Posted by Sean Chisham on October 27, 2002 at 21:47:38:
In Reply to: Re: Shortage of Military Musicians? posted by doubting thomas on October 26, 2002 at 14:48:09:
Well, from what I understand, some people way up there, like Congress or high brass at the Pentagon, made a rule that "Families of honorably discharged veterans are entitled to a two-person uniformed funeral honor guard, the folding and presentation of the U.S. flag and a rendition of taps" according to the quote Steve posted here.
Think about how many thousands of veterans are buried each day and then think about how many buglers are employed by the US military. This is a pure number problem. Realistically, the military can't support enough buglers to cover all those burials.
Because some people way up high made this rule, the Pentagon's job is simply to do their best to "follow orders". When you give someone an impossible task, you sometimes get impossible or at the very least highly "creative" responses. I don't think I should go any further by giving my personal opinions on whether the mandate is practically feasable as it stands.
We have known about this issue for a couple of years now. All we can do is keep plugging ahead the best we can with what we've got. I believe that Arlington National Cemetary is up to 25-30 burials/day for all branches combined now, to give some perspective. The US Army Ceremonial Band alone does an average of 2-4 full honors/day along with 3-6 simple honors/day. This is in addition to retirement ceremonies, change of commands, arrivals, Twilight Tatoos, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wreath layings, etc which happen on a daily basis.
I believe the concert band does an average of about 2-3 concerts/month along with supplementing the Ceremonial Band on days when we are too saturated and run out of people for our workload. They also provide musical support for the trombone workshop and tuba conference hosted by Pershing's Own each year. They also play in Spirit of America each year.
Basically any job which involves sitting down is covered by the concert band and the Ceremonial Band covers any military job involving standing up.
sean