Memorial Day Special Interview with Sergeant Shane Vincent 10:07

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds Memorial Day Special Edition here.

Up next with us, Sergeant First Class Shane Vincent joined the Army in 2008. His first assignment was with the 3rd Infantry Regiment, most commonly known as the Old Guard from 2009 to 2012. He became the first person from Wyoming to earn the Tomb Guard identification badge. He also became the first Tomb Guard in history to guard the unknowns for 24 hours straight without relief during Hurricane Sandy.

And he then went on to serve with the 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado, and returned in 2016 for a second tour at the tomb and conducted a second 24-hour shift during the blizzard of 2017. He has not had good luck with the weather in Washington. No, he has not. And currently he is in the last year of a recruiting posting in Casper, Wyoming.

Shane, welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Thank you for having me, guys. So, Shane, I think a lot of people simply do not understand what is exactly the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and what does it mean to be standing there for 20 hours and guarding it? So, I'll try and summarize. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is...

a shrine, kind of a place where anyone that's ever lost somebody that never came home. So back, let me start over. So in World War I, we had thousands of unknown soldiers because of the devastation that the weaponry was leaving and

the lack of technology to be able to identify remains. There were thousands of unknown soldiers, which meant there were thousands of families that never had the closure to be able to identify

to know what happened to their loved one when they went off to World War I. So they didn't know if they died in combat. They didn't know if they were a prisoner of war. I mean, there was just so much that they had no idea, even after the war.

And worse off than that, they didn't have a way, a place where they could go and mourn for their loved one like we do now. You know, you can go, you know that your loved one is buried somewhere and you're able to go and see them. So really they made, we always say the ultimate sacrifice is sacrifice.

dying for your country or serving, dying in service to your country, really these guys made the ultimate sacrifice because not only did they lose their lives, but they lost their identity as well. Because there were thousands of them, they decided in 1921, they basically created one

place with one set of remains of unknown soldiers that represented all of the rest of them. That way, people could come to this singular place in Arlington National Cemetery, the largest veteran cemetery in the country, and they can pay their respects.

Now, you have, is it 24, 25-hour shifts or 26-hour shifts? Is that correct? Per relief, yes. So it's basically a relief is like your squad, anywhere between as low as four people and anywhere upwards of nine people on one relief. And then how it works is what's called a fireman schedule. So you work 26 hours on, 22 off, 26 off.

26 on, 22 off, 26 on, and then you have four days off after that to kind of recover, spend time with family, get your uniforms back up to the standard they need to be, and then you get right back into that rotation. How does one get, I mean, it's an honor. How does one get this honor to be one of these guards? Is it something you apply for or something they pick you? How does that work?

It could be a little bit of both. For the majority of it, we look for volunteers. So I was actually recruited from the old guard right out of basic training. They had...

really good recruiters. I like to think I'm a good recruiter, but these guys are great. They basically, you know, they're talking about being able to possibly be a tomb guard and that it's the least awarded badge in the military and all of these great things that the old guard does. And so that piqued my interest. You know, I wanted to be the best of the best. And so I volunteered for the old guard with the

with the whole plan as to be, to go and be a tomb guard. And the standards for that are incredibly high, right?

They are, yes. It's easier when you're first coming into the Army because one of the stipulations, you have to have no UCMJ action. So basically you can't have gotten into any big trouble with the military coming in. Really, other than that, the standards are

are pretty basic. Uh, you know, you have to be somewhat tall. Uh, five, 10 is like, it used to be the minimum, but I've worked with guards shorter than that. They have to be at least like, I think the shortest guard I worked with was five, five. Uh, you have to meet the height and weight requirements of the army. So, and you have to be able to pass a PT test. Um,

Now, that's just to be able to even look at going down for your what's called TDY, and that's like a 10-day long crash course on how to be a tomb guard. Now, if we have a bunch of people that volunteer and we do a TDY class of, say, 20 guards, we're only going to pick the top people out of that.

to go and start their training. So it's kind of like a selection process of picking who we think has potential to be a guard. So how having this honor, and it is an honor, of being this guard, how has it made you reflect upon Memorial Day and this weekend?

Oh, it's completely changed my outlook as far as Memorial Day. You know, before, I can't even remember, you know, I've been in for 15 years now, so I can't remember back before I joined, but I know that honoring service members that have been killed in combat was the last thing on my mind when Memorial Day weekend came along 15 years ago. In fact, probably 10 years ago. Even when I first started

out as a private, um, I looked at Memorial day as a four day weekend, like, like many other people do. Uh, but being, uh, being in Arlington national cemetery for a large portion of my career and seeing, uh,

seeing people buried there, walking through the headstones every single day, the interactions that you have with people that have come to the tomb, not just to see the guard, but they really actually do appreciate and understand the meaning behind the unknown soldiers has completely changed the way that I see Memorial Day. And so now...

You know, I don't focus on the four-day weekend and the barbecuing and enjoying it. I try and educate the public on what it actually means, and I try and honor those that have came before me to the best of my ability. This is sacred ground, isn't it, in Arlington Cemetery? It really is. It's the most—it's a very powerful place, probably the most emotional place I've ever visited. As our time closes here, you're recruiting now in Wyoming, correct? Correct.

I am, yes. Is it as hard to recruit people for the Army as we're reading about from Congress and in the newspapers?

You know, I'm not really sure. Wyoming is full of patriots. I think the hardest obstacle we've come across in recruiting isn't finding people that want to join. It's finding qualified people that want to join. I talk to people every day. The hardest thing that I can do is tell somebody that they'll never be able to join.

join the military because of law violations that they made 10 years ago or a medical disqualifier. That's probably one of the toughest parts about recruiting. Well, Shane, we thank you for your service. We appreciate you coming on today. I think this is very beneficial for our listeners. They just don't know what it is. And we hope you have a great Memorial weekend. And thank you for your service to our country. Thank you. I hope you do, too. Take care.

Well, Sam, it was really good stuff. It is really good stuff. I don't know if you've ever seen the videos of what they do there or anything. Oh, it's incredible. Go look that up if you haven't. I mean, these he really, I thought, undersold the standard that those tomb guards are held to. You want to talk about people who have to have everything in order.

Well, we'll put it right. Yeah, we'll put we'll put this on his website. It was, you know, Googled some articles on him, actually. And it's a nine month training program to be to get this responsibility. And he said everything on the uniform is measured to one sixty fourth of an inch. That is how much attention they pay to detail.

It's amazing. That's amazing. That seems like there's a good group of them I want to hire. I mean, talk about Mark here. I mean, when you're paying one 64th of an inch detail to your uniform, it's probably a person you can give some responsibilities to. When you're that squared away, I'm going to trust you with a lot else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.