Veteran Column: Veterans Honoring Veterans with Honor Flags
The VFW post 2771and other volunteers help place American Flags upon our veterans’ graves. We place them on three graveyards in Kinston. We place about 2500 flags each year. We go on about a week before Memorial Day and pick them back up the weekend after Memorial Day. We normally have about 20-25 people from different VSO’s including the American Legion, AM Vets, Vietnam Veterans of America, Marine Corps League, Air Force Sergeants Association along with the Auxiliaries from the VSOs. We also have some help from our community Boy and Girl Scouts.
We meet up at the Walk of Honor, which is next to the Farmers Market. We have prayer, and then we give out instructions to everyone. Everyone is instructed to place flags on the graves of all
Military members. This can be very tasking and not easy on Some of the graves, because the headstones can be very hard to read. We look for things on the headstones including rank, unit, armed services they belonged to too, which war they were in, and some even show where they passed at.
The cemetery’s that we put flags on are Maplewood, Westview, and Pine Lawn. We have graves of soldiers from all the wars we fought in.
We have a Buffalo Soldiers grave, which is an all-black regiment in the Army and the Native Americans nicknamed them that back in 1866. We have Union and Confederate Soldiers in these graveyards.
It can take anywhere from 2 hours up to 8 hours to place the flags out. It just depends on how many volunteers we can get.
When we pick up the flags it doesn’t take as many to pick them up. We mark all the flags with black tape on the flagpole. We take the flags back to G. I. Joe’s and turn them in. Over the next few days the flags are cleaned, stored, there will be several that become unserviceable because of wear and tear, some need a small amount of care to keep in service and others are ready to us again, all flags and flagpoles are cleaned and then rolled in 25 per pack. They are then stored to use again.
We place these flags on these graves to memorialize all our veterans that have passed in the line of duty and those that have served and since passed. It stands as a reminder of what the actual cost of freedom is. Many of these soldiers gave their life to this country.
Richard Jones
VFW Post 2771 Commander
