{"id":38236,"date":"2013-11-01T07:40:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T11:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38236"},"modified":"2013-11-01T17:19:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T21:19:00","slug":"last-flght-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38236","title":{"rendered":"Last Flight Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Yahoo News<\/a> comes the story of a soldiers last flight home. A passenger that day was riding on a flight with a fallen soldier and decided to write about it. I’ll let him tell you about it…<\/p>\n

Delta Flight 2255 from Atlanta to Los Angeles seemed to be an ordinary flight with the exception of Candy, who was the most loving flight attendant I\u2019ve ever encountered. Besides using her Southern charm to quickly defuse every situation, she began her welcome announcement by thanking the handful of uniformed soldiers on-board for serving our country. Her poignant message was followed by applause, and it put into perspective that none of us would be able to do what we do without these brave men and women.<\/p>\n

But this transcontinental flight turned out to be everything but ordinary. We later learned, when the captain got on the PA system about 45 minutes prior to landing, that we were transporting a fallen soldier. The plane went quiet as he explained that there was a military escort on-board and asked that everyone remain seated for a couple of minutes so the soldiers could get off first. He also warned us not to be alarmed if we see fire trucks since Los Angeles greets their fallen military with a water canon salute.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You really should read it, the author does a better job than I could.<\/p>\n

When the jet door opened, another military officer addressed the escort who was standing at attention. He then stepped on the plane and told us passengers \u201cI just addressed the escort. It is a sworn oath to bring home, to the family, the fallen.\u201d He paused and then said, \u201cToday you all did that, you are all escorts, escorts of the heart.\u201d And then thanked us for our time and walked off the plane.<\/p>\n

As you can imagine, everyone was silent and no one got up, not even that person from the back row who pretends he doesn\u2019t [understand] English so he can be first off the plane. I\u2019m sure most had meteor-sized lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes like I did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"escort\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is video of the water cannon salute at the story, my web fu is weak so I’m not going to try and embed it here. Take some Kleenex with you when you go to the link….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Yahoo News comes the story of a soldiers last flight home. A passenger that day … Last Flight Home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":612,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blue-skies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/612"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}