Motorcycle Groups Support Special Forces Memorial Day Ceremony

By Chuck N. Baker
(Boulder City) —For the past 20 years, the local Special Forces Association has held its own Memorial Day ceremony, one day before the official commemoration. This year the Special Forces ceremony at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery. was supported by several veterans’ motorcycle clubs, including local Post 149 American Legion Riders.

Aurelio Flores is a retired Special Forces captain, and the outgoing president of Chapter 51 of the Green Berets. Speaking about the ceremony, he said, “This is a day for remembering our veterans, a day of honor. ‘Freedom is not free,’ and we prefer to do the honors ourselves.” Flores said he served in Columbia and Nicaragua, and has been the local Green Beret president for the past two years.

During the ceremony, Flores turned over the presidency to newly-elected (Ret.) Colonel Jim Hanke, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Describing the Special Forces, Hanke said, “We’re the Quiet Professionals.” Since their establishment in 1952, Special Forces soldiers have operated in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, first Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Syria, Yemen, Niger and, in a foreign internal defense operational role, in East Africa.

A rider who goes by one name only, Arrow, told the attendees that there are still many American warriors that have been missing since WWII. Perhaps coining a new phrase, he differentiated between MIA’s and POW’s who joined the service as opposed to those who were drafted by noting that “Some were volunteers, and some were ‘voluntolds.’” He added, “We will never forget you, the thousands (of men and women) who are unaccounted for.”

Near the beginning of the ceremonies a recording of Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” was played. And during the last part of the ceremony, Green Beret veterans recited the numbers in their battalions who have lost their lives in combat in recent years. The veterans then slowly placed fresh red roses and miniature American flags at the base of the Special Forces memorial sculpture that sits permanently at the cemetery. For many in attendance, the earlier strains of the Green Beret lyrics continued to linger in their minds.