St. Louis hosts first Iraq Welcome Home Parade.

What an amazing parade.  St Louis really turned out in force for this thing, and it is astonishing to me they pulled it off in such a short period with all the planning that such a parade entails.

 UPDATE:  Here is the Legion footage: 

And here is some local video coverage from MSNCB....

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Anyway, my wife (who is a photographer) and I drove out with our resident Legion videographer to take in the festivities.   And we met up with two of my fellow bloggers out there, Jim Hoft (the Gateway Pundit) and Marcus Penn of You Served. 

The parade itself lasted around 2 hours, it went on and on.  The obvious highlights were the Iraq veterans themselves, of which there were many different groups.  The Gold Star Family contingent was probably the most heart wrenching, most of them bearing pictures of our departed heroes.  Budwesier showed up big, both with financial donations and with a float drawn by their iconic clydesdales.  (They even had the dalmation on the carriage, to the consternation of the two dogs I was standing next to who seemed to be vocalizing their discontent with not being included.)  There were also literally hundreds (if not thousands)of bikers from the Legion Riders and Patriot Guards to AMVETS and Buffalo Soldier contingents.  Another corporate sponsor, Mayflower Moving company had a pretty awesome looking float that was a large wooden replica of the Mayflower boat. 

Naturally, there was a very strong Legion presence, led by Past National Commander Joe Frank who I saw in several local news stories on the event as well.  The Department of Missouri Legion had also set up booths in Union Station at the end of the parade route where veterans could meet with Department Servcie Officers, sign up for Membership, or find out about the Legion's Four Pillars.

I will have more info up as the week goes on, including some video taken at the event, and more pictures, but I wanted to get something up to reassure everyone that the Legion was there for this event.  Hopefully other communities will step up and sponsor parades like St. Louis did.  I understand the trepidation of the DoD to sponsor such things when we still have troops fighting the enemy overseas, but I don't see a reason we can't have seperate Afghanistan parades when that conflict winds down.  And for those, I will be walking instead of simply covering it and adding my voice to the chorus of those honoring our servicemembers.