Practice makes perfect honor guard

  • Published
  • By Airman Jack Sanders
  • 3rd Wing Public Affairs
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --  Members of the base honor guard here have received extra training the past few weeks.

Airmen from the Air Force National Honor Guard arrived April 13 to help train the base honor guard here.

"We're here, basically, to come out and train the local base honor guard," said Staff Sgt. Alex Frizzo, United States Air Force Honor Guard. 

Sergeant Frizzo is one of three national hour guard trainers who are here for the 10 days of training.

"Currently ... we have three rotations, we have Senior Airman Cambell teaching body bearers, Staff Sgt. Cenatiempo teaching firing party and myself teaching colors," he said.
The base honor guard is taking time out of their schedule to do their best to learn all that the national honor guard can teach them. 

"I think it's pretty cool," said Airman 1st Class Jose Camacho, a military justice paralegal. "I learned some new stuff that I didn't even know about."

"What we do for it (referring to the training) is we look for standardization," said Sergeant Frizzo. "One of our main goals is to standardize funerals across the Air Force. We've been doing this for quite a few years now," he said. Sergeant Frizzo said that they are just now getting to the point where all the bases are beginning to look the same.

The idea is that in a few more years all base honor guards will be very similar. 

"We show them what we do, and they give us some examples and some clues and some tips at how to make it look better," said Airman Camacho. "Our instructor didn't step in too much. I guess if he'd see something he'd (tell us the difference and) we try to implement it into our stuff."

"It's just really cool to have the actual Air Force Honor Guard here teaching us. We're at a lower level so we don't really expect much when we do our duties here, but they've been everywhere and they've done presidential burials ," said Airman Camacho.

The base honor guard has had the chance to do many tasks around the base. Retirements, flag folding and funerals are just a taste of the flavor the honor guard brings to Elmendorf.