the salute was definitely an omen of things to come in romero's films, but taken viewed within the movie, it's a pretty funny capstone to the Bub Saga.
According to some Tom Savini interview I saw once, all of those guts had sat out at room temperature overnight and were rotting by the time they shot this scene. Immediately after the cut, Joe Pilato projectile vomited all over himself because of the stink (and maybe he was also getting over the flu, I forget).
My first zombie flick! My kid self was somehow allowed to rent the VHS, and then I wanted to watch it over and over again, despite protest from pretty much everyone else in the house.