Tuesday:

Jim was posted to FOB Summerall near Tikrit. When the 101^st relieved the 82^nd, the 2^nd Battalion of the 327^th Infantry Regiment replaced the 1^st of the 505^th at Summerall. Branden Haunert of Blue Ash (Cincinnati) Ohio was killed by an IED one week before Memorial Day in Tikrit. And now another 2/327 paratrooper has died.

Jim is soon to join a fire department near Dallas. Less than two years ago he was preparing to leave for Iraq and Robin was preparing to see her younger son go. At times like that, people don’t know what to say, especially if they have little contact with the military and little understanding of how our volunteers view their duty. Robin would mention his imminent departure and reactions might be:

“Oh! How terrible for you!”

or

“Why can’t they stop this war?”

or even

“Couldn’t he get out of it?”

I once heard her try to explain, “If you were on a football team for years and you trained and trained, wouldn’t you want to play in at least one game before you left the team?”

Unfortunately (but predictably) a sports analogy is lost to those who didn’t get it in the first place. So it is similarly difficult for me to describe to anyone not PGR how I feel about the news of a Screaming Eagle Sergeant from Rockford Illinois who died from an IED explosion in the middle of the Jazeera Desert in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend.

Undoubtedly I am anticipating the funeral of Blake Evans the same way Blake anticipated his second tour with Delta Company, 2^nd Battalion, 327^th Infantry Regiment.

~~~

What ever happened to “Scooter Sissy”? I knew I was an “aging, hell-bound ruffian” but now I learn that “These PGR slobs are violent, cowardly, murderous liars.” Time to make another patch.

~~~

Update, Friday:

The family has honored us with an invitation and a Ride Captain has been appointed: It’s the old coastie, John Kopeck. That made me smile – Blake’s mission is in good hands.

The airport escort is tomorrow. In July of ’06, Old Coastie posted a short poem in each of two missions. He hasn’t used it since, so I will resurrect his poem for SGT Evans.

The planning is done, the stage is set,
we travel now to honor the Best.

With sincere humility, respect and pride,
LIGHT 'EM UP, PGR, IT'S TIME TO RIDE!!

~~~

Update, Saturday morning:

The DC name lingers on even though the toilet is kept clean these days. By 0745 ten PGRiders had gathered in the DC parking lot. It was a beautiful day for a ride. They would pick up additional riders at two designated stops along the 50 mile way to Rockford.

Once there, they will escort the family to the airport to meet their loved soldier, our fallen hero, Blake Evans. They will then escort Blake and his family back to the funeral home. (I would later learn from the newspaper that there were more than 100 bikes. Well done, guys.) There will be a visitation in three days and a funeral in four days, and I will be proud to stand for those, but today this group would go on without me.

So I watched them pin on Blake’s image,

and strap down their hats,

and then, following Blake’s example, they went off to do God’s work.

~~~

Ride Captains for the Tuesday visitation and Wednesday funeral portions of the Evans mission were Ro

and Rocky.

Here, Rocky is talking to mother Bowman who held her flag through the five-hour visitation while wearing Blake’s image.

Opposite her for those five hours, father Bowman, also wearing Blake’s image. Like most Patriot Guard, they had never met the young soldier they now honored. It was their first mission since Stockton, Greg’s last mission. And after that fatal bike crash, and after enduring the celebration of that loss by our friends from Westboro, Jeff had a near-fatal bike crash. His recovery has been recently jeopardized when his wife of 19 years was diagnosed with a terrible cancer. And yet, here they were for Blake.

And so was Yvette.

And so was Melissa.

And so was Bob.

And so was Matt.

It was a great honor to stand for Blake. He volunteered to face an enemy so that the rest of us could go about our lives as if the terrorists did not exist. It has been more than 92 months since they hijacked four of our planes and crashed them into three buildings: the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The only reason the fourth plane did not reach the Capitol Building was because a handful of people like Blake charged the cockpit of Flight 93 and engaged the terrorists in the sky over Pennsylvania.

And the only reason there has not been another successful attempt in those 92 months is because of the efforts of soldiers like Blake and Emily. Emily is 29 years old. She is an army medic. She thought she would be tending American soldiers but they assigned her to work in a prison. And think about that: The enemy uses their suicidal terrorists as bomb-delivery systems. We use our soldiers to give medical aid to their soldiers.

Emily’s mother is Dee-Dee. As she and her husband passed me on their way into the funeral home, she told me that she had a daughter in the 101^st. When I engaged her after they came back out, she told me that the work was discouraging for her daughter – tending the medical needs of enemy prisoners instead of her fellow American soldiers. She said Emily might not re-enlist.

Emily: This is just one person’s opinion, but I say that is okay. You have already done more to serve your country than most Americans. You learned to be a good medic and then you did your job where they told you to do it and that makes you a good soldier. Dee-Dee: Be sure to contact the Patriot Guard just before she returns so that we may properly welcome her home.

~~~

Wednesday. I stayed in town and arrived at the church early. As I walked through the parking lot watching others arrive, Dee-Dee approached me again. She told me that “the protestors” were active a few blocks east of the church. I found them and have written about them separately, but they had little impact on Blake’s funeral.

The Bowmans said they would not return for a second day of flagline duty, but they did.

And their son Mike was here for Blake, too.

And others,

and others.

Dee-Dee and those who knew Blake would go inside the church; we would stay outside. But Blake was in all of our hearts.

If the mission calls for a simple show of respect, we know how to do that. And if our friends from Westboro had required that we interpose ourselves, we know how to do that too.

So when the family asked that we shield Blake’s two daughters, Kylee and Adriana, from the media, we were more than willing.

We positioned ourselves in advance. As the girls entered the church, and again as they came out, we transformed our flags into a privacy curtain. I don’t have a good picture of the effect because I was holding my flagpole with one hand and the fly edge of another flag with my other hand.

And then we escorted Blake to the cemetery. The advance party displayed flags at the cemetery entrance. The bikes were last in the procession, but then we rolled past the cars to a special parking area where other flags were assembled and ready. We dismounted and were handed a flag as we walked to the gravesite.

John met with the family the previous week. As he left, the younger daughter waved bye-bye enthusiastically. She was too young to understand what was happening, but she knew how to wave bye-bye.

I held my flag very near the widow. The little girl would wave her small flag and then drop in on the ground. Her (slightly) older sister would jump down from her chair, pick up the flag, return it to her sister and then return to her chair. Repeat.

After a while, the smaller sister climbed down from her mother’s lap and started tramping around nearby, ever-threatening to fall backwards onto her well-diapered rear end. Perhaps confused by all the uniforms that reminded her of her father, she kept calling out, “Daa-dee! Daa-dee!”

The triple flag-folding (wife, mother, father) is a long, silent affair. The many people assembled in solemn reverence could hear the little girl’s anguish. Fortunately for all of us, General Rogers was rock-solid, as usual.

And then we turned-in our flags. As we walked from the gravesite back to the bikes, we passed this plaque:

R.I.P. Sergeant, and thanks.

~~~

7 photos from Saturday and 106 from Tuesday

Wednesday, 126 photos

Wednesday, 125 more

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