Badge Ceremony Quotes

So that is how we came to be standing in a sparse room, in a nondescript building in the barracks at SAS HQ--just a handful out of all those who had started out so many months earlier. We shuffled around impatiently. We were ready. Ready, finally, to get badged as SAS soldiers. The colonel of the regiment walked in, dressed casually in lightweight camo trousers, shirt, beret, and blue SAS belt. He smiled at us. “Well done, lads. Hard work, isn’t it?” We smiled back. “You should be proud today. But remember: this is only the beginning. The real hard work starts now, when you return to your squadron. Many are called, few are chosen. Live up to that.” He paused. “And from now on for the rest of your life remember this: you are part of the SAS family. You’ve earned that. And it is the finest family in the world. But what makes our work here extraordinary is that everyone here goes that little bit extra. When everyone else gives up, we give more. That is what sets us apart.” It is a speech I have never forgotten. I stood there, my boots worn, cracked, and muddy, my trousers ripped, and wearing a sweaty black T-shirt. I felt prouder than I had ever felt in my life. We all came to attention--no pomp and ceremony. We each shook the colonel’s hand and were handed the coveted SAS sandy beret. Along the way, I had come to learn that it was never about the beret--it was about what it stood for: camaraderie, sweat, skill, humility, endurance, and character. I molded the beret carefully onto my head as he finished down the line. Then he turned and said: “Welcome to the SAS. My door is always open if you need anything--that’s how things work around here. Now go and have a beer or two on me.” Trucker and I had done it, together, against all the odds. So that was SAS Selection. And as the colonel had said, really it was just the beginning.

But the ceremonial preparations were not yet finished. Ever since the exodus, the Israelites had failed to perform the sign of the Abrahamic covenant on their sons: circumcision. Circumcision was the act of cutting off the foreskin of the male genital organ of Israelite boys at the eighth day after birth. It was the badge of covenant that marked the Israelite commitment to Yahweh. Some believed it was a physical picture of spiritual cleansing from a sheath of corruption. Others believed it was a symbol of Yahweh’s blessing upon Abraham’s fathering of a multitude of nations. Yahweh never explained. But explanation was not required for obedience. And obedience was not a badge of the grumbling and complaining exodus generation. By the time that generation had died out, no one was circumcised in the entire nation of Israel. Joshua had the priests make flint knives and they circumcised every male in Israel. There was much pain and crying by men throughout the camp, but they had healed within a week and were ready for battle.

the last rays of the sun touched the hills at night," now, on his next to last day on earth, he had changed his mind and wanted to be buried on Lookout Mountain. "It's pretty up there.... You can look down into four states," he said. At any rate, Denver won the old plainsman's remains, and Lookout Mountain in nearby Golden, Colorado, would receive them-but not immediately. The funeral services were scheduled for Sunday, January 14, but the body would be kept in a mortuary vault in Olinger's Funeral Home until Memorial Day, when it would be finally buried on Lookout Mountain. Cody's funeral, like his life, was carried out on a grand scale. Described as "the most impressive and most largely-attended ever seen in the West," it was a service of such pomp and ceremony as only a head of state would have been granted. At ten o'clock on the morning of January 14, Cody's body was taken from the Decker home to the state capitol, where it lay in state in the rotunda, beneath the huge dome and its flagpole, on which the Stars and Stripes floated at half mast. The body was dressed in a frock coat on which were pinned the badges of the Legion of Honor and of the Grand Army of the Republic. The coffin bore the inscription: "Colonel William F. Cody, `Buffalo Bill."' Troopers from Fort Logan formed lines in the rotunda, through which passed the governors of Colorado and Wyoming, delegations from the legislatures from those states, officers of the United States Army, members of the fraternal organizations of which Cody was a member, veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, thousands of men, women, and children. Among the mourners were a handful of old Indians and former scouts-those who had been performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The rotunda was open for three hours. During that time, some eighteen thousand people according to the Denver Post's estimates-twenty-five thousand was the New York Times's guess-filed past the casket. At noon the crowd was kept back while the family, including his foster son, Johnny Baker, bade the Colonel farewell. A delegation of Knights Templar from North Platte followed.