Armed Guards

The soldier we buried in Columbia has a rather high-ranking Uncle in the Colombian government. So, not only did we have our own armed guards, when the Uncle arrived for the funeral, he brought his own armed guards with him.

I haven't see that many submachine guns outside of the Army. And the guards were NOT joking around. At one point, a motorcyclist decided to cut across the parking lot in front of the funeral home, and the moment his tire touched the blacktop he had three different weapons pointing at him. The team had three guards with them at all times when we were in the open. We moved as a group, and the guards moved with us. I've never been involved in anything like it, so it was a learning experience, to say the least.

I'll say this - there was nobody who could mess with us without getting ventilated by several different people. Unfortunately, we weren't armed ourselves. One of our escorts was an Army captain, prior enlisted, Ranger. One morning I mentioned to him that it's rather hard for me to travel around being guarded and not have a weapon myself. He said "Don't worry bro, a Ranger never leaves a fallen comrade behind!" I replied "Yeah, but I'd rather be your comrade and not be fallen. Can we make that happen please?" He started chuckling. "Well, I've got fourteen and one in the pipe. After that, you'll see me running, and you should probably try to keep up."

I'll be tossing out bits of my trip as the week goes on. I'm busy as all hell right now, and being away from the office for a week only means that I now have two weeks of work to do and only one week to get it done. Not that I wouldn't have gone, but it does suck to see all that paperwork waiting for me when I return.