I went on my first Patriot Guard Riders mission early this morning and found it exhilarating (maybe because of riding a motorcycle at 70 MPH in 24F weather? LOL)

The mission was to attend a deployment ceremony for C-Company 1-137th Assault Grp (Air Cav) of the Indiana National Guard of Shelbyville, IN.

We had approximately 40 riders to form a flag line for the ceremony and it felt like an honor to be able to participate in the ceremony. While looking out at the troops deploying to a hot battle area in Iraq, I was struck by how young they seemed. Some looked like they should be heading to a Sophomore class in High School...yet every single one of them projected an air of calm confidence in their ability to get the difficult and dangerous job ahead of them done in the long months to come. It was inspiring to know that our society is still producing such fine "sheepdogs" despite the seeming slide of the general populace into becoming "sheeple".

After the ceremony I was astounded when some of the troops came up and thanked ME for being there to help send them off! I was almost speechless (stop laughing, yes it DOES happen to me on rare occasions!)
I managed to say "thank you, but it's YOU that deserve any thanks".

In my era of service, we didn't deploy as units as they do today; every soldier generally was sent to a duty posting alone and returned home alone afterwards.
Sometimes that return was acrimonious if you were foolish enough to travel in uniform...I am thankful that these soldiers won't have to worry about such a scenario occurring to them; it's much better to travel as a unit, especially on the return after war. The Army did something right when they instituted the new policy - maybe they did learn something after all.

After the ceremony, the Ride Captain informed me that it was PGR policy to give all first-timers a "Mission Accomplished" pin after their first ride and handed a pin to me. The whole experience really moved me in a way I hadn't expected and I look forward to participating in as many more such missions as I can, always with the hope that someday soon they will no longer be necessary. But until that day comes, I will always be honored to ride with a group that took as its motto:

Posted by: Delftsman3 at 01:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 418 words, total size 3 kb.