Hell no, they won't go.

A group of U.S. Marine veterans say they will skip Saturday's St. Patrick's Day parade after being bumped from the 14th position in the parade to the 74th position overall.

For a time, that would have put them behind a group of llamas, but parade officials made a last-minute adjustment to put them in the 72nd spot, a bit ahead of the llamas.

Llamas to the front or llamas to the rear, Al Apodaca said he and his fellow vets from the 1st Marine Division will not be there when the 45th edition of the parade kicks off through lower downtown Denver.

"I don't know why this happened," said Apodaca, a Korean War veteran from Highlands Ranch. "We always get our name in pretty early, but this year it was to no avail.

"We feel it's an injustice. We're proud of the fact that we served our country. We're proud of the the fact that we're Marines."

Parade President Larry E. Law-ler, a 76-year-old Marine and a member of the 1st Division, said there's nothing he can do about it at this point.

The decision was not meant as an act of disrespect, he said. The parade committee decided it wanted to trim the size of the honors division, the section that marches at the head of the parade, down to a more manageable size of 20 groups, down from about 30.

There are 196 groups in the parade, which starts at 10 a.m. and continues until about 1:30 p.m.

The honors section includes groups such as a Marine Corps color guard, the Queen Colleen and her court riding in classic Cadillac convertibles, dignitaries such as Mayor John Hickenlooper, City Auditor Dennis Gallagher and Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey.

The 1st Marine Division vets were to march in what also happens to be called the First Division of the Parade, which includes 81 groups. Thus, overall, they were to march in the 72nd position out of 196 groups.

The issue of who marches first in the parade is always a touchy subject, Lawler said.

By the time he heard about the 1st Division's complaint about its placement, it was too late to do anything, he said. The programs with the published list of who is marching behind whom already had gone to the printer.

"I'm sorry they feel that way," Lawler said Tuesday.

Lawler suggested the Marines could arrive later and avoid having to stand around and wait.

But Apodaca said that, by then, it would be nearly impossible to find parking spaces near Coors Field, where the parade begins.

Several members of the group are now in their 70s, he said.

Lawler said he hopes to meet with members of the group on Thursday and talk them into staying with the parade.

Apodaca said his group still will celebrate one of its long-standing parade traditions.

They'll gather at the Cherokee Bar and Grill that day and raise a toast to the Corps and to Marines who have been killed in combat or died of other causes.

Information

• For details about the parade, go to denverstpatricksday parade.org/index.htm

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