Ground Team Essay

I serve in the Civil Air Patrol Edmond Composite Squadron ground team. I am a ground team member level two which signifies that I have done proper training to participate in ground team searches for both lost aircraft and missing persons and aid in natural disaster reliefs.
I have gone on three searches, two of them for the same mission. One search was a search for a thought-to-be downed aircraft. My team and I searched the area around Cushing for a crashed aircraft using an elper. We did not find the lost aircraft because it had landed at a nearby airport, and the pilot forgot to check it in.
Another mission I've been on contained two searches, one on a Saturday and one on the following Sunday. Our mission was to find a lost elderly man with the tendency to wander. We were called out by the sherif approximately two weeks after he had been reported missing.
We knew, almost
One of the cadets that searched with me had what we call afterthoughts. He believed that if we had just looked a little harder then we might've been able to find him.
It's a common thing to happen to people after an unsuccessful search, but it was still a problem I needed to address. I told him that there is no way to change the past, that we did everything that we knew to do, and that we should feel delighted that he was found, not distraught that we were not the ones to find him. It was curt of me, but it needed to be said that way. He needed to know that it was a fact that he couldn't change what happened, and that he should be glad it worked out in the end.
I faced a little bit of after-thinking, myself, but I have been through training for that sort-of thing. I've been trained to serve my community, do the best job I can do at all given times, and never regret when I cannot give enough, especially when it works out in the end. I am glad to serve for the greater good of all, and I will always endeavor to do