Wounded Warrior March at Pentagon Is a Little-Known Event

The March 13th Wall Street Journal front-page article by Yochi J. Dreazen entitled “Wounded Soldiers See the Pentagon in Private Parade” describes the Wounded Warrior March, which takes place at the Pentagon about every six weeks and is a little-known event.

The article describes the Pentagon visit of 22-year-old Marine Corporal Kenny Lyon, who lost his leg in a mortar attack on a small U.S. outpost near Fallujah in Iraq. Though he had hoped to walk on his prosthetic leg for the Pentagon march, he had to be pushed in a wheelchair by his mother, Gigi Windsor.

According to The Wall Street Journal article, hundreds of Defense Department employees lined the corridor to cheer for Cpl. Lyon and the other military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I especially connected to Cpl. Lyon’s quoted comments about the Defense Department employees: “Some of them make important decisions but never get to see their decisions being carried ou. When they applaud us, it gives them a little bit of closure for what they do every day. It makes things real for them.”

Credit for implementing the program goes to Diane Bodman, who volunteers at the Red Cross office at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She is the wife of Energy Sectrretary Samuel Bodman.

This a heartwarming emotional story, and an example of what good newspaper reporting can do when it brings to the rest of America such little-known stories.

Do you know other little-known events that honor American military personnel who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan?