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President of the Republic at the farewell ceremony for Sergeant Kalle Torn and Junior Sergeant Jako Karuks, who were killed in Afghanistan, Tapa, 4 July 2007

04.07.2007

Dear intimates of Kalle Torn and Jako Karuks!
Friends and comrades!
Good compatriots!

Last Friday afternoon at the Tallinn Airport, when receiving two caskets draped with Estonian flags, a lone trumpet played a call signaling the end of the day. Today, this trumpet call will be heard again at the Mõisaküla and Tõrma cemeteries.

The lone trumpet signals that the day is over, and wishes us peaceful slumber.

This trumpet call is known as the Last Post. Sergeant Kalle Torn and Junior Sergeant Jako Karuks are now at their last post.

We met in the middle of April in Paldiski before your unit flew to Afghanistan. At that time, I said that I was proud of your courage and valor in serving on the front lines of the interests of Estonian security policies, in serving Estonia.

I also wished you soldiers’ luck. Yet here you are, draped with Estonian flags. Killed, unjustly early, on Victory Day. Bullets and shells are unjustly blind, as is war itself.

However, Estonian soldiers do not go to Afghanistan with a message of war. Estonia sends you there so that Afghanistan might live in peace, its people might live securely, and the country would not be a threat to other countries. The Estonian state sends you there to support our allies, because Estonia also expects help from its allies when we are in need.

The Last Call trumpet call for the fallen Estonian soldiers speaks painful words to us of the abbreviated lives of the two young men. For instance, about the fact that Jako Karuks leaves behind an unfinished diary that he started in the Defence League and continued in the Defence Forces, which he planned to publish as a book. And for instance, about the fact that Kalle Torn will not see the home that his parents had started to re-roof and re-side, hoping to complete the work by the time their son arrived home on leave.

Now their friends and comrades hope that they will be able to publish Jako Karuks’s diary and they promise to help put Kalle Torn’s home in order in his memory. “Hey, guys, let’s do it!” Kalle himself would have said in this case.

Life goes on, continues on from our mourning and words of compassion. Memories and gratitude remain and a knowledge that we will not forget these soldiers.

I too will not forget. Will not forget Kalle Torn or Jako Karuks, will not forget Andres Nuiamägi and Arre Illenzeer who fell in Iraq. Similarly we must not forget the tens of Estonian soldiers that have been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. They must know that even if the medical commission certifies them as unfit for military service, the country knows how to support them, knows how to care for them.

They are all Estonian soldiers who have fought courageously for Estonia and Estonia will remember them.

To Kalle Torn and Jako Karuks, at whose graves a mourning trumpet will play the Last Call today, I can only say very succinctly—Soldiers, I am proud of you! I thank you, and slumber peacefully!