National Guard captain from Boise says of D.C. duty: ‘It’s a little bit heartbreaking’
During his 14 years with the Idaho National Guard, Capt. Vaughn Ellsworth, of Boise, had been deployed to other countries, but never to another area of the U.S. outside Idaho.
That changed in the summer of 2020, when Ellsworth and other Idaho National Guard members were sent to Washington, D.C., during Black Lives Matter protest. Ellsworth said he saw 10,000 people in the streets at night protesting racial injustice.
Ellsworth expected to see a similar scene when he returned to the capital to provide additional security during President Joe Biden’s inauguration. But that wasn’t the case. Washington was on lockdown, and the Capitol was surrounded by barriers and fences.
“It was pretty crazy to see a city being locked down like that,” Ellsworth said. “The whole time I didn’t see more than 100 civilians.”
Ellsworth is the company commander for the Idaho National Guard battalion based in Twin Falls. He was one of 300 soldiers from the Idaho National Guard who traveled to Washington to provide reinforcements on Inauguration Day. Thousands of guard members from other states were also sent to Washington out of precaution after the protests that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6, where five people died.
The soldiers and airmen returned home Sunday.
The Idaho National Guard planned for more than a month to send roughly two dozen personnel to the region in support of the inauguration. The increase in personnel was due to a new request to provide additional Guard support and represented about 7% of the Idaho National Guard force.
Having previously experienced life-threatening situations in Iraq, Ellsworth said he wasn’t worried about his safety in Washington. The most unnerving part for him was the thought of being in the position where he’s forced to raise his firearm toward a fellow citizen.
“That’s not what we’re here for,” Ellsworth said. “We are here to ensure people have their right to peacefully and safely protest.”
Ellsworth had about 80 people under his command in Washington, many of whom he had never worked with before. They worked 12-hour shifts that often extended to 14 or 15 hours after completing other steps like retrieving and turning in weapons before and after every shift.
Before their shifts, Ellsworth and guard members under this command boarded buses and rode 30 minutes into Washington. While on duty, they spread out along the fences outside the Capitol to ensure no protesters got through.
Ellsworth’s group was sometimes on call and needed to be stationed close by to quickly respond to an event. When they first got to Washington, the guard members would stay inside the Capitol in these situations. But at one point they were relocated to a parking garage.
This received national media attention and an outcry from members of Congress. Ellsworth said the Guard members were temporarily moved to the garages when Congress convened to approve Biden cabinet nominees. Ellsworth wasn’t too bothered by the relocation. He said, as a soldier, he’s used to worse conditions, like working in the high desert at Orchard Combat Training Center south of Boise.
Although the trip was largely uneventful, Ellsworth said it’s strange to have been deployed to the nation’s capital twice in the past year.
“It’s a little bit heartbreaking, because it’s us fighting against ourselves,” Ellsworth said. “Until us as Americans really come together and look past our differences and focus on what really needs to change, then I fear that this is going to become more of the norm.”
