They Found A Marine Who Died Alone, What They Did Was…

He was a marine who died alone, and there was no getting around that. But here is the astonishing thing that they did next…

Robert Krause served as a Marine, but he died homeless and alone. Sadly, there was no family available to claim his body, but that’s when “biker veterans” rolled into town to prove that he too could be given a respectful goodbye.

As Americans, we all owe our freedom to our nation’s veterans. Unfortunately, there are many veterans who die alone because they are homeless. This is what happened to Robert Krause regardless of the fact that he served his country as a proud Marine in the 1950s. There is a positive to this story, however. At least in Robert’s case, he wouldn’t be laid to rest alone.

There are plenty of cases where surviving relatives do not know about the passing or simply cannot be bothered to fill out the paperwork. This could be because they haven’t seen the veteran in question for years because they live in a different state.

“I’ve heard it said that a veteran dies twice: once on the battlefield and the second time when people stop saying his name,” said Morales. “If there’s anything we can do to prevent the latter, so be it.” According to Fox13, Morales and other volunteer riders decided to pay homage to this homeless veteran, so they escorted Krause’s hearse from the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa to the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

“Escorting this veteran with no family to his final rest place is the last thing we can do to help this veteran,” said David Allen, who rallied fellow biker club members after discovering that a dozen or more veterans pass away unclaimed each year, just in the Tampa Bay area alone. “This is the last opportunity that, as a combat veteran myself, I have to show respect for this veteran. If it’s not for us stepping up to do this for these veterans, many would go on to have a service at Bushnell with no one present,” Allen added.

Morales and the other members of his group said it is an honor to participate in ensuring no veteran will be buried without someone paying their last respects to them. “Our motto is ‘vets helping vets,’” he said. “We’re not going to let any vet go to their final resting place by themselves. We all have a common bond of service – our service, what we’ve done for our country. And regardless of what we’ve done after our service, we still have that bond.” Even though they didn’t know him in real life, Krause’s biker brothers even had “Taps” played for him as they escorted him to the cemetery.

Unfortunately, Krause is not the only one who has died alone. Another example is Richard Butterfield, who served on the battlefield in Vietnam from 1960 to 1968. He too died alone, but due to the activism of Morales and his group, over a hundred people showed up to his funeral.

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