AF honor guard visits Sheppard, teaches ceremony

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Jacob Corbin
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Six Airmen solemnly step in unison toward the waiting casket.

Slowly, they remove a fallen hero's casket and begin carrying him on what has become his final journey.

So begins the ceremony to lay to rest a military member. The Airmen are the stoic guards of the fallen, they are members of the base honor guard. They have trained day-in and day-out for months, taking painstaking care to ensure veterans and active duty members receive the same honors as those who went before them.

A three-man instructor team from the Air Force honor guard at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C., arrived here Feb. 5 to instruct honor guard members from four different bases on how to perform the active duty funeral honors. The visit culminated in a full re-creation of a military funeral and graduation ceremony Feb. 14 at the Hackney Fitness Center.

Ensuring that the customs and ceremonies observed by numerous Air Force base honor guards are standardized is no easy task for the members of the Air Force honor guard, but according to the instruction team, is a necessary part of the program.

"How else better to represent service before self than doing honor guard," said Tech. Sgt. Charles Forrest, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Air Force base honor guard program, "to understand what the people before us have done?"

The honor guard instructor teams make 14 trips a year to bases around the country, in addition to hosting four in-residence courses at Bolling AFB.

The course covers how to perform active duty full-military funeral honors in addition to going over the basics of being in the honor guard, including uniform tips.

Members of Dyess AFB, Texas, Randolph AFB, Texas, and Cannon AFB, N.M., also attended the course.

Airman 1st Class Rafael McKensie was one of two honor guard members from Dyess AFB who were able to attend the course.

Airman McKensie said he attended the training to become more proficient at what he enjoys doing, honor guard. He also said he plans on showing the rest of Dyess's honor guard how to perform the ceremony, and to pass along the tips and tricks he's learned.

As part of their graduation ceremony, the Airmen performed a mock funeral to show the skills they'd acquired over the last 10 days. From start to finish the mock funeral mirrored the real thing, including presenting the flag to the fallen servicemembers "family," represented by Col. Lansen Conley, vice commander 82nd Training.

A large part of the honor guards mission is to be on-call, ready to lay to rest soldiers, sailors, Airmen and Marines, whether they are retired or on active duty, according to Sergeant Forrest.

"There is no higher honor than to be able to carry a casket," said Staff Sgt. Bret Baker, course supervisor for the Air Force honor guard technical training program at Bolling AFB. "We're bearing heroes, from an (Airman 1st Class) to the president, every single day."

As the casket descended, 20 honor guardsmen can stand ready, firm in the knowledge that when they too pass, the next generation will be trained and ready to show them the honor they deserve for serving in the U.S. armed forces.