I understand that the Tomb Guard Badge is the second least awarded decoration in the Army after the Army Astronaut Badge.
I’ve visited the Tomb and watched the Old Guard there. It is truly a somber sight.
Yet the enemy foreign or domestic wants to keep GOD out of any public discourse=There known but only to God...”
As a rule of thumb, there are few memorials that deserve active duty military guards, and this is one.
During the Afghanistan/Gulf Wars, the USMC was so pressed for combat personnel in its frequent rotation cycle that they began to recall personnel deployed on minor jobs around the world. It was discovered that the crypt of John Paul Jones at the USNA at Annapolis had an entire platoon of USMC as guards.
It was decided that in future its honor guard be of cadets, as Marines were too valuable to be used as guards.
But if active duty personnel are not used for such purposes, the question of who should be is obvious: veterans.
A great example is the The USS Arizona Memorial, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Visited by about 2 million people a year, its on shore facility and offshore memorial require a lot of personnel, both active duty and veterans. Though its guards are exclusively active duty.
WHICH book were you reading ???