THE body of Staff Sgt. James McNaughton was borne by six of his brothers of the New York Police Department, but I pray and hope he will be revered by millions.
Why the reservation? His uncle, James McNaughton, at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Lake Ronkonkoma, L.I., told the congregation a stone dead truth:
“We are fortunate that gentleman warriors still exist, but be very skeptical when the media says something negative about our troops.”
Amen.
As someone who has a loved one, my older boy Pete, over there, I am certainly proud but always petrified.
It was a sniper that killed McNaughton, 27, on Aug.2 while he was guarding prisoners at a military base near Baghdad’s airport.
Staff Sgt. James McNaughton also was a New York City cop. He defended us in New York, as a member of the Transit Bureau, and in the badlands of Baghdad, with the 306th Military Police Battalion.
I mean, how much can a guy really give?
Uncle James sort of said it all at the packed church.
“These men are the modern-day samurais,” he told the jammed congregation, “and their code is ‘Live with honor and courage and pity those who don’t.'”
After the service, a fellow soldier, Spc. Kibony Richards, 21, said McNaughton was one of a kind. “You can’t find soldiers like him,” he said. “He’s not one in a million. He’s one in five million.”
Staff Sgt. James was a cop’s cop, his father Bill was a cop and a soldier, his grandfather was a cop, and his fiancée, Liliana Paredes, is a cop in the 9th Precinct. She was wearing her loved one’s silver dog tags.
When his coffin draped with the American flag was carried past her from the hearse, she broke down.
Hours after McNaughton’s military burial, cops and firefighters gathered in Riverdale at Gaelic Park to play rugby in an effort to raise a few bucks in honor of Chris Engeldrum, a firefighter, also killed in Iraq.
These guys, cops and firefighters, they give us a lot on the streets of New York, then they give us the ultimate in the badlands of Baghdad.
What more can you expect from a fella?
Additional reporting by John Doyle.