Cadet Captain Grant Bowden is a junior at UNL and has the privilege of being the Flight Commander for Detachment 465’s Flying Husker Honor Guard. Honor Guard is an extracurricular activity at Det 465 where Cadet Bowden trains, equips, and empowers cadets to perform a color guard, carrying our National, State and service flags, with ceremonial rifles and presenting the colors for the National Anthem for everything from Husker Football and Basketball games to Commencement and other ceremonies. The Honor Guard also gets to do Pushups For Points at football games so when you see those guys and gals in uniforms doing pushups on the endzone for every Husker touchdown, that’s them!
Honor Guard is a volunteer extracurricular activity, so there is no obligation to join. Honor Guard cadets volunteer for which events they are available for and wish to participate in. Detachment 465’s Flying Husker Honor Guard currently has about 16 members, and they typically support upwards of 20 events in the fall semester, and around 6 in the spring. They conduct training for new members in the spring when they don’t have as many events to manage, and that consists of multiple weeks of in-depth, articulate training on how to carry and present colors, rifles, and command color guard teams. They evaluate each trainee at the end of the training period with a knowledge test and practical skills test, and upon passing they become fully qualified Honor Guard members, able to fill any position necessary on a color guard.
Honor Guard is an important organization at Detachment 465 because they do a lot of high visibility, important events in front of thousands of people where they represent not only their Detachment, but the Air Force, and military as a whole. They often do many of the events they support with joint members of Army and Navy ROTC, giving them opportunities to build relationships with the other branches. They carry symbols of our Nation’s pride and honor in the flags they present so it's an incredibly rewarding and meaningful group to be a part of.
