Specialist Dylan Maynes is a member of the 222nd Field Artillery which is a Utah National Guard group out of Southern Utah. This group was one that traveled to Washington D.C. to help with the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in January. Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with him to talk about his experience.
When he first received word on January 13 that his group may or may not be going to Washington D.C., he had so many emotions running through his mind. “I got to be ready, I got to get all my stuff. So I spent an entire day packing, I talked to my family, told them you know there’s a chance but it could just be nothing, we might not go. So I just packed that night, kept doing my thing that next morning, went to work. Got the text again that said hey, its time to go, we got to meet, we’ve got to be in Richfield, within three days we were in D.C.,” stated Specialist Maynes.
Once they arrived in Washington D.C. is when the work began. “We got there, bussed over to the James Madison Building is where we were at. The outcry of support from locals was crazy. I was in my head, picturing this big protest, we’re going to be seeing people every day. I had the same family come by every day that I was working giving us care packages and telling us how much they appreciated us being there to protect their city and protect their homes. It was kind of a cool moment to be just like wow, they support us just as much as we supported them,” explained Maynes. The group worked 24 hour long shifts before having 24 hours off to get to experience the beautiful scenery of monuments in Washington D.C.
On their downtime, some of the guardsmen were able to get a tour by Utah Senator Mike Lee. “So just from Alpha Battery alone Senator Mike Lee took 19 from Alpha, there was about 60-70 other guys that came in. Took us to tour the capital, gave us this amazing tour. I’m probably never going to get anything like that again. You know we started our tour at 8:00 am and we were done at about 10:00 am/11:00 am, so it was like three hours. He knew so much from the Senate Floor to all the nooks and crannies, and the big rooms that were in there. It was really cool,” said Specialist Maynes. The group was in Washington for a total of 13 days before returning home to Utah.