The wails of a dis­traught moth­er pierced the air at the All Saints An­gli­can Church, Mar­li Street, New­town, when the cas­kets of Ja­mal Ed­wards, 24, and Ja­maal Ka­reem An­tho­ny, 23, were placed side by side dur­ing their fu­ner­al ser­vice last Fri­day. The friends grad­u­at­ed two weeks ago from the T&T Air Guard.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 5 am last Sun­day, a car, dri­ven by An­tho­ny, was head­ing east along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route when it slammed in­to a con­crete cul­vert. Short­ly af­ter the im­pact the car burst in­to flames, with the two men in­side. Their col­leagues, mem­bers of the T&T Reg­i­ment, Po­lice Ser­vice and Pris­ons Ser­vice packed the church for the fi­nal rites.

Mourn­ers spilled out­side the build­ing and near the US Em­bassy across the street. Tears came to the eyes of many of the men's col­leagues as the cas­kets were wheeled in­to the church. A flower, a mil­i­tary cap, a bay­o­net and the Air Guard's flag with the words "Ser­vice above and be­yond," adorned the cas­kets.

Collinsworth Howard gave Ed­wards' eu­lo­gy, de­scrib­ing him as ho­n­ourable, valu­able, friend­ly and a pleas­ant in­di­vid­ual. "He was an in­spi­ra­tion. He nev­er gave up to achieve his ob­jec­tive. Noth­ing was too much to ask and he al­ways per­formed his tasks," he said.

Chris Roach, An­tho­ny's cousin, said he touched the hearts of many and there were on­ly fond mem­o­ries of him. Roach said An­tho­ny was a fun-lov­ing in­di­vid­ual who was ded­i­cat­ed to his work which left him tired. "That day I called him and he was work­ing sen­try and he was try­ing to stay awake. I called him every half an hour," he said.

Canon Ma­jor Ro­him ad­vised mourn­ers that it was good to ex­er­cise pa­tience and for­get con­demn­ing oth­ers. Ro­him quot­ed St John's Gospel, where Je­sus asked his apos­tles to spend the night pray­ing with him with­out falling asleep. "Je­sus was ob­vi­ous­ly in a spe­cial place where he chose to go with spe­cial friends. He vis­it­ed them three times and they were sleep­ing on those oc­ca­sions. Would he en­gage in a good bawl­ing out? But Je­sus didn't shout at them," he said.

Ro­him said Je­sus ex­er­cised a great de­gree of pa­tience. "We are pre­vent­ing growth of ma­tu­ri­ty. We have to learn to be pa­tient with God be­cause we don't un­der­stand how he works," he said. The ser­vice was then fol­lowed by in­ter­ment of the bod­ies at the Mil­i­tary Ceme­tery, Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James.