Thank You for Another Successful Year of Support!

To all Members and Supporters of the Nightstalkers Brotherhood Motorcycle Association,

We are thrilled to announce that for another year , the Nightstalkers Brotherhood Motorcycle Association has been recognized as one of the top donors to the Nightstalker Association. This incredible achievement would not have been possible without the unwavering support and dedication of each and every one of you.

Your commitment to our cause and your generosity in giving both your time and resources have truly made a difference in the lives of our Nightstalker members and their families. Your contributions have allowed us to provide essential support, resources, and assistance to those who have sacrificed so much in service to our country.

We are continually inspired by the passion and dedication that each of you brings to our organization. Your willingness to go above and beyond to support our mission is truly commendable and sets a shining example for others to follow.

As we reflect on another successful year of partnership and collaboration, We want to express our deepest gratitude to each and every one of you. Your continued support is invaluable to us and we are incredibly grateful for everything you do.

Thank you for your commitment to the Nightstalkers Brotherhood Motorcycle Association , the Nightstalker Association and for being a driving force behind our continued success. Here's to another year of making a positive impact and creating lasting change together.

Sincerely,
The Officers of the
Nightstalkers Brotherhood Motorcycle Association

B.
Historical context
Pashtuns are historically the dominant ethnic community in Afghanistan, and they have actively fought to keep their predominance throughout Afghan history. In the years before 1978 Pashtuns made up about 40 per cent of the Afghan population. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, some 85 per cent of the more than 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan were Pashtuns. They have always played a central role in Afghan politics, and their dominant position has been a major catalyst in triggering conflict. For example, conflict arose between partners in the Mujahidin coalition which fought the Soviet troops and opposed the regime of President Mohammad Najibullah. Following Soviet withdrawal and that regime’s collapse, President Burhanuddin Rabbani represented the Tajik minority, whereas opposition troops led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and those of the Taliban, were mainly Pashtun.

The Taliban rule was based on a strict and controversial interpretation of Shari’a law and it was responsible, during its dominance, for grave human rights violations based on gender, and also for ethnic discrimination. This period brought severe poverty to Afghanistan, accompanied by food insecurity for most Afghans, and large-scale displacement and emigration, though some Pashtun communities were treated favourably and protected against the worst of the conditions. However, though Pashtuns were in power, the majority of the community nonetheless continued to suffer discrimination. This was particularly true for Pashtun families who had been moved to the north more than 100 years earlier by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, as part of a state consolidation effort. They were left to the mercy of the Tajiks and Uzbeks who are the predominant ethnic groups in the area. There have been reports of ethnic massacres at Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 and 1998 and continuing reports of violence targeted against the Pashtuns (whether or not formely Taliban supporters) as vengeance for the Taliban regime’s excesses.

With the collapse of the Taliban regime and the signing of the Bonn Agreement in 2001, Pashtun dominance over the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan came to an end. Of the estimated one million internally displaced at that time, most of those remaining in displacement were Pashtuns, who had been uprooted by ethnic violence in the north and the west of the country.

Current issues

Since the fall of the Taliban, there has a fundamental shift in the traditional power balance. Although the first post-Taliban president, Hamid Karzai, belongs to a prominent Pashtun family from Qandahar, the central government was largely dominated by the Uzbeks and Tajiks of the Northern Alliance. This less privileged position in administration and power has created obvious dissatisfaction among Pashtuns. Following the final results of the most recent 2010 parliamentary elections, Pashtun parliamentary candidates from Herat and several other provinces staged protests, claiming that they were systematically excluded from the election process through fraud and intimidation. Nevertheless, Pashtuns remain the largest ethnic group and therefore in an increasingly democratic system are likely to regain their influence. Indeed, Karzai’s successor, President Ashraf Ghani is also a Pashtun, although when he took office in 2014, he signalled his intention to break through ethnic barriers by dropping his tribal last name from official documents.

By Major Mark A. Smith Sr. (ret)
Note: Some decades ago, a friend in the Pentagon asked me to jot down a few Soldierly thoughts. Through the years I added a couple, but deleted none of the originals. They may not be modern or politically corrected, but they did make the rounds. I stand by them today.
- Mark
1. Never accept an officer as competent based on his source of commission.
2. Your right to influence the battlefield is diminished in ratio to the distance you are from the actual arena of action.
3. The battlefield selects its own Generals. No school or board can replace it.
4. Never call fire on your own troops, unless you stand among them.
5. Leaders are indeed born and no military school can provide what God did not.
6. Equipment procurement will always be compromised by not only being made by the lowest bidder, but by attempting to make it multi-functional.
7. Attempting to lighten the soldier’s load by diminishing the weight of any given weapon, will always result in shorter range and less firepower.
8. Excellent staff officers rarely make good battlefield commanders.
9. Outstanding commanders will surround themselves with excellent staff officers.
10. Never make command a reward for good staff work.
11. Discipline began its decline with the demise of the swagger stick and centralized promotion boards.
12. Outstanding NCO’s may make good officers. But, rarely will a riffed officer make a good NCO.
13. Atheists will never be trusted by their troops on the battlefield.
14. Women can do many things men do, except for a few days every month.
15. Going through the change, has nothing to do with the female senior officer’s uniform.
16. Sexual harassment is a two-lane road.
17. Soldiers tell the truth about good and bad commanders. Their opinion is the ultimate evaluation of an officer.
18. No commander was ever hated for being too hard. But, many are detested for trying to cultivate that image, without substance.
19. The maximum effective range of any weapon is that range at which the individual soldier can hit his target and not an inch further.
20. Pretty females rarely feel harassed by male counterparts.
21. Plain-looking female soldiers are usually the best performers and fit in.
22. Endurance should be judged on the bayonet assault course and not on a marathon run.
23. How far soldiers can run in shorts is unimportant, compared to how far they can speed march with full equipment.
24. Pregnant females are overweight soldiers. Thus, the US Army Weight Control program is not based on equal enforcement of the rules.
25. Tears on the cheeks of any soldier, regardless of gender, are only acceptable on the death of a relative or comrade and when “Old Glory” passes by.
26. Pregnancy is self-inflicted, thus abortions should be paid for by the soldier, as a non line of duty procedure.
27. Soldiers are not ‘sent into combat,” they are led.
28. Your worth as an officer should never be judged on how well you ran with a football in college.
29. West Point is a place of learning, as is any college. Both produce two types of officer; Good and Bad.
30. The computer will never be able to judge the content of a soldier’s spirit, as his Sergeant can.
31. Esprit De Corps cannot be attained at the Battalion picnic or Sports Day. It must be instilled by good leadership and belief in one’s fellow soldiers.
32. No new weapon or tactic will ever instill the same fear in the enemy that one Infantryman with a bayonet can.
33. He who drinks at lunch is a drunken soldier in the afternoon.
34. No soldier is so smart that his physical deficiencies can be overlooked in the Infantry.
35. Painting rocks and serving drinks to officers, have never been soldierly functions. And golf is not a required skill for officers.
36. Consolidation of all administrative personnel at battalion level has eroded accountability and proper reporting.
37. Anyone who thinks that future battlefields will not contain Infantrymen knows nothing about war.
38. Indecision kills more soldiers than any wrong decision. One can command his way out of a wrong decision.
39. The only mission of the Infantry Soldier is to kill the enemy. “Humanitarian Missions" are someone else’s job.
40. Only the Infantry and Armor can gain ground. Only the Infantry can hold it alone.
41. Special Forces are not Rangers or Light Infantry and should never be employed as such.
42. Rangers are light infantry and are not Special Forces.
43. Victory is not a limited objective. There is no other reason to engage an enemy, except victory.
44. Never shower or apply after-shave and cologne, forty eight hours prior to a night attack.
45. Sweat is the true lubricant of the Infantry fighting machine.
46. No American Soldier can be managed to victory. He must be led.
47. The only color in the U.S. Army is green.
48. Use of chemical weapons and biological weapons are a crime against humanity.
49. Not training your soldiers to protect themselves from them is a crime against your own troops.
50. Any tactic written in a book is known to your enemies.
51. If short hair is truly a matter of hygiene and discipline, then all soldiers must have it.
52. No member of a soldier’s family is more important than the mission.
53. No soldier can accomplish his mission if the Army neglects his family.
54. Any soldier who sleeps with another soldier’s wife or lover cannot be trusted on the battlefield and should be shunned.
55. Officers are more likely to wear unauthorized awards than any NCO or Private.
56. Any officer who claims he is accepting an individual award for the entire unit should allow his soldiers to wear it.
57. There can be no quota for awards.
58. Any award for Valor is of more value to the Army than any school diploma or certification.
59. Heroism cannot be taught. But, cowardice is a communicable disease.
60. The machine gun is too important a weapon to be used as a tool for punishing poor soldiers.
61. Precision weapons will jam, if the Commander demands communal cleaning.
62. No officer should be given a command, because, he needs one for his career.
63. No officer should be denied a command, because, he already had one.
64. The state of the Army can be evaluated by how its soldiers look in uniform, at any airport in the world.
65. No reporter can be trusted with operational plans. A reporter who reveals operational plans is a traitor to his country.
66. A combat veteran of any war should be respected by soldiers.
67. American soldiers do not lose wars. Leaders lose wars.
68. What a soldier saw with his own eyes, cannot be ignored or changed by higher headquarters.
69. If Special Forces are not assigned strategic missions, they are being misused.
70. The “Hummer” is a vehicle and is the only thing of that name allowed in the Infantry.
71. If you wish to learn about guerrilla warfare, study Francis Marion and not Westmoreland or Giap.
72. The one night you don’t dig in, will bring mortars on your position.
73. Taking the easy way will always get you killed.
74. Blank ammunition has no place in Infantry training.
75. The more you restrict Infantrymen possessing live ammunition, the more accidents you will have.
76. The Air Force and Navy are supporting arms.
77. Intelligence Officer is usually a contradiction in terms.
78. Inclement weather is the true Infantryman’s ally.
79. There is no special duty so important, that it takes the Infantry Soldier away from his squad.
80. Commanders who use the “Off Limits” authority to deny sex to combat soldiers will have a high V.D. rate.
81. A Commander’s morals are his own and cannot be imposed on his soldiers.
82. Chaplains must present themselves when the soldier has time, not because they have a schedule.
83. An officer must be judged on his ability and not on how many coffees his wife has attended.
84. Senior officers who allow discussions about a brother officer, not present, are not honorable men.
85. A Commander who bad-mouths his predecessor will never be truly respected.
86. Equal opportunity is guaranteed by the law and does not require a separate staff.
87. If a Sergeant Major suggests a unit watch, he is the supplier.
88. The quality of food went down, with the initiation of the consolidated mess.
89. No NCO or Warrant Officer outranks a Second Lieutenant.
90. Any officer who does not listen to NCO’s and Warrant Officers is a fool.
91. If you wish your subordinates to call you by your first name, go sell shoes. There is no place for you in the Army.
92. Any Army man who sneers at a Marine for being sharp and well turned out is no soldier.
93. Any Infantryman who must call higher headquarters before engaging the enemy has a fool for a commander.
94. Soldiers respect leaders worth emulating. They cannot be “ordered” to respect anyone.
95. No man who refused to serve his country in war should be elected or appointed over men and women being sent to fight.

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
- C.S. Lewis

"In his book, The Abolition of Man, Lewis was prophetic in pointing out that relativism—the idea that there are no absolute truths—would lead to the decay of morality and a lack of virtue within society. Without a belief in and the teaching of universal moral laws, we fail to educate the heart and are left with intelligent men who behave like animals or as Lewis puts it, “Men without Chests.” Read slowly to follow Lewis’s apologetic:

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

In battle it is not syllogisms (logical arguments) that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.

The crudest sentimentalism about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man.

It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book (a book promoting relativism) and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. A persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment... It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

Praise GOD From Whom All Blessings Flow!

Never Forget! - Never Quit!
NSDQ!

via: General George Washington
· 15 March, 1783
"If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the Freedom Of Speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
~ George Washington, Address to officers of the Army

MIgrated the "Vet HR/S1" into this page Here is the comparison for SGLI/VGLI - other options.

While there is just a letter changed in the acronym. There is a major difference between these programs. Here are some:
*Coverage/Cost*
SGLI - The lowest cost insurance period for the coverage amount of $500k. Usually is around $31 a month.
VGLI - Starts at the rate & coverage you ended with during service. Then every 5 years the rate goes up.

*Med exam: most insurances require this.*
SGLI & VGLI - None.

*Claiming Death Benefit*
SGLI - must keep OSGLI (Office of SGLI) up to date with who the beneficiary is. It's a bit complicated, yet extremely important to have that record and access up to date.
VGLI - as this is run through an insurance carrier (like Prudential) the policy can be updated through their client platform.

*Enrollment*
SGLI - Automatic in service; you can opt for lower premium/opt out.
VGLI - must be enrolled within a time window after service

*Special Coverage*
SGLI -Accelerated Death Benefit & a Traumatic Injury Protection (access to an amount for some types of injuries). Family Coverage: $100,000 for spouse, $10,000 for dependent children (FSGLI).
VGLI - Accelerated Death Benefit: in the case of being diagnosed with <9months to live; 50% of the policy may be accessed (only for insured)

*Cash Accumulation*
SGLI & VGLI: none - They are term insurance.
You'll only find this benefit with whole or universal type policies.

*Is it enough?*
SGLI - It can be, depending on the family's needs. For lower rank and less service: It could cover around 10x annual income. At the point of retirement ~2x-3x annual income.
VGLI - See above. It's also exclusive to the Veteran.
**use a calculator, or have a chat with me to determine overall insurable need**

*What else is there*
In Service - Some insurances have limited access to service members, however having coverage for a spouse and dependents is important as well.
Past Service - Calculate and ensure you're insured

More info: reply, chat with me, or setup a short call some time.

via: Medal of Honor Valor Trail
5h ·
#OnThisDay

In early March 2002, coalition forces launched Operation Anaconda to encircle remaining Taliban forces in Paktia province, Afghanistan. On March 3, a seven-man team of Navy SEALs and one Air Force combat controller John Chapman left by Chinook helicopter for a reconnaissance mission on the Takur Ghar mountain. Reaching the deployment ridge on the morning of March 4, the team, led by Senior Chief Britt Slabinski, came under heavy fire. Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts fell from the helicopter, which was soon forced to crash-land three miles away.

Quickly, the team decided to return for Roberts, unaware he had been killed. Immediately coming under attack after re-engaging, Chapman and Slabinski charged up an incline in deep snow to successfully clear an enemy bunker. Soon after, a machine gun in a nearby strongpoint opened fire on the team. Chapman assaulted this bunker, exposed himself to the automatic fire, and was wounded in his efforts. Despite his injuries, Chapman kept fighting until mortally injured. For his bravery and ultimate sacrifice, Chapman was posthumously decorated with the Medal of Honor.

With his team suffering casualties, Slabinski moved them to a stronger position and ordered nearby close air support. Enemy mortar attacks commenced at daybreak, forcing the group further down the mountain. Across rough terrain, Slabinski carried a seriously wounded comrade while directing airstrikes. For 14 hours, he helped stabilize casualties and battled off enemy attacks. Despite suffering killed and wounded men, a quick-reaction force of Army Rangers and Air Force troops moved up to Slabinski’s team. Together, they fought against Taliban assaults until 8:15 p.m. when all personnel, including the seven men killed, were extracted by helicopter.

For his leadership and courage throughout the battle, Slabinski received the Navy Cross, which was upgraded to the Medal of Honor in 2018.
Photo: "The Battle of Takur Ghar" by Keith Rocco, National Guard Heritage Painting

via: WW II uncovered
·
🇺🇲WWII uncovered: Medal of Honor Recipient Jack Lummus: From the New York Giants to the Beaches of Iwo Jima

Jack Lummus, of Ennis Texas, was a sports star at Baylor University. Excelling in both baseball and football, Jack was nominated for two consecutive years as an All-American. However he left Baylor early to enlist with the Army Air Corps. Unfortunately, Jack washed out in flight school.

Jack returned to baseball briefly in the minor leagues and then signed with the New York Giants. As a rookie he played nine games. "On December 7, 1941, the Giants were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers. Around half-time, the Associated Press ticker in the press box gave out a message saying, "Airplanes identified as Japanese have attacked the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor." The players continued the game, knowing nothing of the attack.

Jack enlisted with the US Marine Corps on January 30, 1942. He graduated from Officer's Training School at Quantico on December 18, 1942. Initially, Lummus was assigned to the Marine Raiders at Camp Pendleton - ultimately attaching to the 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division.

"In January 1944, he was assigned as Executive Officer, Company F, 2nd Battalion, 27th Marines. In August 1944, the Division was transferred to Camp Tarawa outside of Waimea, Hawaii. Lummus boarded the USS Henry Clay for the trip. After four months of training, the Division was assigned to the V Amphibious Corps and would fight to take the Island of Iwo Jima." - USMC Archive

According to US Marine Corps records: "First Lieutenant Jack Lummus was in the first wave of Marines to land at Red One."

"On March 6, Lummus was put in command of E Company’s third rifle platoon. Two days later, the platoon was at the spearhead of an assault on an objective near Kitano Point. As Lummus charged forward, assaulting pillboxes on his own, his men watched as he survived several shrapnel hits, only to step on a land mine. Despite horrific damage to his legs, Lummus continued to push his men forward, demanding that they not stop for him." - National World War II Museum

According to the National World War II Museum: "Lummus was triaged and evacuated to the Fifth Division Hospital, where doctors did all they could to save his life. Despite 18 pints of blood transfusions and their best efforts, the damage to Lummus’ body was too much, even for his athletic frame. Before he died, Lummus said to one o f the surgeons, “I guess the New York Giants have lost the services of a damn good end.” A few hours later, Lummus asked for a sip of coffee, after which he laid back, closed his eyes, and smiled as he took his last breath."

First Lieutenant Jack Lummus was 29 years old at the time of his passing.

"Jack Lummus was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on May 30, 1946.

His military and athletic legacy continue today, as the U.S. Navy named a maritime prepositioning ship in his honor, the USNS 1st Lt Jack Lummus, in 1986, and the New York Giants inducted him into their Ring of Honor on October 11, 2015" - The National Medal of Honor Museum

Jack lies in rest at Myrtle Cemetery in Ennis Texas. Lest We Forget.

#ww2uncovered #honorourveterans #bayloruniversity #newyorkgiants #rememberthefallen #honorthefallen #MedalofHonor #iwojima #WWII #WWIIveteran #WorldWarII #lestweforget
WWII uncovered©️ description and photos sourced by: USMC Archive, National World War II Museum, Baylor University and Ancestry Database

via: USAF Special Warfare Recruiting
·
This Sunday’s Hero Story…

The President of the United States of America awarded the Air Force Cross to Captain Barry F. Crawford, Jr., United States Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an armed enemy of the United States as Special Tactics Officer of the 21st Special Tactics Squadron, in action near Laghman Province, Afghanistan, on 4 May 2010.

On that date, while attached to Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha and their Afghan partner force, Captain Crawford conducted a helicopter assault into Hendor Village. Upon landing, Captain Crawford received reports that multiple groups of armed enemy were maneuvering into prepared fighting positions in the high ground around the village. As the assault force initiated clearance operations, they began to receive a high volume of accurate machine gun and sniper fire from an enemy force well over 100 fighters. As the assault force was attacked, Captain Crawford took decisive action to save the lives of three wounded Afghan soldiers and evacuate two Afghan soldiers killed in action. Recognizing that the wounded Afghan soldiers would die without evacuation to definitive care, Captain Crawford took decisive action and ran out into the open in an effort to guide the helicopter to the landing zone. Once the pilot had eyes on his position, Captain Crawford remained exposed, despite having one of his radio antennas shot off mere inches from his face, while he vectored in the aircraft. Acting without hesitation, Captain Crawford then bounded across open terrain, engaged enemy positions with his assault rifle and called in AH-64 strafe attacks to defeat the ambush allowing the aid-and-litter teams to move toward the casualties. While the casualties were being moved the team's exposed position once again came under attack from two enemy trucks that had moved into the area and were threatening the medical evacuation landing zone. As one of the aid-and-litter teams was pinned down by enemy fire, and the medical evacuation helicopter took direct hits from small arms fire, it departed with only four casualties leaving one wounded Afghan soldier on the ground. Captain Crawford developed, coordinated, and executed a plan to suppress the enemy, enabling the helicopter to return to the hot landing zone to retrieve the last casualty. While Captain Crawford's element exfiltrated the village, the assault force conducted a two-kilometer movement over steep terrain with little to no cover. During this movement the ground force commander and Captain Crawford's element were ambushed and pinned down in the open from multiple enemy fighting positions, some as close as 150 meters away. Without regard for his own life, Captain Crawford moved alone across open terrain in the kill zone to locate and engage enemy positions with his assault rifle while directing AH-64 30-mm. strafe attacks. Continuing to move the team further over 1.5 kilometers of steep terrain with minimal cover, Captain Crawford again engaged the enemy with his assault rifle while integrating AH-64s and F-15E's in a coordinated air-to-ground attack plan that included strafing runs along with 500 and 2,0000-pound bomb and Hellfire missile strikes. Throughout the course of the ten-hour firefight, Captain Crawford braved effective enemy fire and consciously placed himself at grave risk on four occasions while controlling over 33 aircraft and more than 40 air strikes on a well-trained and well-prepared enemy force. His selfless actions and expert airpower employment neutralized a numerically superior enemy force and enabled friendly elements to exfiltrate the area without massive casualties. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, Captain Crawford has reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

- AFSOC Combat Controller TSgt.John Chapman's family receives his Medal of Honor posthumously today -

This is the FIRST Medal of Honor for a Special Tactics Airman -- & the 1st Airman since the Vietnam War.

SUMMARY OF ACTION: BATTLE AT TAKUR GHAR

Sergeant Chapman enlisted in the Air Force on Sept. 27, 1985, as an information systems operator, but felt called to be part of Air Force special operations. In 1989, he cross-trained to become an Air Force combat controller.

According to friends and family, Sergeant Chapman had a tendency to make the difficult look effortless, and consistently sought new challenges. Dating back to his high school days, he made the varsity soccer squad as a freshman. Also an avid muscle-car enthusiast, he rebuilt and maintained an old Pontiac GTO.

Combat control would prove to be another instance of “making it look easy.”

Combat control training is more than two years long and amongst the most rigorous in the U.S. military. Only about one in ten Airmen who start the program graduate.

From months of rigorous physical fitness training to multiple joint schools – including military SCUBA, Army static-line and freefall, air traffic control, and combat control schools – Sergeant Chapman is remembered as someone who could do anything put in front of him.

“One remembers two types of students – the sharp ones and the really dull ones – and Chapman was in the sharp category,” said Ron Childress, a former Combat Control School instructor. Combat Control School is one of the most difficult points of a combat controller’s training program, from completing arduous tasks without sleeping for days, to running miles with weighted rucksacks and a gas mask.

“During one of his first days at Combat Control School, I noticed a slight smirk on his face like [the training] was too simple for him…and it was,” said Childress.

Following Combat Control School, Sergeant Chapman served with the 1721st Combat Control Squadron at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, where he met his wife, Valerie, in 1992. They had two daughters, who were the center of Sergeant Chapman’s world even when he was away from home – which was common in the combat control career field.

“He would come home from a long trip and immediately have on his father hat – feeding, bathing, reading and getting his girls ready for bed,” said Chief Master Sgt. Michael West, who served with Sergeant Chapman through Combat Control School, a three-year tour in Okinawa, Japan, and at Pope Air Force Base. “They were his life and he was proud of them…to the Air Force he was a great hero…what I saw was a great father.”

The Battle of Takur Ghar

In conjunction with Operation Anaconda in March 2002, small reconnaissance teams were tasked to establish observation posts in strategic locations in Afghanistan, and when able, direct U.S. air power to destroy enemy targets. The mountain of Takur Ghar was an ideal spot for such an observation post, with excellent visibility to key locations. For Sergeant Chapman and his joint special operations teammates, the mission on the night of March 3 was to establish a reconnaissance position on Takur Ghar and report al Qaeda movement in the Sahi-Kowt area.

“This was very high profile, no-fail job, and we picked John,” said retired Air Force Col. Ken Rodriguez, Sergeant Chapman’s commander at the time. “In a very high-caliber career field, with the highest quality of men – even then – John stood out as our guy.”

During the initial insertion onto Afghanistan’s Takur Ghar mountaintop on March 4, the MH-47 “Chinook” helicopter carrying Sergeant Chapman and the joint special operations reconnaissance team was ambushed. A rocket propelled grenade struck the helicopter and bullets ripped through the fuselage. The blast ripped through the left side of the Chinook, throwing Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts off the ramp of the helicopter onto the enemy-infested mountaintop below.

The severely damaged aircraft was unable to return for Petty Officer Roberts, and performed a controlled crash landing a few miles from the mountaintop. Thus began the chain of events that led to unparalleled acts of valor by numerous joint special operations forces, the deaths of seven U.S. servicemen and now, 16 years later, posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Chapman.

Alone, against the elements and separated from his team with enemy personnel closing in, Petty Officer Roberts was in desperate need of support. The remaining joint special operations team members, fully aware of his precarious situation, immediately began planning a daring rescue attempt that included returning to the top of Takur Ghar where they had just taken heavy enemy fire.

As the team returned to Petty Officer Roberts’ last-known position, now on a second MH-47, the entrenched enemy forces immediately engaged the approaching helicopter with heavy fire. Miraculously, the helicopter, although heavily damaged, was able to successfully offload the remaining special operations team members and return to base. Sergeant Chapman, upon exiting the helicopter, immediately charged uphill through the snow toward enemy positions while under heavy fire from three directions.

Once on the ground, the team assessed the situation and moved quickly to the high ground. The most prominent cover and concealment on the hilltop were a large rock and tree. As they approached the tree, Sergeant Chapman received fire from two enemy personnel in a fortified position. He returned fire, charged the enemy position and took out the enemy combatants within.

Almost immediately, the team began taking machine gun fire from another fortified enemy position only 12 meters away. Sergeant Chapman deliberately moved into the open to engage the new enemy position. As he heroically engaged the enemy, he was struck by a burst of gunfire and became critically injured.

Sergeant Chapman regained his faculties and continued to fight relentlessly despite his severe wounds. He sustained a violent engagement with multiple enemy fighters, for over an hour through the arrival of the quick reaction force, before paying the ultimate sacrifice. In performance of these remarkably heroic actions, Sergeant Chapman is credited with saving the lives of his teammates.

The upgrade to MOH

“John was always selfless – it didn’t just emerge on Takur Ghar – he had always been selfless and highly competent, and thank God for all those qualities,” said Col. Rodriguez. “He could have hunkered down in the bunker and waited for the (Quick Reaction Force) and (Combat Search and Rescue) team to come in, but he assessed the situation and selflessly gave his life for them.”

Sergeant Chapman was originally awarded the Air Force Cross for his actions; however, following a review of Air Force Cross and Silver Star recipients directed by then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, the Secretary of the Air Force recommended Sergeant Chapman’s Air Force Cross be upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

In accordance with Air Force policy whereby Medal of Honor recipients are automatically promoted one grade on the first day of the month following the award, Sergeant Chapman will be posthumously promoted to the rank of master sergeant on Sept. 1, 2018.

Although Sergeant Chapman will be awarded the Medal of Honor, family and friends have expressed his humility and how he would react today, if he were here.

“If John were to find out he received the Medal of Honor, he would be very humbled and honored,” said Chief Master Sergeant West. “He was just doing his job, and that’s what he would say at this moment.”

His widow, Valerie Nessel, has always known her husband was capable of such greatness, but asserts that John wouldn’t be anxious to be in the spotlight.

“[John] would want to recognize the other men that lost their lives,” said Valerie. “Even though he did something he was awarded the Medal of Honor for, he would not want the other guys to be forgotten – that they were part of the team together.”

“I think he would say that his Medal of Honor was not just for him, but for all of the guys who were lost,” she added.

In total, seven service members lost their lives during the Battle of Takur Ghar:

Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts – U.S. Navy SEAL
Technical Sergeant John Chapman – U.S. Air Force combat control
Senior Airman Jason Cunningham – U.S. Air Force pararescue
Corporal Matthew Commons – U.S. Army Ranger
Sergeant Bradley Crose – U.S. Army Ranger
Specialist Marc Anderson – U.S. Army Ranger
Sergeant Philip Svitak – U.S. Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment

“John would have, so I’ll say it for him. Every American who set foot on that mountaintop acted with great courage and selflessness, and deserve all of our praise and admiration for the sacrifices they made,” said Col. Rodriguez.

The Enduring Solitude Of Combat Vets:

Retired Army Special Forces Sgt. Maj. Alan Farrell is one of the more interesting people in this country nowadays, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War who teaches French at VMI, reviews films and writes poetry. Just your typical sergeant major/brigadier general with a Ph.D. in French and a fistful of other degrees.

This is a speech that he gave to Vets at the Harvard Business School last Veterans' Day. I know it is long but well worth the read:
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"Ladies and Gentlemens:

Kurt Vonnegut -- Corporal Vonnegut -- famously told an assembly like this one that his wife had begged him to "bring light into their tunnels" that night. "Can't do that," said Vonnegut, since, according to him, the audience would at once sense his duplicity, his mendacity, his insincerity... and have yet another reason for despair. I'll not likely have much light to bring into any tunnels this night, either.

The remarks I'm about to make to you I've made before... in essence at least. I dare to make them again because other Veterans seem to approve. I speak mostly to Veterans. I don't have much to say to them, the others, civilians, real people. These remarks, I offer you for the reaction I got from one of them, though, a prison shrink. I speak in prisons a lot. Because some of our buddies wind up in there. Because their service was a Golden Moment in a life gone sour. Because... because no one else will.

In the event, I've just got done saying what I'm about to say to you, when the prison psychologist sidles up to me to announce quietly: "You've got it." The "it," of course, is Post Stress Traumatic Traumatic Post Stress Disorder Stress... Post. Can never seem to get the malady nor the abbreviation straight. He's worried about me... that I'm wandering around loose... that I'm talking to his cons. So worried, but so sincere, that I let him make me an appointment at the V.A. for "diagnosis." Sincerity is a rare pearl.

So I sulk in the stuffy anteroom of the V.A. shrink's office for the requisite two hours (maybe you have), finally get admitted. He's a nice guy. Asks me about my war, scans my 201 File, and, after what I take to be clinical scrutiny, announces without preamble: "You've got it." He can snag me, he says, 30 percent disability. Reimbursement, he says, from Uncle Sam, now till the end of my days. Oh, and by the way, he says, there's a cure. I'm not so sure that I want a cure for 30 percent every month. This inspires him to explain. He takes out a piece of paper and a Magic Marker™. Now: Anybody who takes out a frickin' Magic Marker™ to explain something to you thinks you're a bonehead and by that very gesture says so to God and everybody.

Anyhow. He draws two big circles on a sheet of paper, then twelve small circles. Apples and grapes, you might say. In fact, he does say. The "grapes," he asserts, stand for the range of emotional response open to a healthy civilian, a normal person: titillation, for instance, then amusement, then pleasure, then joy, then delight and so on across the spectrum through mild distress on through angst -- whatever that is -- to black depression. The apples? That's what you got, traumatized veteran: Ecstasy and Despair. But we can fix that for you. We can make you normal.

So here's my question: Why on earth would anybody want to be normal?

And here's what triggered that curious episode:

The words of the prophet Jeremiah:

My bowels. My bowels. I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me... [T]hou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoilt and my curtains... How long shall I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?

I dunno about Jeremiah's bowels... or his curtains, but I've seen the standard and heard the sound of the trumpet. Again. Civilians mooing about that "Thin Red Line of 'eroes" between them and the Darkness. Again. ‘Course it's not red any more. Used to be olive drab. Then treetop camouflage. Then woodland. Then chocolate chip. Now pixelated, random computer-generated. Multi-cam next, is it? Progress. The kids are in the soup. Again. Me? I can't see the front sights of me piece any more. And if I can still lug my rucksack five miles, I need these days to be defibrillated when I get there. Nope. I got something like six Honorable Discharges from Pharaoh's Army. Your Mom's gonna be wearing Kevlar before I do. Nope. This one's on the kids, I'm afraid, the next generation.

I can't help them. Not those who make the sacrifice in the desert nor those in the cesspool cities of a land that if two troopers from the One Oh One or two Lance Corporals could find on a map a few years ago, I'll be surprised. Nobody can help... except by trying to build a society Back Here that deserves such a sacrifice.

We gonna win the war? I dunno. They tell me I lost mine. I know I didn't start it. Soldiers don't start wars. Civilians do. And civilians say when they're over. I'm just satisfied right now that these kids, for better or worse, did their duty as God gave them the light to see it. But I want them back. And I worry not about the fight, but about the after: after the war, after the victory, after... God forbid... the defeat, if it come to that. It's after that things get tricky. After that a Soldier needs the real grit and wit. And after that a Soldier needs to believe. Anybody can believe before. During? A Soldier has company in the fight, in Kandahar or Kabul, Basra or Baghdad. It's enough to believe in the others during. But after... and I can tell you this having come home from a war: After ...a Soldier is alone. A batch of them, maybe... but still alone.

Years ago, maybe... when I was still in the Army, my A Team got the mission to support an Air Force escape and evasion exercise. Throw a bunch of downed pilots into the wilderness, let local guerrillas (us) feed them into a clandestine escape net and spirit them out by train just like in The Great Escape to... Baltimore, of all places. So we set up an elaborate underground network: farmhouses, caves, barns, pickup trucks, loads of hay where a guy can hide, fifty-five gallon drums to smuggle the evadees through checkpoints in. We've even cozened the Norfolk and Western Railroad out of a boxcar.

Sooooo... come midnight, with our escapees safely stowed in that car, we wait for a special train to make a detour, back onto the siding, hook it up, and freight the pilots off to Maree-land. Pretty realistic, seems to us.

Now, for safety's sake the Railroad requires a Line Administrator on site to supervise any special stop. Sure enough, just before midnight two suit-and-ties show up toting a red lantern. Civilians. We sniff at them disdainfully. One of them wigwags to the train. With a clank she couples the boxcar and chugs out into the night. The other guy -- frumpy Babbit from the front office -- shuffles off down the track and out onto a trestle bridge over the gorge. He stands there with his hands behind his back, peering up at the cloud-strewn summertime sky, a thousand bucks worth of Burberry overcoat riffling in the night breeze. I edge over respectfully behind him. Wait. He notices me after a while, looks back. "You know," he says, "Was on a night like this 40 years ago that I jumped into Normandy."

Who'da thought?

Who'da thought? Then I thought... back to right after my return from Vietnam. I'm working nights at a convenience store just down the road from this very spot. Lousy job. Whores, bums, burnouts, lowlifes. That's your clientele after midnight in a convenience store. One particular guy I remember drifts in every morning about 0400. Night work. Janitor, maybe. Not much to distinguish him from the rest of the early morning crowd of shadows shuffling around the place. Fingers and teeth yellowed from cigarette smoke. A weathered, leathered face that just dissolves into the colorless crowd of nobodies.

Never says a word. Buys his margarine and macaroni and Miller's. Plunks down his cash. Hooks a grubby hand around his bag and threads his way out of the place and down the street. Lost in another world. Like the rest of the derelicts. One night, he's fumbling for his keys, drops them on the floor, sets his wallet on the counter -- brown leather, I still remember -- and the wallet flops open. Pinned to the inside of it, worn shiny and smooth, with its gold star gleaming out of the center: combat jump badge from that great World War II... Normandy maybe, just like the suit-and-tie.

Who'da thought?

Two guys scarred Out There. Not sure just where or how even. You can lose your life without dying. But the guy who made it to the top and the guy shambling along the bottom are what James Joyce calls in another context "secret messengers." Citizens among the rest, who look like the rest, talk like the rest, act like the rest... but who know prodigious secrets, wherever they wash up and whatever use they make of them. Who know somber despair but inexplicable laughter, the ache of duty but distrust of inaction. Who know risk and exaltation... and that awful drop though empty air we call failure... and solitude! They know solitude.

Because solitude is what waits for the one who shall have borne the battle. Out There in it together... back here alone.

Alone to make way in a scrappy, greedy, civilian world "filching lucre and gulping warm beer," as Conrad had it. Alone to learn the skills a self-absorbed, hustling, modern society values. Alone to unlearn the deadly skills of the former -- and bloody -- business. Alone to find a companion -- maybe -- and alone -- maybe -- even with that companion over a lifetime... for who can make someone else who hasn't seen it understand horror, blackness, filth Incommunicado. Voiceless. Alone.

My Railroad president wandered off by himself to face his memories; my Store 24 regular was clearly a man alone with his.

For my two guys, it was the after the battle that they endured, and far longer than the moment of terror in the battle. Did my Railroad exec learn in the dark of war to elbow other men aside, to view all other men as the enemy, to "fight" his way up the corporate ladder just as he fought his way out of the bocages of Normandy? Did he find he could never get close to a wife or children again and turn his energy, perhaps his anger toward some other and solitary goal Did the Store/24 guy never get out of his parachute harness and shiver in an endless night patrolled by demons he couldn't get shut of? Did he haul out that tattered wallet and shove his jump badge under the nose of those he'd done wrong to, disappointed, embarrassed? Did he find fewer and fewer citizens Back Here who even knew what it was? Did he keep it because he knew what it was? From what I've seen -- from a distance, of course -- of success, I'd say it's not necessarily sweeter than failure -- which I have seen close up.

Well, that's what I said that woke up the prison shrink.
And I say again to you that silence is the reward we reserve for you and your buddies, for my Cadets. Silence is the sound of Honor, which speaks no word and lays no tread. And Nothing is the glory of the one who's done Right. And Alone is the society of those who do it the Hard Way, alone even when they have comrades like themselves in the fight. I've gotta hope as a teacher that my Cadets, as a citizen that you and your buddies will have the inner resources, the stuff of inner life, the values in short, to abide the brute loneliness of after, to find the courage to continue the march, to do Right, to live with what they've done, you've done in our name, to endure that dark hour of frustration, humiliation, failure maybe... or victory, for one or the other is surely waiting Back Here. Unless you opt for those grapes...

My two guys started at the same place and wound up at the far ends of the spectrum. As we measure their distance from that starting point, they seem to return to it: the one guy in the darkness drawn back to a Golden Moment in his life from a lofty vantage point; t'other guy lugging through God knows what gauntlet of shame and frustration that symbol of his Golden Moment. Today we celebrate your Golden Moment. While a whole generation went ganging after its own indulgence, vanity, appetite, you clung to a foolish commitment, to foolish old traditions; as Soldiers, Sailors, Pilots, Marines you honored pointless ritual, suffered the endless, sluggish monotony of duty, raised that flag not just once, or again, or -- as has become fashionable now -- in time of peril, but every single morning. You stuck it out. You may have had -- as we like to say -- the camaraderie of brothers or sisters to buck each other up or the dubious support (as we like to say... and say more than do, by the way) of the folks back home, us... but in the end you persevered alone. Just as alone you made that long walk from Out There with a duffle bag fulla pixelated, random computer-generated dirty laundry -- along with your bruised dreams, your ecstasy and your despair -- Back Here at tour's end.

And you will be alone, for all the good intentions and solicitude of them, the other, the civilians. Alone. But...together. Your generation, whom us dumbo civilians couldn't keep out of war, will bear the burden of a soldier's return... alone. And a fresh duty: to complete the lives of your buddies who didn't make it back, to confect for them a living monument to their memory.

Your comfort, such as it is, will come from the knowledge that others of that tiny fraction of the population that fought for us are alone but grappling with the same dilemmas -- often small and immediate, often undignified or humiliating, now and then immense and overwhelming -- by your persistence courting the risk, by your obstinacy clinging to that Hard Way. Some of you will be stronger than others, but even the strong ones will have their darker moments. Where we can join each other if not relieve each other, we secret messengers, is right here in places like this and on occasions like this -- one lousy day of the year, your day, my day, our day, -- in the company of each other and of the flag we served. Not much cheer in that kerugma. But there's the by-God glory.

"I know..." says the prophet Isaiah:

... I know that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass...I have shewed thee new things, even hidden things. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have [refined] thee...in the furnace of affliction...

Well, all right, then. Why on earth would anybody want to be normal? Thanks for Listening and Lord love the lot of youse."

via: The Giant Killer
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Pictured are the eight U.S. Marines of the suicide mission "Doom Patrol" to recover the body of a dead Marine, Charlie Company, 7th Marine in Quảng Nam Province, 1968.

In February 1968, eight Marines volunteered for a suicide mission. After 32 US casualties were incurred during the first 30 hours of Operation Pursuit. The operation was initiated in mid-February 1968 by the 1st Marine Division to search for enemy rocket caches in the mountains west of Da Nang.

Operation Pursuit began at 11 a.m. on Feb. 14 as Charlie Company crossed the western end of Hill 10 while Delta Company departed from Hill 41, about 2 miles to the southeast. Accompanying them were 1st Division combat correspondent Sgt. Robert Bayer and photographer Cpl. R.J. Del Vecchio.

The two companies linked up on the approach to Hills 270 and 310. The dense jungle growth at the base of Hill 270 channeled the Marines into a single-file column during the slow, exhausting climb that forced the men to hack out a trail with machetes. By 6:30 p.m., Delta Company had secured Objective 1, the saddle between Hills 270 and 310. Charlie Company had secured Objective 2, the top of Hill 270.

Pfc. Michael J. Kelly, a member of the point squad who had been with the company for only two months, was hit by an enemy bullet that struck a grenade on his cartridge belt. The detonation killed Kelly, severing a leg in the process.

Lt. Col. Bill Davis ordered Charlie and Delta companies of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, to get off Hills 270 and 310 and return to their base camps in the flatlands to the east.

A little later the morning of Feb. 16, the acting commander of Charlie Company, 1st Lt. Dana F. MacCormack, whose men were descending from Hill 270, radioed Davis: “Here come the NVA, Colonel! I’ve got one more KIA that the last helo did not have room for. We are having a hell of a time carrying this body, and the bones are cutting up the body bag.”

Davis, on Hill 310 with the battalion command group, told MacCormack to get Charlie Company off the mountain immediately to avoid any more casualties. And that meant leaving the body behind.

Thousands of North Vietnamese Army troops had trekked down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in eastern Laos and moved through South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley before making their way to high ground, including Hills 270 and 310, overlooking an area known as Happy Valley and the Marine positions to the east.

In early afternoon, out of food and water and low on ammunition, the weary, battle-shocked Marines of Charlie Company arrived at Hill 10 and were met by the actual company commander, Capt. Karl Ripplemeyer, who had been on leave and just returned. Delta Company, meanwhile, had reached its base camp on Hill 41.

Davis radioed the regimental commander, Col. Ross R. Miner, and told him that the Marines were back at the command posts, but added that a dead Marine had to be left behind. A few hours later, Miner told Davis that a B-52 bombing mission was scheduled to strike Hills 270 and 310 and ordered him to send a team to recover Kelly’s body before the bombing started. Davis, however, did not want to risk any more lives in those mountains before the bombing runs were completed and argued against an immediate recovery mission, but Miner wouldn’t rescind his order.

Davis discussed Miner’s order with Ripplemeyer, as well as the battalion operations officer and the officer who coordinated air support for the battalion. Davis decided to use Charlie Company volunteers for the recovery since they knew the location of Kelly’s body.

“It was 100% a suicide mission,” Whittier, the 2nd Platoon lieutenant, would write to his wife on Feb. 17. “This is a point I can’t too heavily emphasize.”

“Suicide mission” was an unintentionally appropriate term, given Charlie Company’s longstanding nickname: “Suicide Charley.” The unit had earned its nickname during the October 1942 Japanese assault on Guadalcanal, when 1st Battalion was led by Lt. Col. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, who later became the Corps’ most decorated Marine and finished his career as a lieutenant general. During that battle, Charlie Company held its line against a far larger Japanese force despite suffering heavy losses. The day after the fight, a white flag of parachute cloth with a picture of a skull and crossbones rose over the company’s position. Emblazoned on the flag was “Suicide Charley.”

The patrol to recover Kelly’s body had only a few hours to prepare for its departure. A runner was sent to Charlie Company seeking the volunteers, including an experienced squad leader. John D. McCreless, then a 20-year-old sergeant, recalled: “When the decision came down to use a squad of volunteers, I got crazy and raised my hand and said I’d lead it.”

Lance Cpl. Stephen B. McCashin responded similarly: “When I heard they were asking for volunteers, I said anyone who would go back into those mountains again would have to be crazy. I thought it was a suicide mission, but since I’m on my second tour here, I must be crazy, so I decided to go.”

Pfc. Joseph A. Hamrick signed up because, he said, “I was the only one of the volunteers who knew exactly where the body was, so even though I had only been in the ‘Nam’ for a month and had never walked point, I figured I could go right to it.”

The other Marines on the eight-man patrol were Pfc. Thomas M. Adamson, Lance Cpl. Tyree Albert Chamberlain, Pfc. Alfred P. Granados, Cpl. Billy R. Ranes and Pfc. Pedro A. Rodriguez. Someone—no one can remember exactly who—dubbed the volunteers the “Doom Patrol.”

Granados, the radio operator, remembers their preparations. “Our equipment was light for a short recon patrol—no helmets, flak jackets or cartridge belts, and all but one of the men of the Doom Patrol asked to trade their M16s for the more reliable M14, and permission was granted,” he said. “We were to make no enemy contact, travel by stealth in the dark, get the body and return. If we ran into a superior enemy force, we were to abort, split up and get back any way we could.”

Before the men departed, a senior staff sergeant told McCreless: “None of you will probably return alive, but to increase your chances, if things get hairy you can just bring back the leg.” The eight Marines weren’t totally on their own for the mission. The battalion air officer had arranged for continuous air support for the patrol.

At 2 a.m. on Feb. 17, McCreless’ squad left Hill 10. A little more than an hour later, near the abandoned village of Phuoc Ninh —military maps distinguished villages with the same name by numbering them—the Marines spotted NVA soldiers moving toward their position. Chamberlain opened fire and killed one of them, but the patrol was now compromised. McCreless faced a difficult decision: abort the mission or stay the course. He spoke to the battalion command center and was told to proceed. No one wanted an empty casket sent to Kelly’s family, and the men on the mission knew the odds when they volunteered.

On the move again toward the base of Hill 270, the Marines observed another enemy patrol, and McCreless stopped for an hour near another abandoned village, Phuoc Ninh, a precautionary pause in the dark to make sure there was no other NVA activity in the area before continuing their journey.

By sunrise, around 5 a.m., the patrol had cleared the open rice paddy areas and started into the dense jungle on the side of the mountain—with a long march still ahead, which meant they would have to conduct their “stealth” mission in broad daylight. Three hours later, the men were in a flat area above the bomb crater where Kelly’s body lay, covered with a poncho. There they waited while pilots in O1-Bird Dog propeller-driven planes called in airstrikes.

One of the pilots radioed McCreless to tell him that napalm drops by F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers would land just forward of the bomb crater. He instructed the patrol members to take cover, take three deep breaths, exhale and hold their next breath. The napalm struck about a 100 yards in front of the patrol.
Granados still remembers the intense heat and dust being sucked past his face into the inferno. The shock waves from the blast seemed to raise him off the ground.

After the napalm flames diminished, Granados saw NVA soldiers emerging from bunkers and spider holes.
McCreless, worried that the enemy troops were about to move against his seriously outnumbered men, yelled: “Get the leg, and let’s get the hell out!”

Moments later, Ranes and Adamson dashed to the crater. They grabbed the severed leg and quickly strapped it to a backpack that Chamberlain carried. The eight Marines then ran back down the trail, amid the still-smoldering napalm and the enemy fire tearing into trees and brush around them. A final strafing run by F-4 Phantoms silenced the firing.

After reaching the flatlands, the patrol came upon Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon, sent to assist the squad if any of the men had been wounded or killed. The platoon escorted McCreless’ squad to base camp, and by 2 p.m. all the Marines were back on Hill 10.

Amid great rejoicing, Davis summoned the men to his quarters and handed them cigars and cold beer to celebrate their incredible accomplishment. (He wasn’t aware at that time that the full body had not been recovered.) As recounted in his autobiography Tet Marine, Davis told the Doom Patrol that he had been a fan of Suicide Charley since the Chosin Reservoir battle during the Korean War. “I’ve been proud of them during all these years, because they did great things at the Reservoir,” he said. “But never did they do anything greater than YOU did, as volunteers, last night and today.”

McCreless said: “The only reason I can think of why we were able to pull it off is that the NVA just couldn’t believe that we were stupid enough to go in there and do what we did. They must have thought we were bait for some kind of trap.”

After the celebration, Davis typed a letter to the commander of the 7th Marine Regiment:

“Dear Colonel Miner, I’ve never been prouder to be a Marine than at this moment! This magnificent squad [from Suicide Charley] went on what appeared to be a suicide mission. I wish you could have heard this young Marine [Pfc. Joseph Hamrick] describe why he volunteered. He just couldn’t imagine that an empty casket would go to a Marine’s parents. He knew they had to do the job, and while he was scared all the way out, and all the way back, he knew that they just had to succeed. I’ve just lived through an experience that I’ll always hold dear to me. Semper Fi.”

Within 10 hours of the patrol’s return, the B-52s from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam devastated the high ground on Hills 270 and 310. But the NVA would return to Hill 310, and many more Marines were wounded or killed there the following month during Operation Worth and in August during Operation Mameluke Thrust.

On March 8, Whittier and McCreless were wounded. Later that day, at the Navy hospital in Da Nang, Whittier died from his wounds. A few days later, McCreless was medevaced to Japan for additional surgery. During fighting on May 30, Doom Patrol volunteer Rodriguez was killed.

Men from E Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, found Kelly’s body on March 25 during Operation Worth. A medevac helicopter picked up the remains and took them to the mortuary in Da Nang. A funeral with a casket containing Kelly’s leg was held in his hometown of Findlay, Ohio, in March 1968. A second funeral, with the rest of his remains, was held in April 1968.

Story by Jack Wells
— Jack Wells served in Vietnam during 1968-69 as an artillery forward observer with Alpha and Bravo companies, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, and later as executive officer of H Battery, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

SALUTE!

The Giant Killer
February 21, 2022
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The incredible story behind this picture of two Vietnam Vets that never knew each other meet on a chance encounter and create an iconic picture.

Vietnam veteran, Eddie Robinson, in a wheelchair, watching the Chattanooga Armed Forces Day parade with his child. This photograph won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977.

Chattanooga, Tennessee. May 15, 1976. Photo by Vietnam Vet Robin Hood.

“By the spring of 1976, the Vietnam War is over. But its effects are deeply embedded in the lives of millions.
Robin Hood learned a trade in Vietnam — he went over as an Army information officer and came back as a photographer. Eddie Robinson served in Vietnam, too. But the war took something away from him: his legs.

The two Veterans crossed paths at the Armed Forces Day Parade in Chattanooga, Tenn., on May 15, 1976. Hood is walking along the sidelines, taking pictures for the Chattanooga News-Free Press.

“I had just finished photographing a group of small Vietnamese children who had been relocated to Chattanooga as war refugees and were now watching the parade and waving small American flags.” Then Hood sees Robinson, in army fatigues, a rain poncho — and a wheelchair. “The thought occurred to me that here was a man who had made a supreme sacrifice for the Freedom of those (Vietnamese) children-” Hood releases the shutter. Robinson wistfully watches the parade and protects a child from the rain.

And the truth is that all Veterans pay with their lives... Some pay all at once, while others pay over a lifetime.
- JM Storm

Worth a read...

Strong words from Soldiers such as Willy McTear come in Loud and Clear to Leaders, if they have the stones to face such realities and they provide us, as a Nation, with some Hard Truths that must be heard/faced.

How our Vietnam Veterans were treated upon their return from the green hell of that conflict is something every American who is worthy of such a title should be ashamed of. That must Never happen again... it is Ok, and Right even to hate War (I know that first hand), but when we hate Our Warriors, well, that Must Never Happen Again...

May God Bless our Vietnam Veterans, May He bring them a calm to their heads and hearts from such memories, and grant them Peace for the rest of their days - we must Never Forget how we treated them upon their return to our Homeland, ever...

SALUTE!

via: The Giant Killer
·
Powerful words from a Vietnam vet!

Photo of Willie McTear, McTear served in Charlie Company of the Army 9th Division's 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, 1967.

McTear gives his opinion of the draft, the brotherhood of war, and what it was like to be spit on & cursed at upon his return from Nam.

"I’m just one of the approximate 9,000 men who were drafted and made up the Ninth Infantry Division. This is my opinion based on my personal experience.

We, the draftees, were designated well in advance for the Ninth Division to occupy the Mekong Delta.

We fought in the most difficult terrain in all of South Vietnam: jungles, mud and swamps. The only volunteers were the officers. The rest of the entire division, with exception of some non-commissioned officers, were draftees. I was in one of the first integrated companies of all draftees.

We had the best officer, Jack Benedict. Rest In Peace.

Each patrol was a suicide mission. We would have liked the choice to choose the branch of service and a Military Occupational Speciality. But that was not an option for draftees, only a carrot that was dangled to get us to enlist.

We viewed this as punishment for not volunteering. We all gave some and some gave all. R.I.P.

After several firefights we realized how the draft board and America really felt about us. Sergeant Bill Reynolds said it best. “America is not with us.”

Enough said.

Without a word said, we understood that we had a special bond and from this point on we will fight for each other because we had been abandoned.

More abandonment was revealed and manifested upon our arrival home, not as heroes but as villains. We were spat on and cursed at. Our government didn’t have the decency to give us a heads up upon our arrival.
That hurt really deep.

The wounds inflicted are invisible and manifested in many ways. Many of us grapple with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a sense of not belonging and not being good enough to be accepted as Soldiers.

So thank you draft board for souls lost and lives destroyed beyond repair.

I try not to remember the suffering you inflicted upon us, but remember our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility and the courage to endure past and current hardships.

I think I can speak for the Ninth Division, 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry and especially Charlie Company.

God did through Andrew Wiest what we could not do for ourselves when he wrote the book, The Boys of ’67: Charlie Company’s War in Vietnam.

Writer and arm-chair general Abigail Pfeiffer said it best: “Wiest addresses the ugliness and humanity of war but also the loving bonds that are created between Men who experienced war together and the indelible marks it leaves on their minds.”

And a big thank you to National Geographic for “Brothers in War,” for bringing The Boys of ’67 to life with that documentary, the story of Charlie Company.

To the draft board, we forgive you, but we hope and pray the draft board will be eliminated."
- Willie McTear

The Giant Killer book & page honors these incredible war heroes making sure their stories of valor and sacrifice are never forgotten. The book which features the incredible life of the smallest soldier, Green Beret Captain Richard Flaherty (101st Airborne & 3rd SF Group 46th Co.) and several of the other heroes featured on this page is available on Amazon & Walmart. God Bless our Vets!

Retired Chief Petty Officer David Goggins is the only person to ever complete US Army Ranger School, US Air Force Tactical Control Party Training, and US Navy Seal Training. Individually, each of these training programs are nearly impossible to complete. He not only completed the training, but served honorably, completing numerous combat missions in each capacity. David Goggins is an American hero and we may never know the true extent of all he has done for our country. He is a Guinness World Record holder and widely regarded as “the baddest man on the planet”. We salute you!!!

The Enduring Solitude Of Combat Vets:

Retired Army Special Forces Sgt. Maj. Alan Farrell is one of the more interesting people in this country nowadays, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War who teaches French at VMI, reviews films and writes poetry. Just your typical sergeant major/brigadier general with a Ph.D. in French and a fistful of other degrees.
This is a speech that he gave to Vets at the Harvard Business School last Veterans' Day. I know it is long but well worth the read:
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"Ladies and Gentlemens:
Kurt Vonnegut -- Corporal Vonnegut -- famously told an assembly like this one that his wife had begged him to "bring light into their tunnels" that night. "Can't do that," said Vonnegut, since, according to him, the audience would at once sense his duplicity, his mendacity, his insincerity... and have yet another reason for despair. I'll not likely have much light to bring into any tunnels this night, either.

The remarks I'm about to make to you I've made before... in essence at least. I dare to make them again because other Veterans seem to approve. I speak mostly to Veterans. I don't have much to say to them, the others, civilians, real people. These remarks, I offer you for the reaction I got from one of them, though, a prison shrink. I speak in prisons a lot. Because some of our buddies wind up in there. Because their service was a Golden Moment in a life gone sour. Because... because no one else will.

In the event, I've just got done saying what I'm about to say to you, when the prison psychologist sidles up to me to announce quietly: "You've got it." The "it," of course, is Post Stress Traumatic Traumatic Post Stress Disorder Stress... Post. Can never seem to get the malady nor the abbreviation straight. He's worried about me... that I'm wandering around loose... that I'm talking to his cons. So worried, but so sincere, that I let him make me an appointment at the V.A. for "diagnosis." Sincerity is a rare pearl.

So I sulk in the stuffy anteroom of the V.A. shrink's office for the requisite two hours (maybe you have), finally get admitted. He's a nice guy. Asks me about my war, scans my 201 File, and, after what I take to be clinical scrutiny, announces without preamble: "You've got it." He can snag me, he says, 30 percent disability. Reimbursement, he says, from Uncle Sam, now till the end of my days. Oh, and by the way, he says, there's a cure. I'm not so sure that I want a cure for 30 percent every month. This inspires him to explain. He takes out a piece of paper and a Magic Marker™. Now: Anybody who takes out a frickin' Magic Marker™ to explain something to you thinks you're a bonehead and by that very gesture says so to God and everybody.

Anyhow. He draws two big circles on a sheet of paper, then twelve small circles. Apples and grapes, you might say. In fact, he does say. The "grapes," he asserts, stand for the range of emotional response open to a healthy civilian, a normal person: titillation, for instance, then amusement, then pleasure, then joy, then delight and so on across the spectrum through mild distress on through angst -- whatever that is -- to black depression. The apples? That's what you got, traumatized veteran: Ecstasy and Despair. But we can fix that for you. We can make you normal.

So here's my question: Why on earth would anybody want to be normal?

And here's what triggered that curious episode:
The words of the prophet Jeremiah:

"My bowels. My bowels. I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me... [T]hou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoilt and my curtains... How long shall I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?"

I dunno about Jeremiah's bowels... or his curtains, but I've seen the standard and heard the sound of the trumpet.

Again. Civilians mooing about that "Thin Red Line of 'eroes" between them and the Darkness.

Again. ‘Course it's not red any more. Used to be olive drab. Then treetop camouflage. Then woodland. Then chocolate chip. Now pixelated, random computer-generated. Multi-cam next, is it? Progress. The kids are in the soup.

Again. Me? I can't see the front sights of me piece any more. And if I can still lug my rucksack five miles, I need these days to be defibrillated when I get there. Nope. I got something like six Honorable Discharges from Pharaoh's Army. Your Mom's gonna be wearing Kevlar before I do. Nope. This one's on the kids, I'm afraid, the next generation.

I can't help them. Not those who make the sacrifice in the desert nor those in the cesspool cities of a land that if two troopers from the One Oh One or two Lance Corporals could find on a map a few years ago, I'll be surprised. Nobody can help... except by trying to build a society Back Here that deserves such a sacrifice.

We gonna win the war? I dunno. They tell me I lost mine. I know I didn't start it. Soldiers don't start wars. Civilians do. And civilians say when they're over. I'm just satisfied right now that these kids, for better or worse, did their duty as God gave them the light to see it. But I want them back. And I worry not about the fight, but about the after: after the war, after the victory, after... God forbid... the defeat, if it come to that. It's after that things get tricky. After that a Soldier needs the real grit and wit. And after that a Soldier needs to believe.

Anybody can believe before. During? A Soldier has company in the fight, in Kandahar or Kabul, Basra or Baghdad. It's enough to believe in the others during. But after... and I can tell you this having come home from a war: After ...a Soldier is alone. A batch of them, maybe... but still alone.

Years ago, maybe... when I was still in the Army, my A Team got the mission to support an Air Force escape and evasion exercise. Throw a bunch of downed pilots into the wilderness, let local guerrillas (us) feed them into a clandestine escape net and spirit them out by train just like in The Great Escape to... Baltimore, of all places. So we set up an elaborate underground network: farmhouses, caves, barns, pickup trucks, loads of hay where a guy can hide, fifty-five gallon drums to smuggle the evadees through checkpoints in. We've even cozened the Norfolk and Western Railroad out of a boxcar.

Sooooo... come midnight, with our escapees safely stowed in that car, we wait for a special train to make a detour, back onto the siding, hook it up, and freight the pilots off to Maree-land. Pretty realistic, seems to us.

Now, for safety's sake the Railroad requires a Line Administrator on site to supervise any special stop. Sure enough, just before midnight two suit-and-ties show up toting a red lantern. Civilians. We sniff at them disdainfully. One of them wigwags to the train. With a clank she couples the boxcar and chugs out into the night. The other guy -- frumpy Babbit from the front office -- shuffles off down the track and out onto a trestle bridge over the gorge. He stands there with his hands behind his back, peering up at the cloud-strewn summertime sky, a thousand bucks worth of Burberry overcoat riffling in the night breeze. I edge over respectfully behind him. Wait. He notices me after a while, looks back. "You know," he says, "Was on a night like this 40 years ago that I jumped into Normandy."

Who'da thought?

Who'da thought? Then I thought... back to right after my return from Vietnam. I'm working nights at a convenience store just down the road from this very spot. Lousy job. Whores, bums, burnouts, lowlifes. That's your clientele after midnight in a convenience store. One particular guy I remember drifts in every morning about 0400. Night work. Janitor, maybe. Not much to distinguish him from the rest of the early morning crowd of shadows shuffling around the place. Fingers and teeth yellowed from cigarette smoke. A weathered, leathered face that just dissolves into the colorless crowd of nobodies.

Never says a word. Buys his margarine and macaroni and Miller's. Plunks down his cash. Hooks a grubby hand around his bag and threads his way out of the place and down the street. Lost in another world. Like the rest of the derelicts. One night, he's fumbling for his keys, drops them on the floor, sets his wallet on the counter -- brown leather, I still remember -- and the wallet flops open. Pinned to the inside of it, worn shiny and smooth, with its gold star gleaming out of the center: combat jump badge from that great World War II... Normandy maybe, just like the suit-and-tie.

Who'da thought?

Two guys scarred Out There. Not sure just where or how even. You can lose your life without dying. But the guy who made it to the top and the guy shambling along the bottom are what James Joyce calls in another context "secret messengers." Citizens among the rest, who look like the rest, talk like the rest, act like the rest... but who know prodigious secrets, wherever they wash up and whatever use they make of them. Who know somber despair but inexplicable laughter, the ache of duty but distrust of inaction. Who know risk and exaltation... and that awful drop though empty air we call failure... and solitude!

They know solitude.
Because solitude is what waits for the one who shall have borne the battle. Out There in it together... back here alone.

Alone to make way in a scrappy, greedy, civilian world "filching lucre and gulping warm beer," as Conrad had it. Alone to learn the skills a self-absorbed, hustling, modern society values. Alone to unlearn the deadly skills of the former -- and bloody -- business. Alone to find a companion -- maybe -- and alone -- maybe -- even with that companion over a lifetime... for who can make someone else who hasn't seen it understand horror, blackness, filth Incommunicado. Voiceless. Alone.

My Railroad president wandered off by himself to face his memories; my Store 24 regular was clearly a man alone with his.

For my two guys, it was the after the battle that they endured, and far longer than the moment of terror in the battle. Did my Railroad exec learn in the dark of war to elbow other men aside, to view all other men as the enemy, to "fight" his way up the corporate ladder just as he fought his way out of the bocages of Normandy?

Did he find he could never get close to a wife or children again and turn his energy, perhaps his anger toward some other and solitary goal Did the Store/24 guy never get out of his parachute harness and shiver in an endless night patrolled by demons he couldn't get shut of? Did he haul out that tattered wallet and shove his jump badge under the nose of those he'd done wrong to, disappointed, embarrassed? Did he find fewer and fewer citizens Back Here who even knew what it was? Did he keep it because he knew what it was? From what I've seen -- from a distance, of course -- of success, I'd say it's not necessarily sweeter than failure -- which I have seen close up.

Well, that's what I said that woke up the prison shrink.

And I say again to you that silence is the reward we reserve for you and your buddies, for my Cadets. Silence is the sound of Honor, which speaks no word and lays no tread. And Nothing is the glory of the one who's done Right. And Alone is the society of those who do it the Hard Way, alone even when they have comrades like themselves in the fight. I've gotta hope as a teacher that my Cadets, as a citizen that you and your buddies will have the inner resources, the stuff of inner life, the values in short, to abide the brute loneliness of after, to find the courage to continue the march, to do Right, to live with what they've done, you've done in our name, to endure that dark hour of frustration, humiliation, failure maybe... or victory, for one or the other is surely waiting Back Here. Unless you opt for those grapes...

My two guys started at the same place and wound up at the far ends of the spectrum. As we measure their distance from that starting point, they seem to return to it: the one guy in the darkness drawn back to a Golden Moment in his life from a lofty vantage point; t'other guy lugging through God knows what gauntlet of shame and frustration that symbol of his Golden Moment. Today we celebrate your Golden Moment. While a whole generation went ganging after its own indulgence, vanity, appetite, you clung to a foolish commitment, to foolish old traditions; as Soldiers, Sailors, Pilots, Marines you honored pointless ritual, suffered the endless, sluggish monotony of duty, raised that flag not just once, or again, or -- as has become fashionable now -- in time of peril, but every single morning. You stuck it out. You may have had -- as we like to say -- the camaraderie of brothers or sisters to buck each other up or the dubious support (as we like to say... and say more than do, by the way) of the folks back home, us... but in the end you persevered alone. Just as alone you made that long walk from Out There with a duffle bag fulla pixelated, random computer-generated dirty laundry -- along with your bruised dreams, your ecstasy and your despair -- Back Here at tour's end.

And you will be alone, for all the good intentions and solicitude of them, the other, the civilians. Alone. But...together. Your generation, whom us dumbo civilians couldn't keep out of war, will bear the burden of a soldier's return... alone. And a fresh duty: to complete the lives of your buddies who didn't make it back, to confect for them a living monument to their memory.

Your comfort, such as it is, will come from the knowledge that others of that tiny fraction of the population that fought for us are alone but grappling with the same dilemmas -- often small and immediate, often undignified or humiliating, now and then immense and overwhelming -- by your persistence courting the risk, by your obstinacy clinging to that Hard Way. Some of you will be stronger than others, but even the strong ones will have their darker moments. Where we can join each other if not relieve each other, we secret messengers, is right here in places like this and on occasions like this -- one lousy day of the year, your day, my day, our day, -- in the company of each other and of the flag we served. Not much cheer in that kerugma.

But there's the by-God glory.

"I know..." says the prophet Isaiah:
... I know that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass...I have shewed thee new things, even hidden things. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have [refined] thee...in the furnace of affliction...

Well, all right, then.

Why on earth would anybody want to be normal?

Thanks for Listening and Lord love the lot of youse."

LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP: From a Janitor
By Colonel James E. Moschgat, Commander of the 12th Operations Group, 12th Flying Training Wing, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas

William “Bill” Crawford certainly was an unimpressive figure, one you could easily overlook during a hectic day at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Mr. Crawford, as most of us referred to him back in the late 1970s, was our squadron janitor.

While we cadets busied ourselves preparing for academic exams, athletic events, Saturday morning parades and room inspections, or never-ending leadership classes, Bill quietly moved about the squadron mopping and buffing floors, emptying trash cans, cleaning toilets, or just tidying up the mess 100 college-age kids can leave in a dormitory. Sadly, and for many years, few of us gave him much notice, rendering little more than a passing nod or throwing a curt, “G’morning!” in his direction as we hurried off to our daily duties.

Why? Perhaps it was because of the way he did his job-he always kept the squadron area spotlessly clean, even the toilets and showers gleamed. Frankly, he did his job so well, none of us had to notice or get involved.

After all, cleaning toilets was his job, not ours. Maybe it was is physical appearance that made him disappear into the background. Bill didn’t move very quickly and, in fact, you could say he even shuffled a bit, as if he suffered from some sort of injury. His gray hair and wrinkled face made him appear ancient to a group of young cadets. And his crooked smile, well, it looked a little funny. Face it, Bill was an old man working in a young person’s world. What did he have to offer us on a personal level?

Finally, maybe it was Mr. Crawford’s personality that rendered him almost invisible to the young people around him. Bill was shy, almost painfully so. He seldom spoke to a cadet unless they addressed him first, and that didn’t happen very often. Our janitor always buried himself in his work, moving about with stooped shoulders, a quiet gait, and an averted gaze. If he noticed the hustle and bustle of cadet life around him, it was hard to tell. So, for whatever reason, Bill blended into the woodwork and became just another fixture around the squadron. The Academy, one of our nation’s premier leadership laboratories, kept us busy from dawn till dusk. And Mr. Crawford...well, he was just a janitor.

That changed one fall Saturday afternoon in 1976. I was reading a book about World War II and the tough Allied ground campaign in Italy, when I stumbled across an incredible story. On September 13, 1943, a Private William Crawford from Colorado, assigned to the 36th Infantry Division, had been involved in some bloody fighting on Hill 424 near Altavilla, Italy. The words on the page leapt out at me: “in the face of intense and overwhelming hostile fire... with no regard for personal safety... on his own initiative, Private Crawford single-handedly attacked fortified enemy positions.” It continued, “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, the President of the United States...”

“Holy cow,” I said to my roommate, “you’re not going to believe this, but I think our janitor is a Medal of Honor winner.” We all knew Mr. Crawford was a WWII Army vet, but that didn’t keep my friend from looking at me as if I was some sort of alien being. Nonetheless, we couldn’t wait to ask Bill about the story on Monday. We met Mr. Crawford bright and early Monday and showed him the page in question from the book, anticipation and doubt in our faces. He starred at it for a few silent moments and then quietly uttered something like, “Yep, that’s me.”

Mouths agape, my roommate and I looked at one another, then at the book, and quickly back at our janitor.

Almost at once we both stuttered, “Why didn’t you ever tell us about it?” He slowly replied after some thought,

“That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago.”

I guess we were all at a loss for words after that. We had to hurry off to class and Bill, well, he had chores to attend to. However, after that brief exchange, things were never again the same around our squadron. Word spread like wildfire among the cadets that we had a hero in our midst-Mr. Crawford, our janitor, had won the Medal! Cadets who had once passed by Bill with hardly a glance, now greeted him with a smile and a respectful, “Good morning, Mr. Crawford.”

Those who had before left a mess for the “janitor” to clean up started taking it upon themselves to put things in order. Most cadets routinely stopped to talk to Bill throughout the day and we even began inviting him to our formal squadron functions. He’d show up dressed in a conservative dark suit and quietly talk to those who approached him, the only sign of his heroics being a simple blue, star-spangled lapel pin.

Almost overnight, Bill went from being a simple fixture in our squadron to one of our teammates. Mr. Crawford changed too, but you had to look closely to notice the difference. After that fall day in 1976, he seemed to move with more purpose, his shoulders didn’t seem to be as stooped, he met our greetings with a direct gaze and a stronger “good morning” in return, and he flashed his crooked smile more often. The squadron gleamed as always, but everyone now seemed to notice it more. Bill even got to know most of us by our first names, something that didn’t happen often at the Academy. While no one ever formally acknowledged the change, I think we became Bill’s cadets and his squadron.

As often happens in life, events sweep us away from those in our past. The last time I saw Bill was on graduation day in June 1977. As I walked out of the squadron for the last time, he shook my hand and simply said, “Good luck, young man.” With that, I embarked on a career that has been truly lucky and blessed. Mr. Crawford continued to work at the Academy and eventually retired in his native Colorado where he resides today, one of four Medal of Honor winners living in a small town.

A wise person once said, “It’s not life that’s important, but those you meet along the way that make the difference.” Bill was one who made a difference for me. While I haven’t seen Mr. Crawford in over twenty years, he’d probably be surprised to know I think of him often. Bill Crawford, our janitor, taught me many valuable, unforgettable leadership lessons. Here are ten I’d like to share with you.

1. Be Cautious of Labels. Labels you place on people may define your relationship to them and bound their potential. Sadly, and for a long time, we labeled Bill as just a janitor, but he was so much more. Therefore, be cautious of a leader who callously says, “Hey, he’s just an Airman.” Likewise, don’t tolerate the O-1, who says, “I can’t do that, I’m just a lieutenant.”

2. Everyone Deserves Respect. Because we hung the “janitor” label on Mr. Crawford, we often wrongly treated him with less respect than others around us. He deserved much more, and not just because he was a Medal of Honor winner. Bill deserved respect because he was a janitor, walked among us, and was a part of our team.

3. Courtesy Makes a Difference. Be courteous to all around you, regardless of rank or position. Military customs, as well as common courtesies, help bond a team. When our daily words to Mr. Crawford turned from perfunctory “hellos” to heartfelt greetings, his demeanor and personality outwardly changed. It made a difference for all of us.

4. Take Time to Know Your People. Life in the military is hectic, but that’s no excuse for not knowing the people you work for and with. For years a hero walked among us at the Academy and we never knew it. Who are the heroes that walk in your midst?

5. Anyone Can Be a Hero. Mr. Crawford certainly didn’t fit anyone’s standard definition of a hero. Moreover, he was just a private on the day he won his Medal. Don’t sell your people short, for any one of them may be the hero who rises to the occasion when duty calls. On the other hand, it’s easy to turn to your proven performers when the chips are down, but don’t ignore the rest of the team. Today’s rookie could and should be tomorrow’s superstar.

6. Leaders Should Be Humble. Most modern day heroes and some leaders are anything but humble, especially if you calibrate your “hero meter” on today’s athletic fields. End zone celebrations and self-aggrandizement are what we’ve come to expect from sports greats. Not Mr. Crawford-he was too busy working to celebrate his past heroics. Leaders would be well-served to do the same.

7. Life Won’t Always Hand You What You Think You Deserve. We in the military work hard and, dang it, we deserve recognition, right? However, sometimes you just have to persevere, even when accolades don’t come your way. Perhaps you weren’t nominated for junior officer or airman of the quarter as you thought you should - don’t let that stop you.

8. Don’t pursue glory; pursue excellence. Private Bill Crawford didn’t pursue glory; he did his duty and then swept floors for a living. No job is beneath a Leader. If Bill Crawford, a Medal of Honor winner, could clean latrines and smile, is there a job beneath your dignity? Think about it.

9. Pursue Excellence. No matter what task life hands you, do it well. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “If life makes you a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be.” Mr. Crawford modeled that philosophy and helped make our dormitory area a home.

10. Life is a Leadership Laboratory. All too often we look to some school or PME class to teach us about leadership when, in fact, life is a leadership laboratory. Those you meet everyday will teach you enduring lessons if you just take time to stop, look and listen. I spent four years at the Air Force Academy, took dozens of classes, read hundreds of books, and met thousands of great people. I gleaned leadership skills from all of them, but one of the people I remember most is Mr. Bill Crawford and the lessons he unknowingly taught. Don’t miss your opportunity to learn.

Bill Crawford was a janitor. However, he was also a teacher, friend, role model and one great American hero. Thanks, Mr. Crawford, for some valuable leadership lessons.

Dale Pyeatt, Executive Director of the National Guard Association of Texas, comments: And now, for the “rest of the story”: Pvt William John Crawford was a platoon scout for 3rd Platoon of Company L 1 42nd Regiment 36th Division (Texas National Guard) and won the Medal Of Honor for his actions on Hill 424, just 4 days after the invasion at Salerno.

On Hill 424, Pvt Crawford took out 3 enemy machine guns before darkness fell, halting the platoon’s advance.
Pvt Crawford could not be found and was assumed dead. The request for his MOH was quickly approved.

Major General Terry Allen presented the posthumous MOH to Bill Crawford’s father, George, on 11 May 1944 in Camp (now Fort) Carson, near Pueblo. Nearly two months after that, it was learned that Pvt Crawford was alive in a POW camp in Germany. During his captivity, a German guard clubbed him with his rifle. Bill overpowered him, took the rifle away, and beat the guard unconscious. A German doctor’s testimony saved him from severe punishment, perhaps death. To stay ahead of the advancing Russian army, the prisoners were marched 500 miles in 52 days in the middle of the German winter, subsisting on one potato a day. An allied tank column liberated the camp in the spring of 1945, and Pvt Crawford took his first hot shower in 18 months on VE Day. Pvt Crawford stayed in the army before retiring as a MSG and becoming a janitor. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan officially presented the MOH to Bill Crawford.

William Crawford passed away in 2000. He is the only U.S. Army veteran and sole Medal of Honor winner to be buried in the cemetery of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Pilgrim’s Progress
By MATT GALLAGHER

Home Fires features the writing of men and women who have returned from wartime service in the United States military.

I’m one of the lucky ones.

War destroys without regard to what’s fair or just. This isn’t a new or terribly profound revelation, but witnessing it, and sometimes participating in it, makes it seem like both. In a professional military, the entire point of training is to minimize the nature of chance in combat. But all the training in the world will never eliminate happenstance in war, or even render it negligible.

I returned from Iraq with all of my limbs, most of my mental faculties and a book deal. I wake up every morning in an apartment in New York City. I’m working toward a graduate degree. I have a beautiful fiancée who reminds me to slow down when I’m drinking. And every day I feel more and more detached and removed from the Iraq dustlands I promised myself I’d shed like snakeskin if I ever got back home.

Like I said, one of the lucky ones.

I didn’t really appreciate the concept of becoming ‘unstuck’ in time until I returned from war.

Meanwhile, the black bracelet on my wrist carries the names of four individuals who weren’t so lucky. One got shot through the armpit with a ricocheting bullet and bled out on an outpost roof. Two drove over the wrong piece of street at the wrong time and likely didn’t even know it was a roadside bomb that ended it all. The last one made it through 15 months of war only to get drunk one night back in the States and shoot himself in the face during an emotional breakdown.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the protagonist Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time.” Much of the novel focuses on Pilgrim’s experience of the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II, something Vonnegut himself survived as an American prisoner of war. Like many American literature students, I was required to read “Slaughterhouse-Five” in high school, and if memory serves, I even enjoyed that assignment at 16. But I didn’t really appreciate the concept of becoming unstuck in time until I returned from war. Just like anyone who poured blood, sweat and tears into missions in faraway foreign lands, I left part of myself over there, and it remains there, while the rest of me goes about my business 6000 miles away — a paradox of time and space Vonnegut captured all too brilliantly.

I’ve walked by manholes in New York City streets and smelled the sludge river I walked along in north Baghdad in 2008. I’ve stopped dead in my tracks to watch a street hawker in Midtown, a large black man with a rolling laugh and a British accent, who looked just like my old scout platoon’s interpreter. And I’ve had every single slamming dumpster lid — every single damn one — rip off my fatalistic cloak and reveal me to be, still, a panicked young man desperate not to die because of an unseen I.E.D.

Despite these metaphysical dalliances with time travel the names on my black bracelet are, in fact, stuck in time. Or, more accurately, stuck in memory, where they’ll fade out and disappear like distant stars before becoming shadows of the men we served with and knew.

So it goes.

So it went for my friend Rob. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003 his unit drove through a neighborhood near Baghdad airport in doorless Humvees. A civilian vehicle pulled out in front of them, temporarily blocking their path. A group of teenage boys stood aimlessly on the street, and one exchanged nods with Rob, who sat in the front passenger seat. Rob glanced away quickly, to see if the civilian vehicle had moved yet, and then, suddenly, a grenade bounced off of the inside of the windshield and into the vehicle. Rob followed the small plume of smoke and rattling noises, grabbing the grenade from behind the radio to his left. He picked it up, intending to throw it back out of the vehicle, but it slipped out of his hand and dropped, landing between his feet. He reached back down for it, fingers just meeting casing when it exploded. He lost a hand and suffered severe nerve damage in his right leg as a result.

Back from Iraq, I carried my self-righteousness around in the form of a portable soapbox.

Recounting the story over drinks one night Rob said he wished he and the other soldiers in his Humvee hadn’t taken their eyes off of the Iraqi teens. Then he added that “luck was for sure on our side that day,” because had he not dropped the grenade but tossed it away as planned, it would’ve exploded at head level, likely killing him and possibly the Humvee’s driver, as well. He laughed deeply, and clinked his prosthetic hook against my pint glass.

Everything’s relative, I guess. Especially luck.

If chance is war’s dirty little not-so-secret, self-righteousness is the veterans’. Upon returning to American society, it’s all too easy to fall into pitfalls about what civilians get or don’t get. Nine years of war fought by an all-volunteer force that constitutes less than 1 percent of the total population has augmented this disconnect between soldier and citizen; in many ways, a separate warrior caste has evolved into being. The impact on our republic of fighting protracted, landlocked wars with an all-volunteer force can be debated. The impact of it on those actually fighting can’t be.

After returning from Iraq and separating from active duty, I carried my self-righteousness around in the form a portable soapbox for many months. Occasionally this proved necessary — sometimes the pejorative “they” really didn’t get it. There was the drunk Wall Street-type who told me, without a trace of irony but with plenty of faux-jingoist twang, “it must be awesome to kill hajjis.” And there was the too-cool-ultra-progressive who couldn’t help but smirk condescendingly while pointing out that “we” signed on the dotted line, after all, so “we” should’ve been ready for anything and everything before we departed for Iraq. Then, as passive-aggressively as possible, he analogized modern American soldiers to mercenaries.

Though I’m certainly no tough guy, the primal urge to put both of these guys’ faces through the nearest window was very real and very pointed. I didn’t do that though, for better or worse. Instead, I told the former that some of my best friends were Muslim and that such a black-and-white understanding of the war is what got us into so much trouble over there in the first place. For the latter, I nodded and smiled, telling him that for someone who hadn’t left the borough of Brooklyn in over a decade, he certainly possessed one hell of a world view.

Neither talked to me again. So it goes.

Most of the time though, my soapbox and self-righteousness and sardonic wrath were unnecessary. Not because people didn’t get it, but because I finally realized it wasn’t their fault they didn’t get it. They’re not supposed to get it — this isn’t Sparta, nor is it even post-World War II America. Sometimes — many times, actually — they wanted to get it. Slowly and surely, I found the all too obvious solution of simply answering people’s questions as considerately as I could, careful not to ascribe my experiences as universal to all of Iraq or all of Afghanistan. I’d rather ramble, I reasoned, and provide nuance and opinion than serve as the representational hollow caricature born only to sacrifice for fast food and online shopping and general postmodern excess.

Just one man’s solution to a litany of complexities, I guess.

I got unstuck in time again last month, right when winter graced the Eastern seaboard with its presence. I was getting out of the Union Square subway station, headphones in, mind tuned out, stomach craving a cheeseburger. I don’t qualify as a full-fledged New Yorker yet, but I’ve lived here long enough not to be disturbed by the sight of a cold and decrepit-looking homeless person. So, coming up the subway steps, I strolled by a young man with a scraggly yellow beard wrapped in an urban camo jacket without anything more than a passing glance. He held a cardboard sign marked in black marker with the words “IRAQ VET, HOMELESS, PLEASE HELP.” I didn’t help, nor did I give the man a second thought until two blocks later, when I cynically scolded him in my head for using the veteran title to his advantage.

Coming to terms with this permanent state of combat readiness has made me realize just how much I miss war (or parts of it).

“But what if he really is an Iraq vet?” I asked myself. I’d read the statistics — according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 100,000 veterans are homeless on a given night in America; the figure is twice that over the course of the month. Not all of the unlucky ones are dead, after all. So the old platoon leader in me kicked in, and I turned back around, to see if I could verify any of this. Certainly a legitimate vet would remember names, units, places … something. And then? And then I’d help. Or I’d bring him to the people or organizations who could help. Maybe, if he seemed legit and came across as relatively stable, I could talk my fiancée into letting him sleep on the couch for a night or two. Just to get him back on his feet, of course.

He was no longer there. Or anywhere nearby. Maybe someone else had helped him. But probably not. I initially breathed out a sigh of relief, and then a sigh of shame. I thought about how these wars may be coming to some sort of end, but veterans’ issues for my generation are really just beginning. I only deployed for 15 months, and had all kinds of support systems in place upon my return. What about the men and women who have done nothing but deploy, redeploy, rinse and repeat since 9/11? What about those soldiers who return to broken homes, mountains of debt, no professional goals beyond not going to war again? What about them?

I smacked my lips and tasted guilt. Then I walked to a restaurant and ate a cheeseburger.

Like the veterans who came before and the ones who will come after, I walk the streets of New York City forever the soldier I no longer am. Oh, I’m no longer lean, hungry, or clean-cut — I’ve put on a little weight, grown my hair out and sport a patchy beard that can best be described as pirate-fashionable. But I still scan crowds for suicide vests, seek out corner vantage points like a bloodhound and value competency in a human being above all else. Jumping back into civilian life headlong, like I originally attempted, proved both disastrous and shortsighted. And coming to terms with this permanent state of combat readiness has made me realize just how much I miss war (or parts of it), and how lucky — and twisted — I am to be able to even write those words. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the raw excitement. I miss the Iraqi locals, from the kids who walked our daytime patrols with us to the frightened mothers who just wanted us to go away. I miss the soldiers, the N.C.O.’s, and even some of the officers. I miss that daily sense of purpose, survive or die, that simply can’t be replicated in everyday existence. I miss standing for something more than myself, even if I never figured out just what the hell that something was supposed to be.

I don’t miss all of it, of course. I got out of the Army for some very good reasons. Love. Sanity. Bureaucracy. A Holy Trinity for our time. But there is a messy ambiguity at the core of this that must be conveyed, if not necessarily understood.

I’m one of the lucky ones. Unstuck in time. Stuck with chance. Stuck at war. Considering the alternatives, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

WWII hero, 1SG Leonard A. Funk, LAUGHED his way to earning a Medal of Honor....

One of the more darkly humorous episodes of warfare occurred on 29 January 1945, in Holzheim, Belgium. Funk and his paratroopers were assaulting the town, and he left a rearguard of 4 men, while he scouted ahead to link up with other units. Those 4 men had to guard about 80 German prisoners. Another German patrol of 10 happened by and overwhelmed the 4 Americans, freeing the prisoners and arming them. When Funk returned around the corner of a building, he was met by a German officer with an MP-40 in his stomach.

The German shouted something at him, and Funk looked around. There were now about 90 Germans, about half of them armed, and 5 Americans, disarmed except for Funk. The German shouted the same thing at him again, and Funk started laughing. He claimed later that he tried to stop laughing, but the fact that the German was shouting in German touched a nerve. Funk didn’t speak German. Neither did any of the other Americans.

Why would the German officer expect him to understand? His laughter and non-compliance caused some of the Germans to start laughing. Funk shrugged at them and started laughing so hard he had to bend over. He called to his men, “I don’t understand what he’s saying!” All the while, the German officer was shouting more and more angrily. Then, quick as lightning, Funk swung his Thompson submachine gun up and emptied the entire clip into the German, 30 rounds of .45 ACP. Before the other Germans could react, he had yanked the clip out and slammed another in and opened fire on all of them, screaming to his men to pick up weapons.

They did so, and proceeded to gun down 20 men. The rest dropped their weapons and put their hands up.
Then Funk started laughing again and said to his men, “That was the stupidest F*#!?#* thing I’ve ever seen!”

The incredible story of POW Navy Pilot Dieter Dengler and his escape from a prison camp in Laos.

Dieter Dengler (May 22, 1938 – February 7, 2001) was a German-born United States Navy aviator during the Vietnam War and, following six months of imprisonment and torture, became the first captured U.S. airman to escape enemy captivity during the war. Of seven prisoners of war who escaped together from a Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos, Dengler was one of two survivors (the other was Thailand citizen Phisit Intharathat). Dengler was rescued after 23 days on the run.

Dieter Dengler was born and raised in the small town of Wildberg, in the Black Forest region of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. He grew up not knowing his father, who had been drafted into the German army in 1939 and was killed during World War II on the Eastern Front during the winter of 1943/44. Dengler became very close to his mother and brothers. Dengler's maternal grandfather, Hermann Schnuerle, claimed he refused to vote for Adolf Hitler in the 1934 elections. Subsequently he was paraded around town with a placard around his neck, was spat upon, and was then sent to labor in a rock mine for a year. Dengler credited his grandfather's resolve as a major inspiration during his time in Laos. His grandfather's steadfastness despite the great risks was one reason Dengler refused a North Vietnamese demand that he sign a document condemning American aggression in Southeast Asia.

Dieter grew up in extreme poverty but always found ways to help his family survive. Dieter and his brothers would go into bombed-out buildings, tear off wallpaper, and bring it to their mother to boil for the nutrients in the wheat-based wallpaper paste. When members of the small group of Moroccans who lived in the area would slaughter sheep for their meals, Dieter would sneak over to their lodgings to take the scraps and leftovers they would not eat and his mother would make dinner from them. He also built a bicycle by scavenging from dumps. Dieter was apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of 14. The blacksmith and the other boys, who worked six days a week building giant clocks and clock faces to repair German cathedrals, regularly beat him. Later in life Dieter thanked his former master "for his disciplined training and for helping Dieter become more capable, self-reliant and yes, 'tough enough to survive'".

After seeing an advertisement in an American magazine, expressing a need for pilots, he decided to go to the United States. Although a family friend agreed to sponsor him, he lacked money for passage and came up with a plan to independently salvage brass and other metals to sell.

In 1956, when he turned 18 and upon completion of his apprenticeship, Dengler hitchhiked to Hamburg and spent two weeks surviving on the streets before the ship set sail for New York City. While on the ship he saved fruit and sandwiches for the coming days and when going through customs the agent was astonished when the food tumbled out of his shirt. He lived on the streets of Manhattan for just over a week and eventually found his way to an Air Force recruiter. He was assured that piloting aircraft was what the Air Force was all about so he enlisted in June 1957 and went to basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas. After basic training, Dengler spent two years peeling potatoes and then transferred to a motor pool as a mechanic. His qualifications as a machinist led to an assignment as a gunsmith. He passed the test for aviation cadets but was told that only college graduates were selected to be pilots and his enlistment expired before he was selected for pilot training.

After his discharge Dengler joined his brother working in a bakery shop near San Francisco and enrolled in San Francisco City College, then transferred to the College of San Mateo, where he studied aeronautics. Upon completion of two years of college he applied for the US Navy aviation cadet program and was accepted.
Dengler would do whatever it took to become a pilot. In his inaugural flight at primary flight training, for example, the instructor told Dengler that if he became airsick and vomited in the cockpit that he would receive a "down" on his record. Students were only allowed three downs then they would wash out of flight training. The instructor took the plane through spins and loops causing Dengler to become dizzy and disoriented. Knowing he was about to vomit and not wanting to receive a "down", Dengler took off his boot, threw up into it and put it back on. At the end of the flight the instructor checked the cockpit and could smell the vomit, but couldn't find any evidence of it. He didn't get a "down".

After his completion of flight training Dengler went to the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas for training as an attack pilot in the Douglas AD Skyraider. He joined VA-145 while the squadron was on shore duty at Naval Air Station Alameda, California. In 1965 the squadron joined the carrier USS Ranger. In December the carrier set sail for the coast of Vietnam. He was stationed initially at Dixie Station, off South Vietnam then moved north to Yankee Station for operations against North Vietnam.

On February 1, 1966, the day after the carrier began flying missions from Yankee Station, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Dengler launched from the Ranger with three other aircraft on an interdiction mission against a truck convoy that had been reported in North Vietnam. Thunderstorms forced the pilots to divert to their secondary target, a road intersection located west of the Mu Gia Pass in Laos. At the time, U.S. air operations in Laos were classified "secret". Visibility was poor due to smoke from burning fields, and upon rolling in on the target, Dengler and the remainder of his flight lost sight of one another. Visibility was poor, and as Dengler rolled his Skyraider in on the target after flying for two-and-a-half hours into enemy territory, he was hit by anti-aircraft fire.

"There was a large explosion on my right side," he remembered when interviewed shortly before his death in 2001.

It was like lightning striking. The right wing was gone. The airplane seemed to cartwheel through the sky in slow motion. There were more explosions—boom, boom, boom—and I was still able to guide the plane into a clearing in Laos.
He said: "Many times, people have asked me if I was afraid. Just before dying, there is no more fear. I felt I was floating."

When his squadron mates realized that he had been downed, they remained confident that he would be rescued. Immediately after he was shot down, Dengler smashed his survival radio and hid most of his other survival equipment to keep Vietnamese or Lao search parties from finding it. The day after being shot down Dengler was apprehended by Pathet Lao troops, the Laotian equivalent of the Viet Cong.

He was marched through the jungle, was tied on the ground to four stakes spreadeagled in order to stop him escaping at night. In the morning his face would be swollen from mosquito bites and he was unable to see.

After an early escape attempt he was recaptured while drinking from a spring. According to Dengler he was tortured in retaliation:

I had escaped from them, [and] they wanted to get even. He was hung upside down by his ankles with a nest of biting ants over his face until he lost consciousness, suspended in a freezing well at night so that if he fell asleep he might drown. On other occasions he was dragged through villages by a water buffalo, to the amusement of his guards, as they goaded the animal with a whip. He was asked by Pathet Lao officials to sign a document condemning the United States, but he refused and as a result he was tortured as tiny wedges of bamboo were inserted under his fingernails and into incisions on his body which grew and festered.

"They were always thinking of something new to do to me." Dengler recalled. "One guy made a rope tourniquet around my upper arm. He inserted a piece of wood, and twisted and twisted until my nerves cut against the bone. The hand was completely unusable for six months."

After some weeks Dengler was handed over to the Vietnamese. As they marched him through a village, a man slipped Dengler's engagement ring from his finger. Dengler complained to his guards. They found the culprit, summarily chopped off his finger with a machete and handed the ring back to Dengler.

"I realized right there and then that you don't fool around with the Viet Cong", he said.
Dengler had trained in escaping and survival at the Navy SERE survival school, where he had twice escaped from the mock-POW camp run by SERE instructors and Marine guards and was planning a third escape when the training ended. He had also set a record as the only student to gain weight (three pounds) during the SERE course; his childhood experiences had made him unafraid of eating whatever he could find and he had feasted on food the course instructors had thrown in the garbage.

Dengler was eventually brought to a prison camp near the village of Par Kung where he met other POWs. The other six prisoners were:
Phisit Intharathat (Thai)
Prasit Promsuwan (Thai)
Prasit Thanee (Thai)
Y.C. To (Chinese)
Eugene DeBruin (American)
Duane W. Martin (American)

Except for Martin, an Air Force helicopter pilot who had been shot down in North Vietnam nearly a year before, the other prisoners were civilians employed by Air America, a civilian airline owned by the Central Intelligence Agency. The civilians had been held by the Pathet Lao for over two and a half years when Dengler joined them.

"I had hoped to see other pilots. What I saw horrified me. The first one who came out was carrying his intestines around in his hands. One had no teeth - plagued by awful infections, he had begged the others to knock them out with a rock and a rusty nail in order to release pus from his gums". "They had been there for two and a half years," said Dengler. "I looked at them and it was just awful. I realized that was how I would look in six months. I had to escape."

The day he arrived in the camp, Dengler advised the other prisoners that he intended to escape and invited them to join him. They advised that he wait until the monsoon season when there would be plenty of water.

Shortly after Dengler arrived, the prisoners were moved to a new camp ten miles away at Hoi Het. After the move, a strong debate ensued among the prisoners with Dengler, Martin and Prasit arguing for escape which the other prisoners, particularly Phisit initially opposed.

As food began to run out, tension between the men grew: they were given just a single handful of rice to share while the guards would stalk deer, pulling the grass out of the animal's stomach for the prisoners to eat while they shared the meat. The prisoners' only "treats" were snakes they occasionally caught from the communal latrine or the rats that lived under their hut which they could spear with sharpened bamboo. At night the men were handcuffed together and shackled to wooden foot blocks. They suffered chronic dysentery and were made to lie in their excrement until morning.

After several months, one of the Thai prisoners overheard the guards talking about shooting them in the jungle and making it look like an escape attempt. They too, were starving and wanted to return to their villages. With that revelation, everyone agreed and a date to escape was set. Their plan was to take over the camp and signal a C-130 Hercules flare-ship that made nightly visits to the area. Dengler loosened logs under the hut that allowed the prisoners to squeeze through. The plan was for him to go out when the guards were eating and seize their weapons and pass them to Phisit Intharathat and Promsuwan while Martin and DeBruin procured others from other locations.

"I planned to capture the guards at lunchtime, when they put down their rifles to get their food. There were two minutes and twenty seconds in the day when I could strike." In that time Dengler had to release all the men from their handcuffs.

Escape
On June 29, 1966 while the guards were eating, the group slipped out of their hand-cuffs and foot restraints and grabbed the guards' unattended weapons which included M1 rifles, Chinese automatic rifles, an American carbine and at least one sub-machine gun as well as an early version of the AK47 automatic rifle, which Dengler used during the escape from the POW camp. Dengler went out first followed by Martin. He went to the guard hut and seized an M1 for himself and passed the American carbine to Martin. The guards realized the prisoners had escaped and five of them rushed toward Dengler, who shot at least three with the AK47. Phisit killed another guard as he reached for his rifle. Two others ran off, presumably to get help, although at least one had been wounded. The seven prisoners split into three groups. DeBruin was originally supposed to go with Dengler and Martin but decided to go with To, who was recovering from a fever and unable to keep up. They intended to get over the nearest ridge and wait for rescue. Dengler and Martin went off by themselves with the intention of heading for the Mekong River to escape to Thailand, but they never got more than a few miles from the camp from which they had escaped.

"Seven of us escaped," said Dengler. "I was the only one who came out alive."
With the exception of Phisit, who was recaptured and later rescued by Laotian troops, none of the other prisoners were ever seen again. DeBruin was reportedly captured and placed in another camp, then disappeared in 1968.

Rescue
Escape proved to be hazardous. Soon, the two men's feet were white, mangled stumps from trekking through the dense jungle. They found the sole of an old tennis shoe, which they wore alternately, strapping it onto a foot with rattan for a few moments' respite. In this way they were able to make their way to a fast-flowing river.

"It was the highway to freedom," said Dengler, "We knew it would flow into the Mekong River, which would take us over the border into Thailand and to safety."

The men built a raft and floated downstream on ferocious rapids, tying themselves to trees at night to stop themselves being washed away in the torrential water. By morning they would be covered in mud and hundreds of leeches. When they thought they were on their way to the Mekong, they discovered that they had gone around in a circle. They had spotted several villages but had not been detected. They set up camp in an abandoned village where they found shelter from the nearly incessant rain. They had brought rice with them and found other food, but were still on the verge of starvation. Their intent had been to signal a C-130 but at first lacked the energy to build a fire using primitive methods of rubbing bamboo together. Dengler finally managed to locate carbine cartridges that Martin had thrown away and used their powder to enhance the tinder and got a fire going. That night they lit torches and waved them in the shape of an S and O when a C-130 came over. The airplane circled and dropped a couple of flares and they were overjoyed, believing they had been spotted. They woke up the next morning to find the landscape covered by fog and drizzle, but when it lifted, no rescue force appeared.

Martin, who was weak from starvation and was suffering from malaria, wanted to approach a nearby Akha village to steal some food. Dengler knew it was not a good idea, but refused to let his friend go near the village alone. They saw a little boy playing with a dog and the child ran into the village calling out "American!" Within seconds a villager appeared and they knelt down on the trail in supplication, but the man swung his machete and struck Martin in the leg. With the next swipe, Martin's head came off. Dengler jumped to his feet and rushed toward the villager, who turned and ran into the village to get help.

I reached for the rubber sole from his foot, grabbed it and ran. From that moment on, all my motions became mechanical. I couldn't care less if I lived or died.

Dengler recalls, it was a wild animal who gave him the mental strength to continue.
"I was followed by this beautiful bear. He became like my pet dog and was the only friend I had."
These were his darkest hours. Little more than a walking skeleton after weeks on the run, he floated in and out of a hallucinatory state.

"I was just crawling along," he said. "Then I had a vision: these enormous doors opened up. Lots of horses came galloping out. They were not driven by death, but by angels. Death didn't want me."

Dengler managed to evade the searchers who went out after him and escaped back into the jungle. He returned to the abandoned village where the two had been spending their time and where he and Martin had signaled the C-130. That night when a C-130 flare-ship came, Dengler set fire to the huts and burned the village down. The C-130 crew spotted the fires and dropped flares, but even though the crew reported their sighting when they returned to Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base, the fires were not recognized by intelligence as having been a signal from a survivor.

Deatrick has long marvelled at the fact that had he stuck to his original flight schedule on the morning of July 20, 1966, Dieter would not have been at the river to be sighted at that earlier hour. "If God put me on the earth for one reason," Deatrick says, "it was to find Dieter over there in the jungle." As it was, Deatrick describes it as "a million-in-one chance."
-Excerpt from Dengler biography regarding the role of pilot Eugene Deatrick

When a rescue force again failed to materialize, Dengler decided to find one of the parachutes from a flare for use as a possible signal. He found one on a bush and placed it in his rucksack. On July 20, 1966, after 23 days in the jungle, Dengler managed to signal an Air Force pilot with the parachute. A 2-ship flight of Air Force Skyraiders from the 1st Air Commando Squadron happened to fly up the river where Dengler was. Eugene Peyton Deatrick, the pilot of the lead plane and the squadron commander, spotted a flash of white while making a turn at the river's bend and came back and spotted a man waving something white. Deatrick and his wingman contacted rescue forces, but were told to ignore the sighting, as no airmen were known to be down in the area. Deatrick persisted and eventually managed to convince the command and control center to dispatch a rescue force. Fearing that Dengler might be a Viet Cong soldier, the helicopter crew restrained him when he was brought aboard.

According to the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly Dengler said one of the flight crew who was holding him down pulled out a half eaten snake from underneath Dengler's clothing and was so surprised he nearly fell out of the helicopter. Dengler was stripped of his clothes to ensure he was not armed or in possession of a hand grenade. When questioned, Dengler told Air Force pararescue specialist Michael Leonard that he was a Navy Lieutenant JG who had escaped from a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp two months earlier. Deatrick radioed the rescue helicopter crew to see if they could identify the person they had just hoisted up from the jungle. They reported that they had a man who claimed to be a downed Navy pilot who flew a Douglas A-1H Skyraider.

It wasn't until after he reached the hospital at Da Nang that Dengler's identity was confirmed. A conflict between the Air Force and the Navy developed over who should control his debriefing and recovery. In an apparent attempt to prevent the Air Force from embarrassing them in some way, the Navy sent a team of SEALs into the hospital to steal Dengler. He was brought out of the hospital in a covered gurney and rushed to the air field, where he was placed aboard a Navy carrier delivery transport Grumman C-2A from VR-21 and flown to the Ranger where a welcoming party had been prepared. At night, however, he was tormented by awful terrors, and had to be tied to his bed. In the end, his friends put him to sleep in a cockpit, surrounded by pillows. "It was the only place I felt safe," he said.

Dengler's deprivation from malnutrition and parasites caused the Navy doctors to order that he be airlifted to the United States.

Later life and death
Dengler recovered physically, but never put his ordeal behind him. As Werner Herzog described it in his documentary about Dengler, "Men are often haunted by things that happen to them in life, especially in war Their lives seem to be normal, but they are not."

He remained in the navy for a year, was promoted to Lieutenant, and was trained to fly jets. When his military obligation was satisfied, he resigned from the Navy and applied for a position as an airline pilot with Trans World Airlines (TWA). He continued flying and survived four subsequent crashes as a civilian test pilot.

In 1977, during a time when he was furloughed from TWA, Dengler returned to Laos and was greeted as a celebrity by the Pathet Lao. He was taken to the camp from which he had escaped and was surprised to discover that at one point he and Martin had been within a mile and a half of it.

His fascination with airplanes and aviation continued for the remainder of his life. He continued flying almost up until his death. He took an early-retirement as a pilot for TWA sometime prior to 1985, but continued flying his meticulously restored Cessna 195, putting it on static display at numerous California air shows.

In 2000, Dengler was inducted into the Gathering of Eagles program and told the story of his escape to groups of young military officers. Dengler was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neurological disorder; on February 7, 2001, he rolled his wheelchair from his house down to the driveway of a fire station and shot himself. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A Navy honor guard was present at the burial as well as a fly-over by Navy F-14 Tomcats.

Awesome read; if it doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you're not human; I am so proud to have been in an organization that instilled the values described in LTC Lofaro's speech below:

Dining-in speech at U.S. Military Academy
by LTC Guy Lofaro:

"Let me say before beginning that it has been my pleasure to attend several dinings-in here at West Point and hence I have some basis for comparison. You people have done a fine job and you ought to congratulate yourselves. In fact, why don't we take this time to have the persons who were responsible for this event stand so we can acknowledge them publicly.

I guess I am honored with these invitations because there exists this rumor that I can tell a story. Cadets who I have had in class sometimes approach me beforehand and request that, during my speech, I tell some of the stories I've told them in class. For the longest time I have resisted this. I simply didn't think this the right forum for story-telling, so I tried instead, with varying degrees of success, to use this time to impart some higher lesson - some thought that would perhaps stay with one or two of you a little longer than the 10 or 15 minutes I will be standing here. I tried this again last week at another dining in and I bombed. Big time. Of course, the cadets didn't say that. They said all the polite things- "Thank you, sir, for those inspiring words" - "You've provided us much food for thought" - "We all certainly learned something from you tonight, sir." And I'm thinking - yeah - you learned something all right. You learned never to invite that SOB to be a dining in speaker again.

So in the interim I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I would say to you to night. What can I say that will stay with you? And as I reflected on this I turned it on myself - what stays with me? What makes a mark on me? What do I remember, and why? How have I learned the higher lessons I so desperately want to impart to you? Well - I've learned those higher lessons through experience. And as I thought further, I realized that there's only one way to relate experience -that is to tell some stories. So I'm going to try something new here this evening. I'm going to give you your stories and attempt to relate what I've learned by living them. I'm going to let you crawl inside my eye-sockets and see some of the things I've seen these past 18 years.

Imagine you are a brand new second lieutenant on a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula. You are less than a year out of West Point, and only a few weeks out of the basic course. You are standing at a strict position of attention in front of your battalion commander, a man you will come to realize was one of the finest soldiers with whom you've ever served, and you are being questioned about a mistake - a big mistake - that you've made. You see, your platoon lost some live ammo. Oh sure, it was eventually found, but for a few hours you had the entire battalion scrambling. Your battalion commander is not yelling at you though, he's not demeaning you, he's simply taking this opportunity to ensure you learn from the experience. And you do- you learn that people make mistakes, that those mistakes do not usually result in the end of the world, and that such occasions are valuable opportunities to impart some higher lessons. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see your platoon sergeant emerge from behind a building. He's an old soldier - a fine soldier though - whose knees have seen a few too many airborne operations. He sees you and the colonel - and he takes off at a run. You see him approaching from behind the colonel and the next thing you see is the back of your platoon sergeant's head. He is now standing between you and your battalion commander - the two are eyeball to eyeball. Your platoon sergeant says, a touch of indignance in his voice "Leave my lieutenant alone, sir. He didn't lose the ammo, I did. I was the one who miscounted. You want someone's ass, you take mine."

And you learn another lesson - you learn about loyalty.

It's a few months later and you are one of two soldiers left on a hot PZ on some Caribbean island. There's been another foul up - not yours this time, but you're going to pay for it. It's you and your RTO, a nineteen-year-old surfer from Florida who can quote Shakespeare because his Mom was a high school literature teacher and who joined the army because his Dad was a WWII Ranger. The last UH-60 has taken off on an air assault and someone is supposed to come back and get you guys. But the fire is getting heavy, and you're not sure anything can get down there without getting shot up. You're taking fire from some heavily forested hills. At least two machineguns, maybe three, maybe more, and quite a few AKs, but you can't make out anything else. You and your RTO are in a hole, hunkered down as the bad guys are peppering your hole with small arms fire. Your RTO is trying to get some help - another bird to come get you, some artillery, some attack helicopters - anything. But there are other firefights happening elsewhere on this island involving much larger numbers.

So as the cosmos unfold at; that particular moment, in that particular place, you and that RTO are well down the order of merit list. You feel a tug at your pants leg. Ketch, that's what you call him, Ketch tells you he got a "wait, out" when he asked for help. The radio is jammed with calls for fire and requests for support from other parts of the island. "What we gonna do, sir?' he asks. And all of a sudden, you're learning another lesson. You're learning about the weightiness of command, because it's not just you in that hole, it's this kid you've spent every day with for the last five months. This kid you've come to love like a kid brother. There is only one way out and that's through the bad guys. You see, you are on a peninsula that rises about 100 feet from the sea. The inland side is where the bad guys are. You figure you are safe in this hole, so long as they don't bring in any indirect fire stuff, but if they come down off those hills, onto the peninsula, then you're going to have to fight it out. And that's what you tell your RTO. We either get help or, if the bad guys come for us, we fight. He looks at you. You don't know how long. And he says only four words. Two sentences. "Roger, sir. Let's rock." Appropriate coming from a surfer. Then he slithers back down to the bottom of the hole. Staying on the radio, your lifeline, trying to get some help. You are peering over the edge of the hole, careful not to make too big a target. You're thinking about your wife and that little month-old baby you left a few days ago. It was two o'clock in the morning when you got the call. "Pack your gear and get in here." You kissed them both and told them to watch the news. Hell, you didn't know where here you were going or why, but you were told to go, and you went.

Then all of a sudden it gets real loud, and things are flying all around and then there's a shadow that passes over you. You look up and find yourself staring at the bottom of a Blackhawk, about 15 feet over the deck, flying fast and low, and as it passes over your hole you see the door gunner dealing death and destruction on the bad guys in those hills. It sets down about 25 meters from your hole, as close as it can get. You look up and see the crew chief kneeling inside, waving frantically to you, the door gunner still dealing with it, trying to keep the bad guys' heads down, who have now switched their fire to the bird, a much bigger, and better, target. You look at Ketch and then you're off - and you run 25 meters faster than 25 meters have ever been run since humans began to walk upright. And you dive through the open doors onto the floor of the Blackhawk. There are no seats in the bird since this is combat and we don't use them in the real deal. And you are hugging your RTO, face-to-face, like a lover, and shouting at him "You OKAY? You OKAY? You OKAY?" but he doesn't tell you he's OKAY since he's yelling the same thing at you -- "You OKAY? You OKAY? You OKAY?" And then the pilot pulls pitch and executes a violent and steep ascent out of there and had you not been holding on to the d-rings in the floor and the crew chief not been holding your legs you might have fallen out. Then you're over the water, you're safe, and the bird levels out, and you roll over to your back and close your eyes - and you think you fall asleep. But then you feel a hand on your blouse, and you open your eyes and see the crew chief kneeling over you with a head set in his hand. He wants you to put it on so you do. And the first thing you hear is "I-Beamer, buddy boy. I Beamer." You were in I-4 while a cadet, and that was your rallying cry. And you look up to where the pilots sit and you see a head sticking out from behind one of the seats. He's looking at you and it's his voice you hear, but you can't make out who it is because his visor is down. Then he lifts it, and you see the face of a man who was 2 years ahead of you in your company. He tells you that he knew you were there and he wasn't going to leave an I-Beamer like that. And you learn about courage, and camaraderie. And friendship that never dies.

It's a few years later and you've already had your company command. You're in grad school, studying at Michigan. You get a phone call one night, one of the sergeants from your company. He tells you Harvey Moore is dead, killed in a training accident when his Blackhawk flew into the ground. Harvey Moore. Two time winner of the Best Ranger Competition. Great soldier. Got drunk one night after his wife left him and took his son. You see, staff sergeants don't make as much money as lawyers, so she left with the lawyer. He got stinking drunk, though it didn't take much since he didn't drink at all before this, and got into his car. Then had an accident. Then got a DUI. He was an E-6 promotable when this happened, and the SOP was a general-officer article 15 and a reduction one grade, which would really be two for him because he was on the promotion list. But Harvey Moore is a good soldier, and it's time to go to bat for a guy who, if your company command was any sort of a success, played a significant part in making it so. And you go with your battalion commander to see the CG, and you stand at attention in front of the CG's desk for 20 minutes convincing him that Harvey Moore deserves a break. You win. Harvey Moore never drinks again. He makes E-7. And when you change command, he grabs your arm, with tears in his eyes, and thanks you for all you've done. Then the phone call. And you learn about grief.

And then you're a major and you're back in the 82d - your home. And one day some SOB having a bad week decides it's time to take it out on the world and he shoots up a PT formation. Takes out 20 guys. You're one of them. 5.56 tracer round right to the gut. Range about 10 meters. And you're dead for a little while, but it's not your time yet - there are still too many lessons to learn. And you wake up after 5 surgeries and 45 days in a coma. And you look down at your body and you don't recognize it - it has become a receptacle for hospital tubing and electronic monitoring devices. You have a tracheotomy, so there's a huge tube going down your throat and you can't talk, but that thing is making sure you breathe. And there's a tube in your nose that goes down into your stomach - that's how you eat. And there are four IVs - one in each arm and two in the veins in the top of your feet. There is a tube through your right clavicle - that's where they inject the high-powered antibiotics that turns your hair white and makes you see things. But disease is the enemy now and it's gotta be done. And there are three tubes emerging from three separate holes in your stomach. They are there to drain the liquids from your stomach cavity. It drains into some bags hanging on the right;side of your bed. And they've shaved your chest and attached countless electrodes to monitor your heartbeat, blood pressure, and anything else they can measure. They have these things stuck all over your head as well, and on your wrists and ankles. And your family gathers around, and they are like rocks, and they pull you through. But there's also a guy, dressed in BDUs, with a maroon beret in his and, who stands quietly in the corner. Never says anything. Just smiles. And looks at you. He's there every day. Not every hour of every day, but he comes every day.

Sometimes he's there when you wake up. Sometimes he's there when you go to sleep. He comes during his lunch break. He stays an hour, or two, or three. And just stands in the corner. And smiles. No one told him to be there. But he made it his place of duty. His guard post. You see, it's your sergeant major, and his ranger buddy is down, and a ranger never leaves a fallen comrade. And you learn, through this man, the value of a creed.
(Note from Guy): if you've never read the Ranger Creed, Google it. The men of the Ranger Regiment live this creed every day. It is probably more powerful than wedding vows, and once you've lived by it, it's part of your life forever)

And every four hours two huge male nurses come in and gently roll you on your side. The bullet exited through your left buttock and made a hole the size of a softball. The bandages need to be changed. Take the soiled wads out and put clean ones in. And a second lieutenant comes in. She seems to be there all the time. She's the one changing the bandages. And it hurts like hell, but she, too, is smiling, and talking to you, and she's gentle. And you know you've seen her before, but you can't talk - you still have that tube in your throat. But she knows. And she tells you that you taught her Military Art History, that now it's her turn to take care of you, that she's in charge of you and the team of nurses assigned to you, and she won't let you down. And you learn about compassion.

And then it's months later and you're still recovering. Most of the tubes are gone but it's time for another round of major surgeries. And you go into one of the last, this one about 9 hours long. And they put you back together. And you wake up in the ICU one more time. Only one IV this time. And when you open your eyes, there's a huge figure standing over your bed. BDUs. Green beret in his hand. Bigger than God. And he's smiling. "It's about damn time you woke up you lazy bastard" he says. And you know it's your friend and former commander and you've got to come back with something quick - something good. He's the deputy Delta Force commander, soon to be the commander. And you say "Don't you have someplace else to be? Don't you have something more important to do?" And without skipping a beat, without losing that smile he says "Right now, I am doing what I consider the most important thing in the world."

And you learn about leadership.

So there you have them. Some stories. I've tried to let you see the world as I've seen it a various points in time these 18 years. I hope you've learned something. I certainly have."

For the record, I know these men personally, and I served during these times the writer is describing, I was there @ Hill AFB that dark night on 29 Oct '92 during the final hit of Operation Embryo Stage when RANGER Moore departed this rock, he was my buddy... I also recall very clearly that damn sniper doing his evil down @ Bragg... this world just never quits jackin with the good folks seems like. My point of all of this is while you are in the middle of it all, this Serving stuff, pay attention to those around you, that is what is Truly of most importance, gubmints will come and go, Honor, Courage, being Solid under extreme pressure and circumstance will be your test... make this world a little better of a place while you are among the living... and Never Forget the RANGER Harvey Moore's that you will meet along the way...

HOOAH!
RLTW! - NSDQ!

The Foundation for Exceptional Warriors - The FEW
- 4 Jan, 2022

He was the first.
On this day in U.S. Army SF history, 04-January, 2002:
US Army Special Forces Staff Sgt. Ross Chapman was killed by enemy fire near Khost, Afghanistan. He became the first US military service member to be Killed In Action by enemy fire after 9/11.

Chapman's military career spanned 13 years and included combat service in Haiti, Panama and the Persian Gulf War. In 1989, he parachuted into Panama during the invasion of that country. He also served in Operation Desert Storm and later attended the U.S. Army Special Forces School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Assigned to the 1st Special Forces Group following the 11 September attacks, Chapman was directing troop movements from the back of a flatbed truck when he was shot. He did not die instantly from the attack, which also saw a CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer from Special Activities Division wounded.

Rest Easy, Brother - We Remember...
DOL

#exceptionalwarriors #TheFEW #purpleheart #SOF #Valor #Heroes #warfighter #America #armyranger #navySEAL #MARSOC #JSOC #SOCOM #greenberet #ranger #PJ #jtac #deltaforce #OGA

On this day in U.S. Army SF history, 31 Dec 1968
– (then) 1st Lt. James N. “Nick” Rowe escaped Viet Cong captivity.

Prisoner of war:
On October 29, 1963, after only three months in country, Rowe was captured by Viet Cong elements along with Captain Humberto "Rocky" R. Versace and Sergeant Daniel L. Pitzer while on an operation to drive a Viet Cong unit out of the village of Le Coeur. Rowe states that the VC were a main force unit due to his observations of their equipment.

Rowe was separated from his fellow Green Berets and spent 62 months in captivity with only brief encounters with fellow American POWs. Rowe was held in the U Minh Forest, better known as the "Forest of Darkness," in extreme southern Vietnam. During most of his five years in captivity Rowe was held in a 3 by 4 by 6 feet (0.91 m × 1.22 m × 1.83 m) bamboo cage.

As an intelligence officer, Rowe possessed vital information about the disposition of defenses around the CIDG camps, the locations of mine field, names of friendly Vietnamese, and unit locations and strength. Rowe had left his West Point ring at home in the United States, and he told his captors that he was a draftee engineer charged with building schools and other civil affairs projects. The Viet Cong interrogated him unsuccessfully. They gave him some engineering problems to solve and Rowe, relying on the basic instruction in engineering he'd received at West Point, successfully maintained his deception.

However, Rowe's deceptive cover was blown when the Viet Cong managed to obtain a list of American high-value prisoners-of-war (POWs), and his name was in the list, identifying him as an intelligence officer. This enraged the VC, prompting them to order his execution.

Rowe was then led deep into the jungle to be shot. When his would-be executioners were distracted by a flight of American helicopters, he overpowered his guard, escaped and flagged down a UH-1 helicopter. He was rescued on December 31, 1968. Rowe had been promoted to Major during captivity.

In 1971, he authored the book, Five Years to Freedom, an account of his years as a prisoner of war. In 1974, he continued his military career the U.S. Army Reserve.
-Special Forces Association Chapter LX

Stars and Stripes Museum
December 21 at 4:00 PM

**The Birth of The Stars and Stripes: A Civil War Legacy**

On November 7, 1861, Federal soldiers from Illinois and Iowa made their way into the nearly abandoned town of Bloomfield, Missouri. Little did they know that their actions would set the stage for the birth of an American military legacy - the military newspaper, The Stars and Stripes.

Colonel Richard J. Oglesby, commanding officer of the 8th Illinois Infantry Regiment, received orders to lead an expedition to destroy rebel forces in Stoddard County. With approximately 2,200 men under his command, they embarked on a journey through a swampy terrain to reach Bloomfield.

As Union forces converged on Bloomfield from different directions, General Thompson of the Missouri State Guard realized his predicament and withdrew further south. The first Union force to enter Bloomfield was the 10th Iowa Infantry, followed by Colonel Oglesby and his Illinois troops.

During their occupation of Bloomfield, some of the Illinois troops engaged in looting, prompting Colonel Oglesby to intervene and put a stop to it. Meanwhile, another group of soldiers discovered the abandoned newspaper office of the Bloomfield Herald.

In the evening hours, ten soldiers, including some printers from the regiment, took over the printing office and decided to publish a newspaper. They named it THE STARS AND STRIPES. The following morning, carriers distributed the first issue to the troops in and around Bloomfield.

Today, you can visit our museum to read what the first Stripers wrote. We proudly display an original copy of The Stars and Stripes and offer reprints for purchase in our gift shop for $2. Come and immerse yourself in the history of this remarkable Civil War legacy.
**Visit our museum to learn more about The Stars and Stripes and the Civil War.**

Army Emergency Relief | Dec. 12, 2023

Soldiers and Army Families impacted by the tornado that struck in the Clarksville, Tennessee, area are encouraged to contact Fort Campbell’s Army Emergency Relief office for financial assistance. AER officers are located at 5662 Screaming Eagle Blvd. and can be reached at (270) 798-5518.

Financial hardships faced by those affected by natural disasters can be devastating. As the U.S. Army’s official nonprofit, AER provides grants, loans or a combination of both to cover costs for basic essential needs like temporary lodging, food and fuel.

Those eligible for AER disaster assistance are:

Soldiers on active duty and their eligible Family members
Soldiers retired from active duty because of longevity and their eligible Family members
Retired Army Reserve and National Guard Soldiers receiving retired pay and their Family members
Medically retired Soldiers and their dependents, including both those placed on the Permanent Disability Retired List (PDRL) or Temporary Disability Retirement List (TDRL)
Surviving spouses and children of Soldiers who died while on active duty (including those on Title 10 Orders) or in an eligible retired status
Members of the Reserve Component of the Army (National Guard and Army Reserve under Title 10 U.S.C) on continuous Active Duty for more than 30 consecutive days and their eligible Family members
Title 10, Title 32 and TPU Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers NOT mobilized, or are mobilized for LESS THAN 30 consecutive days and those activated in support of tornado relief efforts.
Assistance may be provided up to $600 as a grant for all those listed above. For active duty Soldiers, commanders should be the individuals who validate need by signing AER Form 101 prior to Soldiers requesting assistance. Any amount above $600 may be considered as a loan, grant or a combination.

PJ’s Veteran’s Day Sermon:

TO THE WARTIME VETERAN:

There is a saying that says, “The war is never over in the mind of the warrior”.

I sincerely believe that! When I returned from the war, I went “nuts” for 9 years. Life was difficult, as I experienced nightmares and daymares. I could not quiet my mind as visions of the unthinkable raced through my mind. Today, they call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD}.
I tried everything the world offered for help;
visits to the Psychiatrist, meds, alcohol, sex, and anything I thought would help. Sometimes I would pretend that it helped. In reality, nothing helped, nothing. I felt so alone, even in the midst of a crowd.
Now, if you are a Wartime Veteran, EMT, Police Officer, etc., that has “experienced the unthinkable”, reading this, please hear this truth and cognitively receive it, THERE IS HELP! Help is not in what the world offers, but rather in what God offers you.He offers you what you are really looking for, Healing and Peace.

The Lord says:

“For I will restore health unto thee, And I will HEAL thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD”. Jeremiah 30:17

“You will keep him in perfect PEACE; Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You”. Isaiah 26:3

Jesus says:

“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls”
Matthew 11: 28-2

How do you “Come unto Jesus”? Here is what worked for me. I simply prayed, “Jesus, if you are real, HELP”. And with that simple prayer, the help I was seeking began!

Thank you for your service. You’re not home yet, but with Jesus, one day you will be Home!

From one wartime veteran to another:

PJ