Marine receives military burial

Published Oct. 25, 2006
By Jim Carney
Beacon Journal staff writer

ARLINGTON, VA. - A few weeks before he left for his third deployment to Iraq, Marine Sgt. Justin Walsh spoke to his brother of his last wishes, in the event he didn't come home from the war.

The 24-year-old Marine reminded his brother that if anything should happen, he wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

``He said he wanted to be buried there with his fallen brothers,'' James Walsh II said.

The Cuyahoga Falls resident's wishes were honored in October. He was the 266th person killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom to be buried at Arlington.

Nearly all of those killed in Iraq, including Walsh, are buried in the same section.

The final resting spot for Walsh, a redhead who played football and wrestled in high school and had wanted to be a Marine since he was a boy, is a serene place known as Section 60 in the vast cemetery.

As far as the eye can see, there is row upon row of white gravestones.

Above the sea of markers at his burial, a blue sky was accented with fluffy gray clouds as a chilly October wind blew through the many trees nearby, most still holding onto their green leaves.

Walsh, a 2001 graduate of Cuyahoga Falls High School, died Oct. 11, 2006, at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., after being wounded Oct. 5.

He had joined the Marines the summer after high school graduation and graduated from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, S.C., three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

He was assigned to the 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

He was an explosive ordnance disposal technician who was defusing a roadside bomb when a second bomb went off, critically injuring him.

The funeral for Walsh drew 1,750 students from his alma mater, who lined the street in front of the school for the funeral procession.

James Walsh II said his brother had talked about wanting to be buried at Arlington since he joined the Marines in 2001.

``It was very important to him,'' he said.

A few of his friends who had been killed during his first two tours in Iraq had already been buried there, his brother said.

On the third tour, because he was working with bombs and mines, ``he had a different feeling this time,'' his brother said.

Walsh was to have returned from his third deployment in March 2007.

The 612-acre Arlington cemetery was designated as a military cemetery in 1864, when it was just 200 acres. It is the cemetery where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located and where President John F. Kennedy and more than 300,000 others are buried.

There are an average of 28 funerals a day at the cemetery.

Walsh's military burial was somber and brief -- 17 minutes from start to finish.

At 11 a.m., as 11 church bells rang in the distance, a Marine honor guard carried Walsh's flag-draped casket from a hearse to the grave.

After comments from Chaplain Ron Nordan, a three-round volley from seven Marines and the playing of taps by a Marine bugler, Marine Master Sgts. Allen Benjamin and Barry Baker presented Walsh's mother, Terri Walsh-Silvey of North Benton, and his father, Jim Walsh of Mantua, with American flags.