I recently had a Red Rose Veterans Honor Guard service on a cold afternoon in Lancaster. We all arrived before our time to report. The time we gather is a half hour before the graveside ceremony begins.
We practice the ceremony for a few minutes. We concentrate on the very precise way we fold the flag. Then in a very military way, we wait. This particular ceremony happened right on time. I have been to others that were delayed from a few minutes to almost an hour.
All of us are required to leave our phones in the car, so we actually talk to each other. And we don't take selfies. I have my phone shut off in my jacket pocket because I ride a bicycle to the ceremonies. I am the only one who has ever ridden to the ceremonies, so there are no bike rules.
At the most recent ceremony I attended, I met another Tanker. He is younger than I am so we trained on and served in different tanks. But we still spent years in turrets and had a lot of fun talking about "the best job we ever had."
After I left the active duty Army at the end of1979, I grew a beard and was a civilian for almost two years. Then I joined a reserve tank unit for three years. I was not ready to re-enlist in the active-duty Army, but 12 weekends and two weeks in the summer sounded just right, especially because I could fire tank guns at least twice a year.
Now that I am well past any sort of military service, participating in a ceremony to honor fellow veterans a few times a month gives me a lot of joy, and just enough feeling of being back in the military.
We recently went to a retirement service for a former student who was in the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service. There was an honor guard for that ceremony, too. They did very well, despite it being the first time for almost all of them. It was a very interesting experience.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to be apart of this
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