Send off ceremony

So, today the family went to see my son's Army Reserve unit "Coin and Flag" ceremony. The men and women will be heading to Fort Riley soon to begin training for their deployment to Iraq. They give the soldiers a coin to exchange with the family members as a way to remember and think about one another. My son is giving his coin to his fiance - I think that's right.

It was great to see the families and friends stand and applaud from the time the first soldier entered the auditorium until the last one sat down. There was a lot of clapping and cheering throughout the ceremony.

It was great that the Governor and the district Congressman were there to speak. They also stayed all the way through the ceremony - they didn't duck out. They shook the hand of every, single soldier and spoke a few private words to each one.

A bit less than great was the absence of both Senators although they did send representatives which at least helped. Hell, maybe they really couldn't be there.

After the ceremony, they did a briefing for the families and the troops. It took a bit too long, but it was thorough and did cover a lot of things that dependents need to understand. Not being a dependent, it didn't really matter to us, but we sat through it anyway. I got to meet several of his fellow NCO's - people he has spoken highly of. They seemed sharp and on the ball. He will have good company again.

After it was all done, we took our soldier out to dinner. Old Chicago, his favorite place. Then we left him and his fiance alone and went home. The kids need some time to themselves.

I have a bunch of financial things to take care of for him in the next few days. He needs to concentrate on his squad, so I'll happily do that for him. Since this is his second deployment, he's actually more experienced than some of the nominally more senior NCO's in the company and he gets looked to for answers a lot. It's so odd to see the boy you changed diapers for being addressed respectfully as "sergeant".

Then I blogged this entry.