Welcome home 133rd Bravo

We escorted the 133rd. Bravo Battalion from an 8 month deployment in Iraq yesterday. The Patriot Guard Riders escorted them from the airport to the ceremony at the civic center. We left at 06:30 to meet up with some of the Patriot Guard Riders at the local Harley shop, here's my son at about 07:00...



This woman is one of the Road Captains for PGR. It's really cool to participate in something like this. When we finally line up to escort the soldiers, one cop car leads. Then a motorcycle cop roars past us to block the intersection followed by another. The PGR leapfrog up past us real fast and replace the cops who then roar onto the next on ramp to block it and the freeway. The PGR road captains keep leapfrogging up and relieving them as we progress, very organized.



At the airport, there were a lot of groups represented, my son is in a Christian motorcycle group...



Here's another, the Christian Motorcycle Association..



My club of firefighters, the Red Knights...



Here's some of the lineup...



This older woman came and spoke to me, she got very emotional, crying at times...



The families all waiting for their soldiers...



My flash didn't work very well in the civic center, but here is a photo of 133rd. Bravo Artillery group. 134 of them came home yesterday...



Check out the little dude with the Mohawk, he held this salute...



The crowd went crazy when they finally came out...



Blurry, but here they are, welcome home Bone Crushers..

More of America should welcome her soldiers home in a like manner...

Here's the video. http://www.kfdm.com/news/soldiers-38730-home-texas.html

Thanks BF. What a great opportunity to honor some of the US finest. Makes me proud to know you and your men too.

Once we were going over to church on a Saturday afternoon and got on top of an overpass and there the traffic was stopped. We had no idea what was going on but had a good view of the surrounding territory. To the right was the east end of the airport and that seems to be where the incoming special flights end up, like when Obama came a few weeks ago. Anyway, we could see a bunch of busses way over and then out near the fences we could see motorcycles all lined up in order with a couple of police cars in front. Pete right away figured it out so we found it exciting to wait for the motorcycles to roll by with flags flying. It wasn't long and I opened my door and climbed up on the floor of the car and began waving to them. Pete looked at me like I was crazy. Then the busses began approaching and to my surprise, Pete got out and saluted the whole time the busses went by. I'm not sure what is correct etiquette when it comes to saluting but if anybody deserves a salute, they do. He was in Guards for 5 years and the only time he was shot at was in Detroit during the riots. I could see the smiling faces of the soldiers and some had the windows down and happily waving back. It was a pleasure to let the people on the motorcycles know that we honored them at the same time were honoring the soldiers.

The little guy in the picture with the Mohawk was saluting.The National Anthem was being sung. Proper etiquette is for veterans to salute and all others to stand with their hands over their hearts. If you scroll up and look at that picture, you'll see just how many people don't resect our country enough to even do this. Maybe a lot of them are just uneducated about it, as this type of thing has been eliminated from school along with prayer.