perhaps 30 funerals will be ongoing, with those laid to rest joining the ranks of more than 400,000 buried there. Because of this, visitors are asked to be very quiet; those placing a wreath must abide by a simple dress code as a show of respect and the solemnity of the occasion.

“They told us, ‘No shorts, no jeans, no sneakers,'” Naden recalled. “We wore our Honor Flight shirts, black dress pants, and black walking shoes. It was fairly comfortable,” Naden said — even for the very long day of the Honor Flight.

Arriving for the ceremony in mid-afternoon, Walker noted that one of the tomb guards quickly greeted them and prepared them for the ceremony. Honor Flight buses are actually the only public vehicles allowed to drive all the way through the cemetery to the amphitheater at the Tomb of the Unknown.

“We reported to the guard headquarters. One of the guards marched up, real formal, greeted us, and after that he kind of relaxed and told us what we needed to do,” Walker recalled. “It was pretty simple. We marched down in step with him and he gave us the wreath. We were hanging on to it, but he did most of the work.”

The guards, also known as tomb sentinels, even welcomed the two local veterans to their headquarters at the lower level of the amphitheater shortly before the ceremony.

“It was kind of like a little museum and we were able to look around a bit,” Walker said. “When we first got there it was raining, and that gave us a place to get out of the rain. By the time it came to lay the wreath, it had mostly quit.”

For Walker, even the brief time spent with the guards was impressive, knowing that their work is not just ceremonial, but a true call to guard this sacred site and pay tribute to the fallen.

“The guard escorted us around and he thanked us for our service,” Walker said. “He was somebody I wouldn’t mind just sitting and talking with for a while … I was very honored to be a part of the ceremony and to remember the Unknowns this way.”

Walker, a Fort Dodge attorney, is a U.S. Army veteran and served one year in Vietnam. A graduate of Iowa State University, he was selected for training with the National Security Agency as a cryptographic analyst, a code-breaker.

Naden, retired after leading Naden Industries in Webster City, is a U.S. Navy veteran. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he attended Officer’s Training School in Rhode Island. Assigned to the USS Tutuila near Saigon, the ship served as a home base for gunboats that patrolled up and down the Mekong River.

Vietnam, of course, never looked much like the spit and polish of the revered sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown. The Old Guard, which is part of the U.S. Third Infantry has guarded the Tomb 24 hours a day, seven days a week, since 1948. The guard is changed in a precision-filled ceremony every half hour in the summer and every hour in the winter.

But it’s really not about the shine of the rifles, the perfection of the 21-step march, or the sharp dress of the Old Guard’s uniform; it’s about the three unknown soldiers who rest there, and all of those they represent.

“I felt it was a great honor and really the experience of a lifetime,” Naden said.

Naden can well appreciate the fact that the unknown soldiers who rest at the Tomb of the Unknown serve to represent so many more who never made it home and whose remains were never identified.

“There are so many unknowns,” Naden said. “My dad (Bob Naden) lost a brother in World War II. His body was brought back, but I can’t imagine what it would have been like for families that still have missing loved ones.”

His uncle, Charles Naden, was a tail gunner on a B17 that was returning from a bombing mission to an oil factory in France in the summer of 1944 and lost two engines. It was getting ready to land back in England when it was waved off because of another incoming plane that had injured people aboard. Before getting clearance to land, Naden’s plane lost a third engine. The pilot ditched the plane in a grove of trees, avoiding a church or school where children were at play. While some crew members survived, Charles Naden lost his life in the crash, but the children were saved and the town later put up a plaque to honor the sacrifice made by the crew of the plane.

Charles Naden, a World War II hero, rests in the family plot at Graceland Cemetery in Webster City. He was a 1942 graduate of Webster City High School and just 20 years old when he made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of freedom. Unlike the soldiers of World War I, World War II and Korea, who rest at the Tomb of the Unknown, Charles Naden made it home, even in death.

For Walker and Naden, the placing of the wreath is a highlight of years of service to veterans through the Honor Flight. Walker’s wife, Mary Lou, works alongside them and, while she has gone on only one flight, enjoys meeting the veterans as they depart on their long-awaited flights. In that time, they have seen the one-day flight change lives and bring peace to veterans who often struggle to put some hard memories behind them.

“Particularly with the Vietnam vets, they don’t feel like they want to go, and I’ve had a lot of them say that,” Naden explained. “But if you finally get them to go, they have found out it helps. I had one just a few months ago. He said, ‘You got me on that Honor Flight, and when I got home it was the first peaceful night I spent in 45 years.'”

Throughout Arlington National Cemetery, one can find the graves of presidents and heroes, famous old generals, and privates who died far too young. There are Supreme Court justices there, and even men who were born enslaved, but died free.

Among all of them, it is the Tomb of the Unknown that is the most visited grave at Arlington National Cemetery. These soldiers could have been any mother’s son: a farm boy from Iowa, a city kid from New York or Chicago. He might have been his mother’s only son, the childhood sweetheart of a girl who waited so long for him to come home.

As the Tomb’s well-known inscription reads, “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.”

Their mothers never planted a flower at their graves on Memorial Day. But the nation they died to protect, and fellow veterans like Walker and Naden, continue to honor them and leave them flowers of gratitude all these many decades hence.

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