Now it can be told continued

I got down to Arlington Hall in July of 1944 and had served there for almost ten months, never having gotten off the base. Then, on April 12, l945, our president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, suffered a brain hemorrhage and died a short time later. His body was shipped by train to Washington, D.C. and our unit was allowed to go to the Capitol to see the funeral parade.
I will never forget that day. It was a fairly warm day, but a slow and steady drizzle fell, and the funeral procession moved slowly past the spectators, most of whom were in tears. Eleanor Roosevelt rode in an open vehicle with no veil, her face composed and sad. She looked to neither left nor right, and sat alone in quiet dignity.
I remember the crushing sadness of the spectators. There is nothing so solemn as a funeral procession, with its muffled drums and slow cadence. There was no music, and the muted footsteps of the marchers was the only sound heard as the slow procession passed by. For once I recognized the unfolding of an historic event. An era had passed by, and such a one as our dead president would never come again.
We returned to the base, chastened and sobered by the events of the day. We knew of course that the vice-president, a modest and little –known fellow named Harry Truman, had been sworn in. What we didn’t know was that he would prove to be a fearless and far-seeing leader, destined by fate to make one of the most difficult decisions ever to fall to the lot of a president. He decided to drop the atom bomb and forever changed the world.