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Associated PressThe National Guard remembers a fallen soldier during one of a series of homecomings.
PANAMA CITY - The empty boots and helmet sitting atop a rifle onstage were a reminder of war's reality amid a festive welcome-home celebration Saturday for Florida National Guard and reserve troops.
Four Air Force F-15 Eagle jet fighters roared over the crowd, estimated at 5,000 people. Fireworks launched from a barge in St. Andrew Bay peppered the blue Florida Panhandle sky with red and white flashes. "It doesn't help with the grief, but it comforts me to know that everyone else is receiving the recognition that they deserve," Tammy Wise said afterward. "They have brought great comfort to me."
Her son, Spc. Robert A. Wise, 21, of Tallahassee, was killed Nov. 12 when a roadside bomb ripped through his Humvee in Baghdad. He is one of three Florida guardsmen killed in Iraq. Two have died in Afghanistan.
Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings presented the Panama City-based 3rd Battalion of the 124th Infantry with a Presidential Unit Citation for helping destroy nine Iraqi divisions in the opening month of the war, the first the National Guard unit has received since World War II.
The Salute to Florida's Heroes was the second in a series of five such celebrations for troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first was in Tampa last month, and others are set for June 12 in Orlando, July 10 in Miami and Aug. 21 in Jacksonville.
Tammy Wise said the three guardsmen who were with her son when he was killed were like characters from the Wizard of Oz - Spc. Matt Moss for his quiet intellect, Spc. Micah Sofge for his heart and Pfc. Trueman Muhrer-Irwin for his courage.
The attack remains etched into the minds of Moss, 22, of Panama City and the Humvee's driver; Sofge, 21, of Tallahassee, who was driving a second Humvee; and Muhrer-Irwin, 21, a Florida State University student from Chicago and who was manning the gun turret of Wise's vehicle.
The guardsmen were assisting Army explosives experts in clearing unexploded ordnance and were headed back to their compound when the homemade bomb went off under the right side of the Humvee, where Wise was seated.
"It feels like a sledgehammer into the side of your body," Moss recalled. "All of a sudden you can't hear anything out of your right side. Dust is everywhere. You can't see a thing."
Muhrer-Irwin was facing backward. The concussion made him think he had been hit in the back of the head by a low bridge or perhaps someone had thrown a brick. Then he felt the pain from a shattered foot.
"Every breath would come out as a scream," he said.
Moss, a medic who plans to resume his college studies and become a doctor, and another soldier managed to stop Wise's bleeding, but he died later that day.
"Because of his efforts and the efforts of everyone involved, Robert died in a military hospital and not on the streets of Baghdad," Tammy Wise told the crowd. "In my heart that means Robert died on American soil, not Iraqi soil."
Sofge invited her to spend Christmas with his family and kept in touch by e-mail when his leave ended and he returned to Iraq. Doctors told Muhrer-Irwin it would be at least a year before he could walk again, but only five months later he walked into Tammy Wise's home, she said.
About 2,000 Florida guardsmen have returned from various deployments since February.