Silent Platoon Friday Parade

Friday, 14 July 2023

Marine Barracks, Washington DC

This has been on my bucket list for quite some years. Can't even remember when I first heard about them. It met my expectations & I highly recommend it - if you are even remotely patriotic and especially if you love marching music & close order drill. The setting was amazing & very historic. In our case, it had the added drama that when we arrived at Eastern Market metro, there was a huge storm passing by! Extremely hard rain, high winds & lightening popping down all around us. And this was about 6:20pm. Gates were to open at 7pm!!!!

The website said that they always waited to the last minute to cancel, so we stayed in the underground & kept checking the Facebook, Instagram & Twitter sites. About 7pm they announced that it would probably be moved inside, but would still go on. About 7:10pm we headed to our gate in a light drizzle. By the time (6 minutes walk) we got to our gate, it wasn't raining & there was a rainbow over the barracks. The storm continued on it's path & even though there was lightening visible over the buildings throughout the evening, it was always very far away & the skies were mostly clear with a light breeze. Perfection! It was meant to be!!

Marine Corps Capt. Kelsey M. Hastings serves as the Silent Drill Platoon Commander for the Marine Barracks Washington 2023 parade season. She is the first woman to command the platoon.

The grand finale started with a concert by the President's own & a firing of the cannons.

The ceremony ended with a long Marine on the roof playing taps. Very inspiring. It was a lovely evening.

Low quality video of snippets of the performance.

A video of the individual performance of the Silent Platoon. Amazing!!!

Tour of the Arlington National Cemetery

Short visit to the Air & Space Museum

Thursday, 13 Jul 2023

Once again, we drove to the Franconia/Springfield station & caught the blue line into the City. We had a tour reservation through Viator (booked through Chase using points). It was extremely hot, but we were still very very pleased that we had done this walking tour. Our guide was Jim & he was extremely knowledgeable. He had 30+ relatives buried here & had been doing this tour for 7 years. Before that he had trained the guys on the motorized train tour. He had background stories about almost everything monument we passed! It was really incredible. He led us much of the time walking backwards. Scary, but he has obviously been doing that for a long time, so he was competent & secure with his actions!

Female Guardian of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The walk the mat is 21 steps and when they turn, they face the tomb for 21 seconds. Everything being done in 21's to liken to the highest of honor - the 21 gun salute.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We watched the changing of the guard - done every 30 minutes during high season - not due to the heat or for the soldiers, but to allow crowd control!

Pentagon in the distance.

Audie Murphy - a must see marker - used to be the most decorated soldier - now he's the 2nd most decorated. But still definitely the most famous. Garlin Murl Conner is actually the most decorated now, since his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to a Medal of honor on 26 Jun 2018.

Headstone for a combined grave. Jim explained that occasionally it would be decided to bury a group that had all died together in the same grave. Sadly, it was sometimes it was because their remains were intertwined.

It is possible to donate something in memoriam to an individual - tree, bench, something - even if the individual was not buried in the cemetery.

A member of the Kennedy family - they chose the simple wooden cross.

JFK's Eternal Flame Memorial. Jim said he knew of 2 times he had gone out for a few seconds. Once when a visiting nun had poured holy water on the flame!!!

After the tour of the cemetery, we took the Metro to LeEnfant Station, ate a sandwich at Subway & then went to the Air & Space Museum for our 4pm timed entry pass. We didn't have time to see a lot because I elected to sign us up for 2 planetarium shows & the museum was closed when we got out of the second one. Still loved it.