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Air Force, Army teams to recognize Hood victims

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Air Force Academy will hold a moment of silence to honor the shooting victims at Fort Hood before the Army-Air Force football game Saturday at the academy.

The observance will also honor soldiers from nearby Fort Carson who’ve been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, academy spokesman Troy Garnhart said.

The academy and Fort Carson are on the outskirts of Colorado Springs.

On Friday, scores of soldiers and family members gathered on a parking lot at Fort Carson for a pep rally to support the Army football team. It opened with a moment of silence for the Fort Hood victims in Texas but quickly warmed into a boisterous event, with soldiers competing for who could do the most pull-ups and push-ups. Loudspeakers blared “Bad to the Bone” and “Born to Be Wild.”

Security did not seem unusually tight. Only one military police officer was in view.

“It’s a little bit of a somber occasion,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the Academic Board at West Point, told the crowd.

He offered his condolences to the Fort Hood victims and their families. Then he led the crowd in a cheer and gave a rousing pep talk.

Afterward, Finnegan said: “We’re all in this together. We’ve suffered through some of the same kind of things over the years, whether it’s casualties in the war or anything else. It’s always good to try to find some bright spot.”