Word: caissons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...genuine beyond dispute: a gesture of splendid grandeur. As sheer spectacle, the tribute was a rousing success. It was vintage Big Apple, a ticker-tape parade through the canyons of lower Manhattan. Blizzards of litter (duly calculated to be 468 tons). Bands blaring (God Bless America and The + Caisson Song). Onlookers shouting down from skyscraping heights. Placards and posters flashing and bobbing (YOU'RE OUR HEROES and THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICES). Throngs (perhaps a million, according to police) cheering, clapping and even weeping at streetside. The guests of honor, some 25,000 strong, were a wonderfully motley montage...
...veterans, many of them dressed in camouflage fatigues, formed up outside the Capitol, where the Unknown Soldier had lain in state for three days. The vets tried to join the line of march-some military bands and representatives of the services and veterans groups-that was to escort the caisson to Arlington. The police intervened. Once again, as in the war, there was a gap between official policy and the will of the grunts. Once again, some Viet Nam veterans were being denied the soldier's crucial ceremony of return from war: the parade, the public ritual...
...lain in state for three days, by six high-ranking officers as a procession of generals and admirals carried his medals on red cushions. The coffin was placed on a gun carriage drawn by an amphibious army scout car, the modern-day Soviet equivalent of the traditional horse-drawn caisson. Soldiers with fixed bayonets goose-stepped alongside the carriage as a military band played Chopin's Funeral March. Said a Western diplomat: "It seemed as much a military event as the Nov. 7 parade...
...coffin was placed in state in the Abdin palace. An honor guard of four Egyptian generals stood with swords drawn as incense from a brass burner wafted through the air. Egyptian President Sadat, in full military band delivered a drum roll as the coffin was borne on a caisson drawn by six black Arabian horses. The cortege proceeded solemnly through the streets of Cairo, to the shouts of thousands of Egyptians lining the 1.2-mile route. "There...