When U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond was laid to rest last week, a number of people labored in the background so the public could observe an occasion steeped in tradition.

Perhaps one of the most labor-intensive portions leading up to the funeral and burial was the work done by the South Carolina Caisson Detachment. The detachment commander, Maj. Steve Riggs, told me that 25 volunteers, most of whom the public never saw, pitched in.

"We started on Saturday," Riggs said when I spoke with him after Tuesday's funeral. "We brought all (eight) horses together, and broke down and repaired all of our equipment. Then we assembled the transport."

Assembling the transport was no easy chore.

"We had two complete sets of everything," Riggs said, referring to the backup equipment needed in case something broke down en route. That meant eight horses (including two spares), two horse vans, or trailers, and a spare. Riggs also had a van for the riderless horse, plus vans for the limber and caissons and trucks to pull each.

"We washed the horses and loaded our equipment on Monday," he said. "All of our people are volunteers and some of them needed haircuts. We took care of that before we left."

The convoy of about 13 vehicles, plus a S.C. Highway Patrol escort, left the stables on Johns Island around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. That placed the detachment in Columbia in time for a brief dress rehearsal.

The funeral procession from the Statehouse to the church went off without a hitch. The detachment then moved down the street where the members tore everything down and loaded the horses and equipment back on the vans for the trip to Edgefield.

In Edgefield, the detachment unloaded the equipment and the horses and put everything back together again. Fortunately, there was time for another rehearsal. That's when Riggs learned that the turn into the cemetery was too tight for six horses and the caisson.

The solution? Eliminate the first two horses from the team. That left barely enough room for the rest of the team to make the turn.

Retired Navy Capt. Jim Kenney of Hollywood was one of the volunteers who helped from behind the scenes.

"The logistics," Kenney said, "the cleaning of the horses, the combing, the spit-shines they put on their hooves. I was astounded."

The U.S. military's Joint Service Casket Team from Washington, D.C., provided the pallbearers. According to Riggs, the team's officer-in-charge nixed the firing of a gun salute and the playing of Echo Taps at the gravesite.

"They said we didn't have enough guns," Riggs said. "While we only had one gun, I think one would have been enough."

As evidence, Riggs said the Caisson Detachment fired that one gun 50 times at last year's July 4 observance at Marion Square.

"It worked perfectly without a stop. And it only takes a second to reload," he said.

Kenney said he was disturbed at the unnamed officer's decision to dispense with the gun salute and the Echo Taps.

As for the Caisson Detachment itself, "they deserve a big 'thank you.' They did this out of the goodness of their hearts."

Early last week, Lt. Col. Kent Selby, commander of the Army's 841st Transportation Battalion, held a picnic to thank the people who have helped ship tons of equipment through Charleston to Iraq.

The 841st is an active-duty outfit that handles the load planning and similar arrangements that go into placing supplies and equipment on cargo ships. Here are some of what Selby calls "quick numbers" accounting for the roughly 25 percent of all Army equipment that was shipped from the continental United States through Charleston to the Persian Gulf region:

The workload included:

-- six Army pre-positioned vessels carrying more than 1.5 million square feet of equipment.

-- 32 deployment vessels, carrying more than 20,000 pieces of equipment totaling over 3 million square feet or over 750,000 measurement tons.

-- movement into Charleston of more than 5,500 commercial trucks and more than 2,000 rail cars.

"All of this was in addition to our normal, routine cargo that we move through here," Selby writes. "Over 450 Reserve component soldiers, including Puerto Rico National Guardsmen, have complemented our unit..."

Selby thanked the Army's stevedore contractor, Stevens Shipping & Terminal Co., the International Longshoremen's Association, the South Carolina State Ports Authority and "literally hundreds and hundreds of over-the-road truckers, CSX and Norfolk Southern Railroads, the North Charleston Police Department and Naval Weapons Station Charleston."

The picnic was sponsored by the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, SAM's Club, and the Naval Weapons Station's Morale, Welfare and Recreation department.

Goodwill Industries of Lower South Carolina learned last week it was awarded a $172,280 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor's Non-Urban Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program to assist homeless veterans in the Lowcountry.

The grant, which is renewable based on good performance, will allow Goodwill Industries to train homeless veterans and help them become self-sufficient through gainful employment.

The grant will help up to 70 individuals in the Charleston area through June 2004. For more information, call Goodwill Industries at 566-0072 or visit http://www.goodwilllsc.org/.

Terry Joyce covers the military. Contact him at tjoyce@postandcourier.com or 745-5857.