Our nation celebrates the memory of our fallen service men and women this weekend. Many of the ceremonies will play the song "Taps."
The song is often played more than 2,500 times a day throughout the United States, because of recent deaths in the war on terror and veterans lives ending.
The song started as a French lullaby, but changed during the “War Between the States” in 1862.
Bugle calls were the method of communicating back then, so General Butterfield altered all calls : time to eat, wake up, attack, and time to go to bed.
Butterfield's idea was simple enough, he wanted his troops to know that it was he who was giving the audible command, and not an enemy.
Later that year, the lullaby changed by Butterfield, became a part of military strategy.
A Clermont County Ohio historian, Gary Knepp, explained, "The typical traditional means of honoring the dead was to have a three-gun volley."
That is where three shots were fired into the air to retrieve your dead during a battle, so instead he had his bugler play “Taps,” according to Knepp.
Because the bugle echoes for miles, the sound of taps would not give away the units position to the enemy.
Since then the song is customarily played at military funerals around the world.
