sigh.

[dragonlady7]

Was looking at friends of friends' journals.
Someone named kradical had linked to this: Honoring a Guardsman's Request.

I thought I might here mention that my father, a warrant officer in the 42nd Nat'l Guard Division who has spent most of his time in the National Guard haranguing the younglings who joined up to get money for college ("what will you do if there's a war?" "A what?"), was left behind when the 42nd deployed because of his age and decrepitude (ok, he's 60, but looks and acts 40, including perfect scores on his PT tests), and has been given the job of honor guard.
What does that mean?
It means he is the one who meets the plane with the bodies of his fellow-soldiers as they come back. He's the one who escorts the coffins out onto the runway, and does all that stuff with the flag.

So two nights ago, in a little blizzard, he got to meet a plane at Albany Airport containing the remains of a 21-year-old Guardsman from Watervliet who was killed in a Humvee accident.

His unit, by the way, is Military Intelligence. They are analysts, traffic coordinators, communications coordinators, Corps command support personnell-- pencil-pushers, number-crunchers, the desk jockeys that make modern warfare possible. And yes, even they get killed.

Comments

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

My dad is retired National Guard. Corps of Engineers. Stayed behind during Vietnam because he was teaching helicopter flying or something like that at Fort Lee (which is where I was born). He felt guilty about that, and when the Gulf War happened in 1991, almost volunteered to go but didn't because Mom threatened to kill him.

He still works for the government though, in the Department of Defense. Aircraft equipment procurement. I don't pretend to understand his job, but he is always quick to point out that he's "employed" by the government, as opposed to "working for" the government. ;-)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Really? What was his name?
My dad's been with the 42nd since... 81? 82? I forget the name of his battalion though.

My name's Bridget Kelly-- I suppose I don't have that in my info anymore. I used to link to my website (bridget.kelly.name) but I see I don't anymore. Anyhow, at this point, the mail for about two dozen people gets delivered to this house. i've gotten stuff for dragonlady7 before. :)
But, yes, it's pretty silly to give one's address and not one's name. Oh, the bizarre nature of the Inter-Net.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Bridie. Not birdie. Bridie. It's a traditional nickname for Bridget. My dad calls me that, and my friends from high school. It's the closest thing I ever had to a nickname.

Birdie the Penguin Queen would be a screwed-up nickname, yo.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

And oh, I don't mean nuffin' against analysts. I know you're one. From what you say, you're a good one. And that's important.
My dad, for one, is much more effectively used, I think, as an analyst, than as a grunt. (I think he does communications-traffic stuff, but I don't remember.)

My brother-in-law had a funny story about the Intelligence guys flying one of those Predator drones around and finding some Iraqis busily planting an Improvised Explosive Device in the middle of the road. It flew around for a while, coming back to check on them, and the exact minute they all packed up and left, a single shell (actually I can't remember what kind of ordnance it was; I was drunk at the time of the story) came streaking in and blew the whole thing up. (They woulda done it while the guys were still planting it, but there were a bunch of kids around, apparently, and that would look bad on the news.)
Since my brother-in-law is one of the guys whose job is to drive around in Humvees getting shot at, he likes those stories a lot. The ones where the high-tech desk jockeys make it so he doesn't die? Good stuff.