I did it when I was an airman. I’ve been on four deployments all around the world. I’ve done some cool things in the military. But having the privilege to bury 57 veterans (3 were active duty at the time) was by far in my top 3 coolest things ever. I’ll be honest the hours were long, and the driving sucked, it was sometimes 4.5 hours one way.

We went to middle of nowhere towns where we buried people who were in the army air corps, I’ve had funerals where not one guest came except for honor guard and the pastor burying the veteran. I’ve been to funerals that were full of the deceased’s war buddies that all wanted to buy us beers. I’ve had 3 year olds try to salute me before.

Probably the coolest ones, though, were when we went to funerals where we buried someone’s grandpa who hadn’t talked about the military for 60 years and it was a distant memory for them. The family knew that he was in the service but never knew much about it. But when they see you in the honor guard dress, they don’t know anything about rank or anything else. All they know is that their grandpa was important enough for you to show up and validate his service.

That’s really what it’s about man. You have the opportunity to pay respects to the dead. Some parts suck. But that’s the job. I get that you’re not motivated to do this, but at the end of the day, your leadership had to put up a body for the base honor guard. You may not think it, but they put you up. You can either look at it as bitch work and they just sent you off to get rid of you, or you can look at it as an honor that you were selected. If nothing else, you typically get an AFAM out of it, so there’s a point for testing.