Golfer rarely talks about one experience in Iraq

From the San Antonio Express News

By Sig Christenson

GA Tour golfer Frank R. Lickliter II told a crowd of about 400 Monday of pulling 9.4 Gs with the Thunderbirds and doing a 15-base tour of Iraq, but the thing he didn't — and wouldn't — talk about was flying out of the war zone.

It's a deeply personal story, one that still haunts. As Lickliter and a band of golfers prepared to board a C-130J Hercules at a U.S. air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, they watched an honor guard escort a flag-draped metal transfer case to the plane's cargo bay.

More than 30 U.S. troops from the Army and Air Force formed two lines as the case containing the remains passed, their arms raised in a stiff salute. The golfers stood at the end of the line, behind the troops, hands over their hearts.

There was no music.

“I've got to tell you,” he said in an interview after the speech, which kicked off San Antonio's Celebrate America's Military week, an event that runs through Veterans Day, “everyone was crying.”

The rest of the story can be found here.