President Obama Visits Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Back on Memorial Day, I was given some special duties revolving around the ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  The wreath laying ceremony there is an important tradition, but this year there was an added twist: President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Panetta, Secretary of Interior Salazar, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki were all honored guests, and Tom Selleck was the host.

Sparing you the details of my day, which involved a pre-dawn arrival time, and probably a lot of security-related things I can't talk about on the blog (Secret Service was doing their thing), suffice to say that I was there all day getting this and that ready.  It was the first real hot day we'd had yet.  I can handle the heat so long as I have water. I lost count of how many bottles of water I had, but my memory is of drinking around two gallons of water throughout the day.  I had a huge stash under my seat for the longer-than-usual ceremony; volunteers distributed water to the crowd.  That didn't stop people from going down with heat exhaustion by the end.  The medical tent looked more like a field hospital by the end of the event.

I had two jobs during the event.  One was to escort Vietnam service organizations to the wall to lay their wreaths.  The second was to escort a special guest and hand her off to the President.  I had to sit carefully in my chair, surrounded by 3- and 4-star generals, in a windless spot, under a relentless sun, in D.C. humidity, next to a wall that radiates solar energy, to avoid getting huge sweat spots on my uniform.  After the president spoke (see video below), I escorted the special guest for the second wreath laying, handed her off to a Marine, who escorted her to the President.  They did their thing at the wall, and then three overflights buzzed the memorial: vintage helicopters, a C-130, and a B-52.  Despite all the speakers, the B-52 ranked right up there in its awesomeitude - I mean, check out the unforgettable sound a B-52 makes.

Here's the video:

Not everything went as planned, but it went well enough.  Hey, Tom Selleck even said "Good morning" to me, so it all worked out. Moustache and everything! And I got to hear The President's Own Marine Corps Band play "Hail to the Chief" in person.  It was kind of like watching the West Wing, except it was real.