Yeah, I'm back

Don't have any pictures for you right now. Maybe later this week.

The ceremony went well. We managed to gel together as best we could. One of the hard things about doing funeral details down here is that you never have the same team twice. Every team has someone different, or everybody different on it.

That makes a big difference, when you're trying to co-ordinate just how long your steps are going to take. Drill and Ceremony means just that. DRILL and CEREMONY. In order to have that ceremony done properly, you've got to drill, drill and drill. Getting a group of people together and telling them "Forward, MARCH!" only works if the people you're giving the orders to know and have drilled with each other long enough to do it right. There's no calling cadence during a funeral. There's nobody counting time. The team has to do it all together, with no communication between the troops. That takes practice, and more practice.

The firing team is the same way. I know I have a lot of folks around here who own personal weapons. I want you to try something. Grab a buddy and a firearm you're not afraid to dry-fire. Stand side by side, not looking at each other. Have someone call out "Ready (charge weapon), Aim (point weapon), FIRE! (obviously fire)". You must charge the weapons in unison, move in tandem, and fire at the exact same time. It should just sound like one loud gunshot. Or one single click, since you're dry firing.

Give it a try. It ain't easy. Now try to do it with seven people at the same time. There is no "Well, it kinda sounded good" statements. It either sounds damn good, or it sounds like hyperactive kids popping rounds off at a firing range. Everybody has to be on the same page, and that takes practice, and more practice.

Now, I told you all that so I could tell you this:

I know that there are a lot of people down here who aren't worth the time of day. But I'm always grateful for the professionalism of the troops who pull funeral details. We're always trying to get familiar with someone new, someone we've never worked with before. It's like constantly re-inventing the wheel over and over. And yet they always make it work. We drill and practice until we get it perfect. We improvise. We deal with changes that are thrown at us left and right as people with shiny metal things on their collar say "Hey, why don't we do this instead?" at the very last minute. At one point it was so bad that even after the dress rehearsal, things were STILL getting changed and we had to adjust on the fly. They busted their asses, and I've learned more from them about D&C than I learned in my first five year tour.

I'm proud to be part of it.