I saw just a bit of Ford’s funeral where the military pallbearers were carrying his coffin into the National Cathedral. To my eye it seemed like the eight pallbearers were made up of two men from each the Army, Marines, Airforce, and Navy. (I’m asking about the guys actually carrying his casket - not the honorary guys who walked behind it).
Doing a little research I found that joint-service pallbearers are made up of men from all five services (the above, plus the Coast Guard). Was this true for Ford - did I just miss the Coast Guard guy (at this early date I can’t find any decent pictures of them to double check my first impression)? If there were men from five branches, which branches were represented by two guys? Why?
Are the pallbearers all of of equal or similar ranks? Officers? Enlisted?
I counted at least one Coastie pallbearer every time I caught a glimpse. In this pic, the Coastie is second from left. In this one, he’s on the near side, third from front.
I can’t speak for the other services, but the pallbearers for the Coast Guard come from our Ceremonial Honor Guard unit in Virginia. I’ve known two prior Honor Guard members, and they do funerals more than any other function. They will also perform at high profile official ceremonies such as Presidential Inaugurations, service Change of Command ceremonies, parades, etc. They have a silent drill team, and I hear they’re very good, although I haven’t seen them perform.
They are made up of junior enlisted personnel (E2 or E3) and are selected right out of boot camp. Here’s their homepage.
Thanks. I guess I haven’t seen enough Coast Guard personnel in dress uniforms and mis-identified them (the shade of blue of their uniforms is kind of Air Force-y).
I found information on the Army honor guard, which seems similar to the Coast Guard one - based in Virgina, does a lot of special functions (one thing I read said that they can do around 12 funerals a week), and they picked the best of the best for Ford’s funeral.
I’m quite curious about two things. Perhaps some of our military members can answer these:
Why was everyone in full dress uniforms except the navy and coast guard members? That’s not what my brother in the Navy looked like in dress uniform. Do the lower ranks not get dress whites?
Why were the ranks not balanced? Why sergeants from the Army, corporals from the Marines, and the lowest ranks from the other three services?
I was not in the Navy but I recall from others I have dealt with there was a winter and summer uniform. Summer whites, winter navy blue. The army is trying to consolidate the number of uniforms. Maybe the other services are also. As to the other question I am not sure. However members of the Old Guard tend to have been in the military for at least a bit before getting into the unit. The pool of soldiers they draw from for the detail may be more experienced and tend to have a higher rank. I know I received a letter while I was on active duty (at 5-9 I am not tall enough, I think they just sent letters to everyone with a high GT score). I never heard about them trying to recruit anyone who didn’t have at least a couple of years on. Here are the requirements. My father was assigned to the DC Marine detail right out of boot camp but that was in 1945 so I don’t know how relevant that is (his main qualification, 6-3 and skinny).
That was a Navy Dress uniform. As noted, it’s winter, and that is the winter dress uniform for the Navy. Navy blue in the winter, whites in the summer.
That list of pallbearers cannot be accurate, as there were Coast Guard pallbearers for Ford. Plus, I’m going to guess that for an event such as this, there were several teams of pallbearers as President Ford’s body was moved to several areas covering a week’s time. As to your questions:
That is the dress uniform for Coast Guard enlisted (not just junior enlisted). That is also a dress uniform for officers as well, although officers also have whites. In reality, there are several versions of dress uniforms when you add them all up, to include several variations of Dinner Dress. Here’s a good pic of the Honor Guard’s standard Service Dress Alpha uniform, taken during Reagan’s funeral
I suppose the answer to that is that each service has their own policies on who performs Honor Guard duties. For the Coast Guard, Honor Guard duties were carried out by a platoon of recruits at basic training until 1962. It was then that a separate unit was created whose sole responsibility was Honor Guard functions. Those selected for Honor Guard duty are “first termers”, identified while still in boot camp. Once in the Honor Guard, their life is much like it was in boot camp, so it probably makes sense to get them right out of basic.
You wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake. In fact, we used to use Air Force light blue shirt as part of our uniform. Actually, we still wear it; the Air Force ended up changing theirs slightly.
[Disgruntled Coastie]
All of our stuff is friggin hand me downs! Air Force uniforms… old Navy boats… Army desks from Korea…
[/DC]
[Disgruntled Coastie]
All of our stuff is friggin hand me downs! Air Force uniforms… old Navy boats… Army desks from Korea…
[/DC]
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but you guys have some nifty small craft, not to mention those rescue helos.
Your right about the pallbearers, in D.C. anyway, I saw at least one coastie.
The Army and Marines are the holdouts at this point in having their ceremonial-ocassion dress uniform be an entirely different get-up, rather than a fancied-up version of the “Class A” or Service Dress; and the Army has already announced that by 2010 the Class As and the Dress Blues are going to be consolidated. (And even the Navy has announced that they’ll be doing away with different “summer/winter” schemes for everyday-wear uniforms.)
