Two missions in two days. Racine for a 5-hour flag line Thursday afternoon and then Friday morning a Gurnee church and the Fort Sheridan cemetery. It was my second mission to that cemetery and I now believe my wife is right about it.

I had conversations with other PGRiders both Thursday and Friday about the guilty pleasure I take from these missions. Sure, solemn respect and heart-felt agony and quiet satisfaction, but also pleasure. When I arrive to find the same faces I have seen before – I don’t know the names but I know the faces – I am pleased.

I know that each familiar soul has given a half day to our common purpose and that we will each suffer a little in the process. It is difficult to stand in the cold for hours. It is not comfortable to ride a motorcycle in the middle of winter. If it were about being comfortable we would stay home. No one pays us to do this; no one assigned us this duty.

In Illinois, we typically ask for a show of hands to identify anyone present on his first mission. Three raised their hands this morning, probably wondering why they were being identified. But the rest of us knew and we applauded their presence without being prompted to do so. That was their first hint of the welcoming we all feel every time. At least I do.

With these photographs and the few words I post, I celebrate the Patriot Guard. Most of us are privately modest by nature and all of us are publicly humble by policy. “It’s not about us.”

We are often thanked by mourners or military. The typical PGRider responds, “It is our honor.”

Sometimes I say, “At least, no one is shooting at us.”

And while we are a little embarrassed when we are thanked – “embarrassed” is the right word for how I feel about it – still I am glad that we have given the person offering the thanks something to be thankful for. I am especially glad when that person is a soldier. I had the pleasure of meeting a member from each Honor Guard these two days.

SSGT Terra was a part of the Honor Guard in Racine yesterday. (And for the burial today, but the PGR were not requested.) He was rotating with nine other soldiers to stand at the casket inside the funeral home while the PGR stayed outside, so I had only a brief visit with him before we began our respective roles. He wanted to come over to our group and talk to us, and we were certainly pleased to talk to him.

SFC Barkefelt ran the Honor Guard for the mission today.

I was able to have a longer conversation with him after things had finished. He is eleven years in; nine to go. He comes from rural Pennsylvania and married a girl from his small hometown. He was made a Drill Instructor right after his Afghanistan deployment which delayed until now his deployment to Iraq.

I imagine that much of the ceremony of military life is performed only for a military audience, or maybe some immediate family on some occasions. He told me that when he was a drill instructor, “my privates would complain that nobody cares if we die.”

He told me that he has hundreds of pictures of Patriot Guard formations that he used to assuage their worries. It is possible that Evan and Jason marched into battle comforted by the memory of such images.

Wisconsin, January 4: Evan Bixler

Illinois, January 5: Jason Denfrund