In Honor of the United States Armed Services

[BOREALIS]

Max Cleland dies; senator and veteran lost limbs in Vietnam

By JEFF AMY
today


FILE - Former Georgia Senator Max Cleland salutes delegates before introducing Sen. John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention Thursday, July 29, 2004 at the Fleet Center in Boston, Mass. Cleland, who lost three limbs to a Vietnam War hand grenade blast yet went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Georgia, died on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. He was 79. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke, file)

ATLANTA (AP) — Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a hand grenade in Vietnam and later became a groundbreaking Veterans Administration chief and U.S. senator from Georgia until an attack ad questioning his patriotism derailed his reelection, died on Tuesday. He was 79.

Cleland died at his home in Atlanta from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean told The Associated Press.

Cleland was a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam when he lost his right arm and two legs while picking up a fallen grenade in 1968. He blamed himself for decades, until he learned that another soldier had dropped it. He also spent many months in hospitals ill-equipped to help so many wounded soldiers.

Fellow veterans cheered when President Jimmy Carter appointed Cleland to lead the Veterans Administration, a post he held from 1977 to 1981. The VA and the wider medical community recognized post-traumatic stress disorder — what had been previously been dismissed as shell shock — as a genuine condition while Cleland was in charge, and he worked to provide veterans and their families with better care.

Cleland’s 2002 Senate loss generated enduring controversy after the campaign of Saxby Chambliss aired a commercial that displayed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and questioned the Democrat’s commitment to defending the nation. Sen. John McCain was among those who condemned the move by his fellow Republican.

President Joe Biden saluted his Senate colleague Tuesday as someone with “unflinching patriotism, boundless courage, and rare character.”

“His leadership was the essential driving force behind the creation of the modern VA health system, where so many of his fellow heroes have found lifesaving support and renewed purpose of their own thanks in no small part to Max’s lasting impact,” Biden said in a statement.

President Bill Clinton praised Cleland as an extraordinary public servant, saying “I will be forever inspired by the strength he showed in supporting normalization with Vietnam after having made profound personal sacrifices during the war.”

A native of the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia, Cleland suffered grievous injuries on April 8, 1968, near Khe Sanh, as he reached for the grenade he thought had fallen from his belt when he jumped from a helicopter.

“When my eyes cleared I looked at my right hand. It was gone. Nothing but a splintered white bone protruded from my shredded elbow,” Cleland wrote in his 1980 memoir, “Strong at the Broken Places.”

After fellow soldiers made a frantic effort to stop his bleeding and he was helicoptered back to a field hospital, Cleland wrote that he begged a doctor to save one of his legs, but there wasn’t enough left.

“What poured salt into my wounds was the possible knowledge that it could have been my grenade,” he said in a 1999 interview.

But later that year, former Marine Cpl. David Lloyd, who said he was one of the first to reach Cleland after the explosion, came forward to say he treated another soldier at the scene who was sobbing uncontrollably and saying, “It was my grenade, it was my grenade.”

Cleland had been an accomplished college swimmer and basketball player, standing 6-foot-2 and developing an interest in politics. Returning home a triple-amputee, Cleland recalled being depressed and worried about his future, yet still interested in running for office.

“I sat in my mother and daddy’s living room and took stock in my life,” Cleland said in a 2002 interview. “No job. No hope of a job. No offer of a job. No girlfriend. No apartment. No car. And I said, ‘This is a great time to run for the state Senate.”’

Cleland won a state Senate seat and then ran a failed 1974 campaign for lieutenant governor before Carter named his fellow Georgian to lead the VA.
Carter on Tuesday called Cleland “a true American hero who was no stranger to sacrifice.”

“We are grateful for his commitment to the citizens of the United States, but also for the personal role he played in our lives,” Carter said on behalf of himself and his wife Rosalynn.

Cleland left Washington after Carter lost reelection, and in 1982 was elected Georgia’s Secretary of State, a post he held for a dozen years. Then he won the Senate seat of the retiring Sam Nunn, but only held it for one term. Polls showed he had been leading in his re-election effort before the devastating Chambliss ad.

“Accusing me of being soft on homeland defense and Osama bin Laden is the most vicious exploitation of a national tragedy and attempt at character assassination I have ever witnessed,” Cleland said at the time.

Cleland wrote in his second memoir, “Heart of a Patriot,” that he lost his fiancee, his income, and his sense of purpose when he left the Senate. He ended up back at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he himself was diagnosed with PTSD, decades after the explosion.

“I was totally wounded and wiped out – hopeless and overwhelmed,” Cleland wrote. “Just like I had been on that April day in 1968 when the grenade ripped off my legs and my right arm. Emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally, I was bleeding and dying.”

Cleland recovered and served as a director of the Export-Import Bank; later, President Barack Obama named him secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

John Kerry, a Democratic senator and later his party’s 2004 presidential nominee, said he and other fellow Vietnam veterans shared a special bond with Cleland.

“One of the greatest gifts any of us ever received was a voice at the other end of a phone, with a sixth sense to call when you needed to hear him the most, saying ‘Hey brother, it’s Max.’ For those of us who knew and loved him, Max Cleland will always be our brother,” Kerry said in a statement.

As senator, Cleland voted to authorize President George W. Bush’s plan to go to war in Iraq, but later said he regretted it, becoming a fierce critic of Bush’s Iraq policy and likening America’s involvement to the war in Vietnam.

“He never asked me to do anything that was not absolutely right,” H. Wayne Howell, Cleland’s longtime deputy secretary of state and chief of staff in the Senate, told the AP Tuesday in a phone interview.

In the conclusion to his first memoir, Cleland explained that book’s title, saying that through crises and defeats, “I have learned that it is possible to become strong at the broken places.”

https://apnews.com/article/saxby-chambliss-max-cleland-atlanta-georgia-veterans-7e88ae1c448dfdeb605e53cf5fe4d0a4

[BOREALIS]

Public allowed to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for first time in nearly 100 years

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 2:42 PM ET, Tue November 9, 2021

01:15
Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/politics/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-centennial-commemoration/index.html

(CNN) - For the first time in nearly a century, members of the public will be able to walk on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier plaza.. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/27/us/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-trnd/index.html .. and lay flowers before the sacred memorial site in Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It's the first time in 96 years that visitors have been allowed to approach the Tomb, according to Karen Durham-Aguilera, the executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery.

The rare chance for the public to get close to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier falls on its centennial commemoration.

"The next two days will truly be a historic and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said Tuesday morning, kicking off the start of the Tomb's two-day flower ceremony.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been a final resting place for three unknown US service members, beginning in 1921, but has also served as a symbolic grave for unidentified or unlocated American solders.

"As you lay your flower, we at Arlington encourage you to reflect on the meaning of the Tomb. By the simple act of laying a flower, you are not only honoring the three unknowns buried here but all unknown or missing American service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation," Tim Frank, the Arlington National Cemetery's historian, said during Tuesday's opening ceremony.

Tuesday's start of the flower ceremony also included a smudging ceremony and a prayer led by Crow Nation.

On Tuesday morning, a crowd of people and families, including Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, an Army combat veteran, lined up to place a flower at the Tomb.

The public will be able to lay a flower at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Arlington National Cemetery said on its website that it does "anticipate holding another event in our lifetimes in which the public will be able to approach the Tomb in this manner."

Visitors to the Arlington National Cemetery will need to provide a government-issued ID for entry.
There will be an invite-only wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the nation's observance of Veterans Day on Thursday, which President Joe Biden plans to attend.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/politics/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-centennial-commemoration/index.html

[BOREALIS]

'A great lion with a big heart': Former presidents and dignitaries pay tribute to Powell

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 2:21 PM ET, Fri November 5, 2021

03:00
'A great lion with a big heart': Powell's son pays tribute to his dad
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/colin-powell-funeral/index.html

CNN)Gen. Colin Powell was remembered Friday as a patriotic statesman who served his country in peace and war at a funeral service that was marked not only by its reverence for the former secretary of state but by a bipartisan attendance of former presidents and dignitaries who paid tribute to the late giant of Washington.

While much was made of his leadership and life of public service in tributes to Powell, friends and family shared personal anecdotes and mourned him as a family man and "a great lion with a big heart." Powell died on October 18 from complications from Covid-19 at the age of 84.

"The example of Colin Powell does not call on us to emulate his resume, which is too formidable for mere mortals. It is to emulate his character and his example as a human being. We can strive to do that. We can choose to be good," former FCC chair Michael Powell, Powell's son, said in a moving tribute to his father.

"My father made a monumental difference. He lived, he lived well. I've heard it asked, 'Are we still making his kind?' I believe the answer to that question is up to us. To honor his legacy, I hope we do more than consign him to the history books. I hope we recommit ourselves to being a nation where we are still making his kind," he said.

At one point, Michael Powell spoke of how he held his father's hand in the ICU the night before he died and how he "felt my father's love in that hand.

"That hand that took my mother's hand in matrimony, that hand that held me as baby, that hand that signed report cards, tossed baseballs and fixed old cars, that hand that signed treaties and war orders, saluted service members and gestured joyfully while telling a story," Powell said, his voice quivering with emotion.
"That hand is still now, but it left a deep imprint on the lives of family and dear friends, soldiers and sailors, presidents and prime ministers, and a generation of aspiring young people."

Richard Armitage, who shared a 40-year friendship with Powell and served for a time as Powell's deputy secretary of state, recalled Powell's "sense of humor, his insatiable curiosity and his comfort in his own skin."

Madeleine Albright, Powell's predecessor at the State Department, noted that despite their differences in background, she and Powell became close friends.

"The reason is that, beneath that glossy exterior of warrior statesman, was one of the gentlest and most decent people any of us will ever meet," Albright said.

The solemn service, which was closed to the public but broadcast on television, brought together leaders from both parties at Washington National Cathedral.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden were seated in the front pew, along with former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama.

Former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken were there, along with current Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, who was recently hospitalized with an infection, and Donald Trump were not in attendance.

The musical selections for the funeral's organ and brass prelude were a mix of patriotic songs, religious hymns and popular music, including Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds," a nod to his Jamaican heritage, and ABBA's "Dancing Queen," as Powell was a noted fan of the Swedish pop group.

Armitage also spoke of Powell's love of music and of the church, and how nothing made him happier than to "sneak away" from his security detail when he was working at State.

Michael Powell said his father's "zest for life derived from his endless passion for people."

"He was genuinely interested in everyone he met. He loved the hot dog vendor, a bank teller, a janitor and a student as much as any world leader," he said of his father.

Michael Powell added that while his father was famous for his "13 rules," "our family life was unregimented" and their home was "warm and joyous and loving."

Powell's daughter, Annemarie Powell Lyons, also delivered a reading from the Bible during the service.

Key figure in shaping American foreign policy

14 PHOTOS: Colin Powell's Funeral




Considered a "favorite" of presidents, Powell served in several top roles in Republican administrations, most famously in the younger Bush's administration.

Powell was also national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for former President George H. W. Bush. He was the first African American man in US history to fill those roles.

He again broke barriers when President George W. Bush selected him to be the 65th secretary of state. When he was sworn-in in 2001, Powell became the first Black US secretary of state and the highest-ranking Black public official to date in the country, standing fourth in the presidential line of succession.

Powell's legacy would be defined by two US wars against Iraq. He was viewed as a hero in the 1991 Gulf War, overseeing Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

His record, however, was marred by his 2003 speech before the United Nations, in which he pushed faulty US intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to advocate for the US to go to war with Iraq. Powell left public office in January 2005.

Despite spending majority of his public service career in Republican administrations, Powell would later support Democratic presidential candidates and told CNN after the January 6 attack at the US Capitol that he no longer considered himself a Republican.

He broke with his party to support Obama's 2008 campaign and endorsed him again in 2012.
Powell voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 over Trump, whom he called a "national disgrace and an international pariah," and supported Biden over Trump's bid for a second term in 2020.

Powell also had a storied military career, serving two tours of duty in South Vietnam in the 1960s.

He is survived by his wife, Alma Vivian (Johnson) Powell, whom he married in 1962, as well as three children.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/colin-powell-funeral/index.html

[BullNBear52]

Stuart Scheller: Marine pleads guilty to charges after posting videos critical of US withdrawal from Afghanistan
By Ellie Kaufman, CNN 22 mins ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stuart-scheller-marine-pleads-guilty-to-charges-after-posting-videos-critical-of-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/ar-AAPwyCX?ocid=Peregrine


Perhaps resigning his commission would have been better.

[BullNBear52]

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had its first all-female guard change in history
October 4, 202112:46 PM ET




For the first time in 84 years, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had its first all-female guard change, the U.S. Army's Old Guard announced.

It was a milestone for the famed memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which pays tribute to the unidentified service members who died in U.S. conflicts and typically draws crowds of tourists.

The changing of the guard occurs when one Sentinel — the term for a soldier who stands watch at the tomb — takes over for another in a ceremony presided over by a relief commander. In one such ceremony last month, all three soldiers were female.

That particular guard change came just as Sergeant of the Guard, Sgt. 1st Class Chelsea Porterfield, the first woman to hold the position, was preparing to take her final walk, according to Patrick Roddy, commander of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment, also known as The Old Guard.

"It wasn't anyone's intent to 'engineer' this event, but we knew an event like this had significant meaning," Roddy said in an interview with Task & Purpose. "So in honor of SFC Porterfield's service, and at her request, the schedules were aligned for the first all-woman changing of the guard as part of her last walk."

The tomb throughout history
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was created in 1921 as a simple marble slab with the remains of one unidentified service member who died in World War I, according to Arlington National Cemetery.

The Army began guarding the tomb in 1926, but it wasn't until 1937 that soldiers established a 24/7 presence at the memorial.

Soldiers who want to become Sentinels undergo extensive training in arms and uniform preparation and face several tests before becoming a tomb guard.

According to the Society of the Honor Guard, the guard is changed every half hour in the summer and every hour in the winter, and the watch continues regardless of the conditions outside. "In fact, it is considered an honor to walk the mat during inclement weather," the society said.

Although Porterfield was the first female Sergeant of the Guard, one of the more senior positions in the regiment, there have been other female Sentinels throughout history.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/04/1043055912/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-first-all-female-guard-change-arlington-cemetery

[BullNBear52]

May they rest in peace. They are America's heroes and deserve our respect and prayers.

[BullNBear52]

Most of the Americans killed in the Kabul bombing were 9/11 babies who never knew a nation at peace
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kabul-bombing-victims-americans-marines/2021/08/28/2a85c00e-0778-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html
By Marc Fisher, María Luisa Paúl and Jose A. Del Real
Yesterday at 5:29 p.m. EDT



441
They had signed up to do their part, to heal a country — their own — that had not known a moment of peace in their entire lives. Rylee McCollum wanted to become a history teacher, but only after doing what he could as a Marine to serve his country. Hunter Lopez knew this was what he wanted since he was 11 years old. Ryan Knauss knew it in second grade.

The 13 American service members killed in Kabul on Thursday died in gruesome violence, victims of a terrorist bombing. They were, with one exception, 9/11 babies, born within a few years of the terrorist attacks that led the United States into a military conflict that stretched across four presidencies and throughout the lives of these 11 men and two women.

They never knew a United States that was not at war, never lived in the world before the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, a country without ID checks in office buildings, metal detectors at schools, shoes X-rayed at the airport.

Instead, they grew up keenly conscious of security concerns, in a culture now sometimes fixated on safety, always aware of a war on terrorism that men and women in uniform were fighting thousands of miles from home.

These are the 13 U.S. service members killed in Thursday’s Kabul airport blast

Biden: ‘I bear responsibility’ for Afghanistan withdrawal
President Biden on Aug. 26 pointed to former president Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban while also accepting responsibility for the Afghanistan withdrawal. (The Washington Post)
They were in Afghanistan this month not to fight, but to help finally end a war that has lasted two decades. In the pictures they posted, the videos they sent home, they held Afghan babies and guided fleeing families and stood guard in a hectic, precarious place. The stories of battles and bombs they heard in their training had seemed to some like tales of another time, the kind of lore their superiors liked to pass along to the next generation.

On Saturday, as the Pentagon released the names and biographies of those who were killed, their families groped to make some sense of the ultimate loss. Parents and other relatives spoke of these deaths as searing reminders that these young people had lived in the shadow of wars that took place an ocean away, conflicts strangely detached from most Americans’ daily existence.

“Our generation of Marines has been listening to the Iraq/Afghan vets tell their war stories for years,” wrote Mallory Harrison, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee’s friend and roommate first in the barracks and later at their shared house in North Carolina. “It’s easy for that war & those stories to sound like something so distant — something that you feel like you’re never going to experience since you joined the Marine Corps during peacetime.

“You know it can happen,” Harrison wrote on Facebook. “You raise your hand for all of the deployments, you put in the work. But it’s hard to truly relate to those stories when most of the deployments nowadays involve a trip to [Okinawa] or a boring 6 months on ship. Then bad people do bad things.”

Gee’s car, Harrison wrote, is still “parked in our lot. It’s so mundane. Simple. But it’s there. My very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half .?.?.”


Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee aboard an MV-22B Osprey aircraft during an exercise mission launching from the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima on April 5, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Mark Morrow/24th Marine Expeditionary Unit)
Flights to a new life were in sight: Portraits of Afghans killed in the bombing

The bombing killed Gee six days after Pentagon officials had tweeted a picture of her cradling an Afghan infant in her arms in Kabul. Gee had reposted that photo on Instagram, adding a caption: “I love my job.”

Gee’s father, Richard Herrera, told The Washington Post that she had texted him from Afghanistan a few days before she died. She had just been in Kuwait and now was helping women and children who sought to flee from the Taliban.

Gee, who was from Roseville, Calif., had set out to become an air traffic controller, but an irregular heartbeat steered her into a position as a maintenance technician. Her father said he had “never expected her to be on the front lines in Afghanistan,” but she told him that “she was having the experience of her life,” he recalled. “And I told her I was proud of her.”

Gee, who was promoted to sergeant last month, was 23 when she died.

So was Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss of Corryton, Tenn. “I want to be a Marine,” he wrote in his second-grade yearbook, drawing himself in uniform.

Knauss recently completed psychological operations training and hoped to serve next in Washington, his relatives said. He was “a motivated young man who loved his country,” his grandfather, Wayne Knauss, told WATE-TV in Knoxville. “He was a believer, so we will see him again in God’s heaven.”

Five of the 13 were 20 years old, as old as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

One 20-year-old, Marine Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, had called his mother from Kabul on Wednesday.

“I love you,” he told Elizabeth Holguin before they hung up. Becoming a Marine had always been Espinoza’s dream, his mother told The Post, and he enlisted right after finishing high school in Rio Bravo, Tex., a small, mostly Hispanic town near Laredo.

“It was his calling, and he died a hero,” Holguin said. She said her heart has “a David-sized hole nobody can fill.”

Another of the 20-year-olds, Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, was a baby on 9/11 and had wanted to join the armed forces since he was 2 years old, according to his sister, Roice. Another sister recalled Rylee as a toddler, carrying around a toy rifle and wearing his sister’s pink princess snow boots.

“He signed up the day he turned 18,” she said. “That was his plan his whole life.”

Rylee, who grew up in Jackson, Wyo., and was a decorated wrestler in high school, had just gotten married on Valentine’s Day before departing on his first overseas assignment in April. He’d been transferred to Afghanistan two weeks ago.

His wife, Jiennah Crayton, who lives in San Diego, was counting the days until McCollum’s return from his tour of duty. She is pregnant, and the couple had hoped Rylee might be home just in time for the arrival of their baby in three weeks, the sister said.

“He would’ve been the best dad,” Crayton wrote on Facebook. “I wish he could see how much of an impact he made on this world.”

Surprise, panic and fateful choices: The day America lost its longest war


Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover. (Jeremy Soto)
The oldest service member killed in Thursday’s attack, Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who went by Taylor, was 31. He had decided on a military career after seeing New York’s twin towers collapse in the 2001 attack, when he was 11. He enlisted when he was 19.

“Why he did this was because he loves his country,” his father, Darin Hoover, told KUTV in Salt Lake City. “He loves people.”

On Thursday, Taylor, who played football at Hillcrest High School in Midvale, Utah, “led his men into that, and they followed him, but I know, I know in my heart of hearts he was out front,” his father said. “And they would have followed him through the gates of hell if that’s what it took, and ultimately that’s pretty much what he did.”

Ever since two Marines arrived at his doorstep outside Salt Lake City to deliver news of Taylor’s death, his father has heard from other Marines who’d served with his son in Afghanistan and elsewhere and wanted his family to know that they’d been honored to have him as their sergeant.

“They look back on him and say that they’ve learned so much from him,” Darin Hoover told KUTV. “One heck of a leader.”

Darin Hoover said he did not want his son’s legacy to be tarnished by the politics of how the war in Afghanistan ended. The father wanted the eldest of his three children to be remembered instead simply as “a great young man” who decided 20 years ago that a historic attack on his country would shape the course of his life.

The father recalled: “He decided, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ ”


Neighbors tie yellow ribbons to flagpoles in front of the family home of Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover in Sandy, Utah, on Aug. 27. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
For some other families of the fallen, the circumstances of these deaths are colored by politics. Some sounded like President Biden when they spoke of the American involvement in Afghanistan, as they wondered why U.S. military forces remained on the ground for so many years, the mission never entirely clear to many of the troops, the endgame never quite certain.

On the first day after two Marine bereavement officers showed up at his front door, Steve Nikoui struggled to assess what had happened to his boy, Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, who was 20 years old.

“I haven’t been able to grasp everything that’s going on,” Steve Nikoui told the Daily Beast. “He was born the same year it started, and ended his life with the end of this war.”

Although the father felt a duty to “respect the office” of the presidency, “Biden turned his back on him,” Steve Nikoui said. “That’s it.”

Kabul deaths of 2 Marines underscore evolving role of women in the military


Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak. (Courtesy of Kathleen Soviak)
He told Reuters that “I’m really disappointed in the way that the president has handled this, even more so the way the military has handled it. The commanders on the ground should have recognized this threat and addressed it.”

The father, a carpenter in Norco, Calif., said he’d been pleased to see his son join the Marines while Donald Trump was president because “I really believed this guy didn’t want to send people into harm’s way. They sent my son over there as a paper pusher.”

The way the war is ending has divided the bereaved families just as it has split the nation.

Twenty-three hundred miles from Nikoui’s home, in Berlin Heights, Ohio, the same knock at the door came from two Navy notification officers, and now Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak’s sister Marilyn finds herself one of 12 surviving siblings in a family that will never be the same.

“I’ve never been one for politics and I’m not going to start now,” Marilyn Soviak wrote on Instagram. “What I will say is that my beautiful, intelligent, beat-to-the-sound of his own drum, annoying, charming baby brother was killed yesterday helping to save lives. He was a ... medic. There to help people … He was just a kid. We are sending kids over there to die. Kids with families that now have holes just like ours.”

Max Soviak, who was 22, was the only sailor killed in the bombing. His last words to his mother came recently over video chat. He assured her that he’d be okay.

“Don’t worry, Mom. My guys got me,” he said. “They won’t let anything happen to me.”

On Friday, after the knock on the door, his mother “realized that they all” — Max and his guys — “just went together,” according to a statement his parents, Kip and Rachel, gave to The Post.

Their son, who had played on the football, wrestling, tennis and track teams in high school, had wanted to make the Navy his career.

Marine Cpl. Hunter Lopez had formed a solid plan, too. His father is a captain and his mother a deputy in the sheriff’s department in Riverside County, Calif., and Hunter, who was 22, intended to follow his parents into the same office, according to a statement from the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association.

“Like his parents who serve our community, being a Marine to Hunter wasn’t a job; it was a calling,” the statement said.

“This kid knew since he was 11 what he wanted to do,” Hunter’s uncle, JC Lopez, said on Facebook. “Every free moment was spent training and perfecting his craft. Hunter, you did your job. Rest now.”


A community member lowers his flag to half-staff in honor of Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak in Berlin Heights, Ohio, on Aug. 27. (Megan Jelinger/Reuters)
Meagan Flynn, Alex Horton and Ellen McCarthy contributed to this report.

[PegnVA]

A feel-good story.

[BOREALIS]

US WWII veteran reunites with Italians he saved as children

By CHARLENE PELE, today


3 of 7
A 97 year old retired American soldier Martin Adler poses with Giulio, left, Mafalda, right, and Giuliana Naldi that he saved during a WWII at Bologna's airport, Italy, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. For more than seven decades, Martin Adler treasured a back-and-white photo of himself as a young soldier with a broad smile with three impeccably dressed Italian children he is credited with saving as the Nazis retreated northward in 1944. The 97-year-old World War II veteran met the three siblings -- now octogenarians themselves -- in person for the first time on Monday, eight months after a video reunion. (AP Photo/Antonio


4 of 7
A 97 year old retired American soldier Martin Adler speaks with journalists at Bologna's airport, Italy, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. For more than seven decades, Martin Adler treasured a back-and-white photo of himself as a young soldier with a broad smile with three impeccably dressed Italian children he is credited with saving as the Nazis retreated northward in 1944. The 97-year-old World War II veteran met the three siblings -- now octogenarians themselves -- in person for the first time on Monday, eight months after a video reunion. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

BOLOGNA, Italy (AP) — For more than seven decades, Martin Adler treasured a black-and-white photo of himself as a young American soldier with a broad smile with three impeccably dressed Italian children he is credited with saving as the Nazis retreated northward in 1944.

On Monday, the 97-year-old World War II veteran met the three siblings — now octogenarians themselves — in person for the first time since the war.

Adler held out his hand to grasp those of Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi for the joyful reunion at Bologna’s airport after a 20-hour journey from Boca Raton, Florida. Then, just as he did as a 20-year-old soldier in their village of Monterenzio, he handed out bars of American chocolate.

“Look at my smile,” Adler said of the long-awaited in-person reunion, made possible by the reach of social media.

It was a happy ending to a story that could easily have been a tragedy.

The very first time the soldier and the children saw each other, in 1944, the three faces peeked out of a huge wicker basket where their mother had hidden them as soldiers approached. Adler thought the house was empty, so he trained his machine gun on the basket when he heard a sound, thinking a German soldier was hiding inside.

“The mother, Mamma, came out and stood right in front of my gun to stop me (from) shooting,” Adler recalled. “She put her stomach right against my gun, yelling, ‘Bambinis! Bambinis! Bambinis!’ pounding my chest,? Adler recalled.

“That was a real hero, the mother, not me. The mother was a real hero. Can you imagine you standing yourself in front of a gun and screaming ‘Children! No!’” he said.

Adler still trembles when he remembers that he was only seconds away from opening fire on the basket. And after all these decades, he still suffers nightmares from the war, said his daughter, Rachelle Donley.

The children, aged 3 to 6 when they met, were a happy memory. His company stayed on in the village for a while and he would come by and play with them.

Giuliana Naldi, the youngest, is the only one of the three with any recollection of the event. She recalls climbing out of the basket and seeing Adler and another U.S. soldier, who has since died.

“They were laughing,” Naldi, now 80, remembers. “They were happy they didn’t shoot.”

She, on the other hand, didn’t quite comprehend the close call.

“We weren’t afraid for anything,” she said.

She also remembers the soldier’s chocolate, which came in a blue-and-white wrapper.

“We ate so much of that chocolate,” she laughed.

Donley decided during the COVID-19 lockdown to use social media to try to track down the children in the old black-and-white photo, starting with veterans’ groups in North America.

Eventually the photo was spotted by Italian journalist Matteo Incerti who had written books on World War II. He was able to track down Adler’s regiment and where it had been stationed from a small detail in another photograph.
The smiling photo was then published in a local newspaper, leading to the discovery of the identities of the three children, who by then were grandparents themselves.

They shared a video reunion in December, and waited until the easing of pandemic travel rules made the trans-Atlantic trip possible.

“I am so happy and so proud of him. Because things could have been so different in just a second. Because he hesitated, there have been generations of people,” Donley said.

The serendipity isn’t lost on Giuliana Naldi’s 30-year-old granddaughter, Roberta Fontana, one of six children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren who descended from the three children hidden in the wicker basket.

“Knowing that Martin could have shot and that none of my family would exist is something very big,” Fontana said. “It is very emotional.”

During his stay in Italy, Adler will spend some time in the village where he was stationed, before traveling on to Florence, Naples and Rome, where he hopes to meet Pope Francis.

“My dad really wants to meet the pope,” Donley said. “He wants to share his message of peace and love. My dad is all about peace.”

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-europe-veterans-542c9655225d0dc846a3386ddf9c7487

[BOREALIS]

Walter Straka, Minnesota's last remaining survivor of the Bataan Death March, died July 4th at age 101

Horrors of the Bataan Death March behind him, he lived a full life.

By Janet Moore Star Tribune JULY 21, 2021 — 4:20PM


Walt Straka, 101, is shown in 2019.

It seems fitting that Walter Straka died on July 4th.

Straka, a member of the Greatest Generation, was Minnesota's last remaining survivor of the Bataan Death March, a horrific chapter of World War II. The Congressional Gold Medal recipient, 101, died on Independence Day at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center.

Born Oct. 23, 1919, in Brainerd, Straka was one of 64 Minnesota National Guard troops from his hometown who belonged to Company A of the U.S. Army's 194th Tank Battalion. They were sent to the Philippines in September 1941 near Clark Field on the island of Luzon, just months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

After months of fighting under desperate conditions, Bataan fell on April 9, 1942. Some 75,000 Filipino and American soldiers, including Straka, were forced by the Japanese to walk 65 miles in six days to prison camps.

The grueling trek through the jungle, marked by physical abuse and torture, was later memorialized as the Bataan Death March. Thousands of the prisoners died.

In a 2020 interview with the Star Tribune, Straka recalled a Japanese soldier ramming his spine with a rifle butt, temporarily paralyzing him. His comrades from Brainerd picked him up and they marched on.
From Brainerd to Bataan: At 101, veteran recalls the horrors
https://www.startribune.com/from-brainerd-to-bataan-at-101-veteran-recalls-the-horrors/573003751/?refresh=true

If he hadn't continued, he said, "They would have bayoneted me for sure. Men were going insane, starving, dropping like flies. Hell couldn't be worse."

Between the American surrender at Bataan and the war's end in 1945, Straka survived starvation, abusive guards and cerebral malaria at a forced-labor steel mill.

"I could have died so many times, so I'm not worried about dying," Straka told the Star Tribune. "I'm a pretty lucky guy in many ways."

Paul Straka of Baxter, Minn., said his father recalled working a burial detail in Nagasaki, Japan, just days after the atomic bomb was dropped.

"How many people alive can say that?" his son said. "It's amazing he survived."

Only half of the 64 men from Brainerd serving with the 194th in the Philippines survived the march and subsequent captivity. The once-strapping 6-foot-2, 200-pound Straka weighed just 89 pounds at war's end.

When he returned home to Brainerd, he married Cleta Sylvester and raised a family. He and Cleta marked 64 years of marriage before she died in 2009.

Straka opened a used-car business, East Side Auto, in Brainerd. After he retired at 56, the couple bought a motor home and traveled all over the country, settling in Pharr, Texas, in winter while spending summers in Minnesota.

"He loved playing cards, sitting in a hot tub and going out to eat," Paul Straka said. "He enjoyed life."

Straka was spry well into his 90s, shoveling his walks and meeting friends for breakfast every day in the McDonald's at the local Walmart.

Though Straka rarely spoke of his wartime experiences, he started to open up about them in his 80s, his son said. He faithfully attended veterans' events and reunions, and was awarded the Minnesota World War II Memorial Medallion for "his intrepidity and indomitable courage against a brutal enemy."

In addition to his son Paul, Straka is survived by daughters Marsha Kate Haaf, of Webster, Wis.; Elizabeth Miles, of Hackensack, Minn.; and Sarah Porter, of Princeton, Minn.; sons Greg, of Brainerd, and Peter, of St. Joseph, Minn.; brother, Jim, of South Carolina; sister, Helen Hansen, of California; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Along with his wife, Straka was preceded in death by another daughter, Jane. Services have been held.

Transportation reporter Janet Moore covers trains, planes, automobiles, buses, bikes and pedestrians. Moore has been with the Star Tribune for 21 years, previously covering business news, including the retail, medical device and commercial real estate industries.

[e-mail]

https://www.startribune.com/walter-straka-minnesota-s-last-remaining-survivor-of-the-bataan-death-march-died-july-4th-at-age-101/600080138/

======================================================

History.com: Bataan Death March

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bataan-death-march

.............

Bataan Death March - Wikipedia

https://www.bing.com/search?q=bataan+death+march&cvid=f14e940c46124b5a91fe309ca77defc5&aqs=edge.1.69i57j0l4j69i60l2.9999j0j9&FORM=ANAB01&PC=LCTS

[BOREALIS]

Flag Day (United States)

In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14.
It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.[1] The Flag Resolution, passed on June 14, 1777, stated: "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."[2][3]

The United States Army also celebrates the U.S. Army birthday on this date; Congress adopted "the American continental army" after reaching a consensus position in the Committee of the Whole on June 14, 1775.[4][5]

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; on August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress. Flag Day is not an official federal holiday. Title 36 of the United States Code, Subtitle I, Part A, CHAPTER 1, § 110[6] is the official statute on Flag Day; however, it is at the president's discretion to officially proclaim the observance. On June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday, beginning in the town of Rennerdale.[1] New York Statutes designate the second Sunday in June as Flag Day, a state holiday.[7]

Perhaps the oldest continuing Flag Day parade is in Fairfield, Washington.[8] Beginning in 1909 or 1910, Fairfield has held a parade every year since, with the possible exception of 1918, and celebrated the "Centennial" parade in 2010, along with some other commemorative events. Appleton, Wisconsin, claims to be the oldest National Flag Day parade in the nation, held annually since 1950.[9]

Quincy, Massachusetts, has had an annual Flag Day parade since 1952 and claims it "is the longest-running parade of its kind" in the U.S.[10] The largest Flag Day parade had been held annually in Troy, New York until 2017, which based its parade on the Quincy parade and typically draws 50,000 spectators.[1][11][12] In addition, the Three Oaks, Michigan, Flag Day Parade is held annually on the weekend of Flag Day and is a three-day event and they claim to have the largest flag day parade in the nation as well as the oldest.[13] In Washington, D.C., Flag Day is celebrated heavily through the 7th and 8th Wards of the city. It is tradition in these wards to slow-smoke various meats and vegetables. It is said that Clyde Thompson is the "Godfather of Flag Day".[why?]



wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_(United_States)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_(United_States)

[BullNBear52]

How a WWII Japanese sub commander helped exonerate a U.S. Navy captain


Mochitsura Hashimoto, center, former Japanese sub commander, testifies at the Dec. 13, 1945, session of the Navy court-martial in Washington, trying Capt. Charles B. McVay III. (Byron Rollins/AP/AP)

By Daryl Austin
June 6, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT


Just 34 days before the end of World War II, a U.S. Navy cruiser was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sunk in the Philippine Sea.

The USS Indianapolis had been the ship of state of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and had just delivered core components of the Hiroshima-bound atomic bomb “Little Boy” off the coast of Japan four days earlier.

After unloading her top-secret cargo at Tinian and then making a quick stop in Guam to await further orders, the crew of the Indy were soon bound for the Philippine island of Leyte, unaware that their location had just been discovered by an enemy submarine.

A Japanese sonar man had picked up on the sound of rattling dishes in her kitchen from some six miles away. The submarine began stalking her through the water until it was close enough to engage.

The sub’s commanding officer, Mochitsura Hashimoto, gave the order to fire six torpedoes into her side at 12:04 a.m. on July 30, 1945. Two of the torpedoes hit their mark, and it took the Indy just 12 minutes to capsize and sink, forever entombing some 300 of her 1,195-man crew 18,044 feet beneath the surface of the moonlit water.

For the next five days, the nearly 900 sailors who had survived the sinking found their numbers whittled down as crew member after crew member fell victim to saltwater poisoning, drowning, delirium and shark attacks. Only 316 survived the horrific ordeal.

‘We knew the ship was doomed’: USS Indianapolis survivor recalls four days in shark-filled sea

Survivor Harlan Twible later recounted his time in the water: “I saw some great heroism, and I saw some great fright, and I saw some things I wouldn’t ever want to talk about.”

When the survivors were first spotted on the fourth morning by 24-year-old U.S. search and reconnaissance air pilot Chuck Gwinn while he was looking for enemy vessels in the area, they had drifted apart from each other and were found in several groups across nearly 200 miles of ocean.

Their collective rescue took about 24 hours to complete — leaving some survivors in the water for five harrowing days. One of the discovered clusters of men contained the Indy’s captain, Charles McVay.

Despite the nightmare he’d just experienced and survived at sea, McVay soon found himself in a different kind of fight — this one with the United States Navy.

The Navy had bungled many things regarding the Indianapolis and they knew it: They denied McVay the escort he’d requested for protection while traveling through enemy waters; they did not respond to any of the distress signals sent from the Indy that listed her coordinates in the final moments of her sinking (the Navy has since disputed receiving any distress signals, though multiple servicemen claimed to have received them); they did not recognize or report that the Indy had not arrived at Leyte when she was scheduled to; and they had provided McVay with an incomplete intelligence report in the first place — withholding the vital information they had come by through a top-secret code-breaking program that confirmed enemy submarine activity along the route the Indy would be taking to Leyte.

The savage fight for Guadalcanal: Jungle, crocodiles and snipers during World War II

To prevent such blunders from getting out and possibly overshadowing the triumphant news of the likely ending of the war (the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima just two days after the survivors were rescued with “This one is for the Boys of the Indianapolis” written on its side), the Navy ordered a news blackout about the incident once the survivors were sequestered and convalescing on a nearby island.

In Washington, the Navy had already begun preparing for a court inquiry as requested by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Nimitz’s inquiry requested an investigation of the cause of the sinking, the culpability of any servicemen involved, and how the survivors had been discovered entirely by accident after the base at Leyte did not report the ship as missing.

In the end, a few servicemen were reprimanded for their respective roles in not recognizing the Indy’s absence, but only McVay would be taken to trial and charged for the sinking of the ship once he arrived back on American soil.

The Navy all but spelled out their reasons for doing so in a letter their judge advocate general sent officials at the time: “Full justification for ordering the trial … springs from the fact that this case is of vital interest not only to the families of those who lost their lives, but also to the public at large.”

In other words, “the Navy needed someone to blame for what the New York Times had already called ‘one of the darkest pages of our naval history,’ ” said Doug Stanton, author of “In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors.”

Initially, Navy prosecutors tried to charge McVay with two counts of negligence: “failure to abandon ship in a timely manner” and “hazarding his ship” by failing to steer her in diagonal lines, a since-abandoned defensive maneuver known as zigzagging.

But the prosecutors soon realized they could not prove the first charge because the ship sank so quickly. So they put all their effort into making the second charge stick. McVay had already admitted that the Indy had not been zigzagging at the time of the attack, citing weather. The Navy insisted on proving that his lack of doing so had been consequential.

Among the list of witnesses the prosecution called to testify against McVay was none other than the submarine commander who had sunk the Indy in the first place: Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto. The decision caused an uproar among members of the press and politicians alike.

“American military prosecutors calling Hashimoto to testify against McVay regarding the loss of his ship would have been as outrageous as the New York City district attorney calling a 9/11 hijacker to testify against the NYC fire commissioner regarding the loss of the World Trade Center,” said Lynn Vincent, co-author of “Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man.”

Nonetheless, Hashimoto had been asked to testify at the court-martial and he obeyed — just not in the way prosecutors had hoped he would.

During his testimony, he was asked to confirm that the Indy had not been zigzagging at the time he fired upon her — a point he readily conceded. But he went on to seemingly mock the maneuver by explaining that zigzagging would have made “no change” in the way he fired the torpedoes and that he would have sunk the defenseless ship either way.

Despite the unexpected blow that Hashimoto’s testimony had been to the prosecution, McVay was still convicted of hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag.

“The conviction meant that of the almost 400 U.S. captains whose ships had been sunk during the war, McVay was the only one to have been court-martialed,” Stanton said. Indeed, he was the only captain in the entire history of the Navy to be court-martialed whose ship was sunk by an act of war.

That distinction stayed with McVay for the rest of his life as he endured anguished letter after anguished letter (“Hate mail,” Indy survivor Granville Crane Jr. later called it), from the families of the fallen sailors whose deaths had been blamed on him. “He read every letter he received and took them all personally,” Stanton said.

In the end, McVay took his own life on Nov. 6, 1968, with a gift from his father of a toy sailor clutched in his hand when he died.

His death marked a turning point for the remaining Indianapolis survivors as they had never held their captain responsible for the sinking and resented the way he’d been made to carry that unnecessary burden. “Once the captain was court-martialed, my first thought was, ‘How can we get these guys for doing this?’ ” Twible later recounted.

Indeed, for more than 50 years, the survivors had tried and failed to get the Navy to reverse the court-martial and to clear their captain’s name. At last, they decided to try another way: by making his exoneration a matter of law by appealing directly to Congress.

The survivors gathered signatures and lobbied members of Congress in visit after visit to Washington. Finally, Sen. Robert Smith of New Hampshire agreed to champion their cause, and he introduced an exoneration resolution that, as he put it at the time, “expresses a sense of Congress that Captain McVay’s court-martial was morally unsustainable.”

Smith’s resolution wasn’t enough, however, because it was up to Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former Navy secretary, to decide whether to take the exoneration resolution to the Senate floor for a vote.

For several months, Vincent said, Warner had opposed the measure and been “utterly immovable” until he received a letter from the most unlikely of people: Mochitsura Hashimoto.

Once again, 54 years after he’d testified at McVay’s court-martial, the submarine commander was coming to his old enemy’s defense. Hashimoto told Warner that he wanted to join the “brave men who survived the sinking of the Indianapolis ... in urging that your national legislature clear their captain’s name.” He added: “Our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences. Perhaps it is time your peoples forgave Captain McVay for the humiliation of his unjust conviction.”

His heartfelt words were enough to soften Warner’s resolve. “With the addition of Hashimoto’s voice,” Vincent said, “it was as though the entire matter had reached a kind of cosmic critical mass, and Warner realized it was time to finally lay it to rest.”

With Warner at last allowing the resolution to be considered, Congress voted to exonerate McVay on Oct. 12, 2000. Hashimoto died 13 days later.

In a show of support for the survivors, Hashimoto’s daughter, Sonoe Hashimoto Iida, and his granddaughter, Atsuko Iida, attended the 60-year anniversary of the ship’s sinking in 2005. Though nervous about how they may be received by the survivors who had been meeting together on the anniversary of the Indy’s sinking every year since 1960, they felt connected to the men of the Indianapolis through their father and grandfather and wanted to attend.

They soon found their role as spectators change to participants, however, when at the close of that anniversary celebration the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the survivors were asked to stand together and sing “God Bless America.” Atsuko was invited to take her two sons up to the front of the room to sing along with the other grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “She seemed nervous,” Vincent’s co-author, Sara Vladic, said, “but she agreed to go with a cautious smile.”

Singing as one, the moment was a fitting demonstration of healing between two peoples who had once called each other “enemy” — brought together by their shared desire to vindicate an innocent man.

“The survivors had fought for 50 years to exonerate their captain,” Vincent said. “In an ironic twist of history, the man who first put them in peril was the same one who came to their aid.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/06/uss-indianapolis-mcvay-hashimoto/

[BullNBear52]

The Last Surviving Soldier Who Liberated Auschwitz Has Died
June 7, 20217:56 AM ET

BERLIN — David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died. He was 98.

The Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria said Sunday that Dushman had died at a Munich hospital on Saturday.

"Every witness to history who passes on is a loss, but saying farewell to David Dushman is particularly painful," said Charlotte Knobloch, a former head of Germany's Central Council of Jews. "Dushman was right on the front lines when the National Socialists' machinery of murder was destroyed."

As a young Red Army soldier, Dushman flattened the forbidding electric fence around the notorious Nazi death camp with his T-34 tank on Jan. 27, 1945.

He admitted that he and his comrades didn't immediately realize the full magnitude of what had happened in Auschwitz.

"Skeletons everywhere," he recalled in a 2015 interview with Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "They stumbled out of the barracks, they sat and lay among the dead. Terrible. We threw them all of our canned food and immediately drove on, to hunt fascists."

More than a million people, most of them Jews deported there from all over Europe, were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945.

Dushman earlier took part in some of the bloodiest military encounters of World War II, including the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. He was seriously wounded three times but survived the war, one of just 69 soldiers in his 12,000-strong division.

His father — a former military doctor— was meanwhile imprisoned and later died in a Soviet punishment camp after falling victim to one of Josef Stalin's purges.

After the war, Dushman helped train the Soviet Union's women's national fencing team for four decades and witnessed the attack by eight Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis, five of the Palestinians and a German policeman.

Later in life, Dushman visited schools to tell students about the war and the horrors of the Holocaust. He also regularly dusted off his military medals to participate in veterans gatherings.

"Dushman was a legendary fencing coach and the last living liberator of the Auschwitz concentration camp," the International Olympic Committee said in a statement.

IOC President Thomas Bach paid tribute to Dushman, recounting how as a young fencer for what was then West Germany he was offered "friendship and counsel" by the veteran coach in 1970 "despite Mr Dushman's personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin."

"This was such a deep human gesture that I will never ever forget it," Bach said in a statement.

Dushman trained some of the Soviet Union's most successful fencers, including Valentina Sidorova, and continued to give lessons well into his 90s, the IOC said.

Details on funeral arrangements weren't immediately known. Dushman's wife, Zoja, died several years ago.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/07/1003910613/the-last-surviving-soldier-soviet-auschwitz-david-dushman

[BullNBear52]

I'll have to find the pics of our son for you.

I know I have them somewhere. Now that I'm retired I need to get them all in the same place.

It will be a rainy day project.

[BOREALIS]

I viewed the sites/memorials in Washington about 1985,
so I missed the ones constructed the last 35 years.
I doubt that I'll be there again.

But I just checked wikuoedua for the different Memorials there now, including:
"National World War II Memorial (2004)" (shown under construction)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mall

MAP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mall#/media/File:National_Mall_map.png

[BullNBear52]

If you ever get to Washington DC this is a must see.

https://www.nps.gov/wwii/index.htm

We went in the evening and there was no crowds.

The Pillars of the states are lit up at night.

[BOREALIS]

77th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy

Updated on 4 June 2021

2021 marks the 77th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Based on this year’s commemorations paying tribute to the heroes who came from far and wide to restore freedom to Europe, here’s an idea of what to expect.

The D-Day Festival

Every year, the tourist offices situated along and near the D-Day Landing Beaches come together to coordinate the D-Day Festival, .. https://www.ddayfestival.com/?lang=uk .. which features commemorative events and festivities on the five D-Day Landing Beaches and in Sainte-Mère-Église, Bayeux and Arromanches-les-Bains (Gold Beach sector) to name but a few places.

Opening of the British Normandy Memorial

British armed forces played a central role in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, and more than 22,000 made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. Until now, there has been no single memorial dedicated to their remembrance. The Normandy Memorial Trust was created in 2016 to realise the dream of Normandy Veterans to have a British Normandy Memorial .. https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/british-normandy-memorial/ .. and, following nearly six years of hard work, it finally opens on Sunday 6 June 2021, to mark the 77th Anniversary of D-Day.

[...]

https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/highlight/77th-anniversary-dday-battle-of-normandy/


https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/discover/history/d-day-and-the-battle-of-normandy/the-anniversary/

[BOREALIS]

Normandy commemorates D-Day with small crowds, but big heart

AP
By SYLVIE CORBET, an hour ago

1 of 14 -- https://apnews.com/article/europe-lifestyle-travel-cc54b0ec493f7763837f999270b0ae0d

World War II reenactors gather on Omaha Beach in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, Normandy, Sunday, June 6, 2021, the day of 77th anniversary of the assault that helped bring an end to World War II. While France is planning to open up to vaccinated visitors starting next week, that comes too late for the D-Day anniversary. So for the second year in a row, most public commemoration events have been cancelled.
(AP Photo/David Vincent)

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — When the sun rises over Omaha Beach, revealing vast stretches of wet sand extending toward distant cliffs, one starts to grasp the immensity of the task faced by Allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, landing on the Nazi-occupied Normandy shore.

Several ceremonies were being held Sunday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the decisive assault that led to the liberation of France and western Europe from Nazi control, and honor those who fell.

“These are the men who enabled liberty to regain a foothold on the European continent, and who in the days and weeks that followed lifted the shackles of tyranny, hedgerow by Normandy hedgerow, mile by bloody mile,” Britain’s ambassador to France, Lord Edward Llewelyn, said at the inauguration of a new British monument to D-Day’s heroes.

On D-Day, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. This year on June 6, the beaches stood vast and nearly empty as the sun emerged, exactly 77 years since the dawn invasion.

For the second year in a row, anniversary commemorations are marked by virus travel restrictions that prevented veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the U.S., Britain, Canada and other Allied countries from making the trip to France. Only a few officials were allowed exceptions.

At the U.K. ceremony near the village of Ver-sur-Mer, bagpipes played memorial tunes and warplanes zipped overhead trailing red-white-and-blue smoke. Socially distanced participants stood in awe at the solemnity and serenity of the site, providing a spectacular and poignant view over Gold Beach and the English Channel.

The new monument pays tribute to those under British command who died on D-Day and during the Battle of Normandy. Visitors stood to salute the more than 22,000 men and women, mostly British soldiers, whose names are etched on its stone columns. Giant screens showed D-Day veterans gathered simultaneously at Britain’s National Memorial Aboretum to watch the Normandy event remotely. Prince Charles, speaking via video link, expressed regret that he couldn’t attend in person.

On June 6, 1944, “In the heart of the mist that enveloped the Normandy Coast ... was a lightning bolt of freedom,” French Defense Minister Florence Parly told the ceremony. “France does not forget. France is forever grateful.”

Charles Shay, a Penobscot Native American who landed as an U.S. army medic in 1944 and now calls Normandy home, was the only surviving D-Day veteran at the Ver-sur-Mer ceremony. He was also expected to be the only veteran taking part in a commemoration at the American memorial cemetery later in the day.

Most public events have been canceled, and the official ceremonies are limited to a small number of selected guests and dignitaries.

Denis van den Brink, a WWII expert working for the town of Carentan, site of a strategic battle near Utah Beach, acknowledged the “big loss, the big absence is all the veterans who couldn’t travel.”

“That really hurts us very much because they are all around 95, 100 years old, and we hope they’re going to last forever. But, you know...” he said.

“At least we remain in a certain spirit of commemoration, which is the most important,” he told The Associated Press.

Over the anniversary weekend, many local residents have come out to visit the monuments marking the key moments of the fight and show their gratitude to the soldiers. French World War II history enthusiasts, and a few travelers from neighboring European countries, could also be seen in jeeps and military vehicles on the small roads of Normandy.

Some reenactors came to Omaha Beach in the early hours of the day to pay tribute to those who fell that day, bringing flowers and American flags.

On D-Day, 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.

Later on Sunday, another ceremony will take place at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, on a bluff overseeing Omaha Beach, to be broadcast on social media.

The cemetery contains 9,380 graves, most of them for servicemen who lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. Another 1,557 names are inscribed on the Walls of the Missing.

Normandy has more than 20 military cemeteries holding mostly Americans, Germans, French, British, Canadians and Polish troops who took part in the historic battle.

Dignitaries stressed the importance of keeping D-Day’s legacy alive for future generations.

“In the face of the threats of today, we should act together and show unity,” Parly said, “so that the peace and freedom last.”

https://apnews.com/article/europe-lifestyle-travel-cc54b0ec493f7763837f999270b0ae0d

[BullNBear52]

D-Day
During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.


https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day

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A Veteran Tried to Credit Black Americans on Memorial Day. His Mic Got Muted.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter was speaking at an American Legion service in Hudson, Ohio, on Monday when he was intentionally silenced.


By Neil Vigdor
June 3, 2021

A little more than four minutes into Barnard Kemter’s speech at a Memorial Day service organized by the American Legion post in Hudson, Ohio, an unusual thing happened: His microphone was silenced.

Mr. Kemter, 77, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served in the Persian Gulf war, had been crediting formerly enslaved Black Americans with being among the first to pay tribute to the nation’s fallen soldiers after the Civil War when his audio cut out on Monday.

Soon after, he said in an interview on Thursday, he learned that he had been intentionally muted by the event’s organizers, who disapproved of his message.

Now, the head of the American Legion of Ohio is seeking the resignation of two of the event’s organizers, and the organization has opened an investigation into the matter.

“Like anyone else, I figured it was a technical difficulty,” said Mr. Kemter, who tapped the microphone to see if it was on and continued his speech to a few hundred people with his unamplified voice.

The two organizers who have been called upon to resign, Cindy Suchan-Rothgery and James Garrison, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

But in an interview this week with The Akron Beacon Journal, Ms. Suchan-Rothgery acknowledged that she or Mr. Garrison — she did not specify — had turned off Mr. Kemter’s microphone for two minutes. She told the newspaper that Mr. Kemter’s narrative “was not relevant to our program for the day” and that the “theme of the day was honoring Hudson veterans.”

The episode swiftly drew international attention to the solemn observance in Hudson, a town of some 22,000 people about 15 miles north of Akron, Ohio, at a time of reckoning in the country over racial injustice.

Until that moment, the service had resembled countless others that take place every Memorial Day. There was the playing of taps, the reading of the names of local armed forces members who died while serving the nation and the placement of wreaths.

The American Legion of Ohio said on Twitter on Thursday that the group’s commander, Roger Friend, had requested the resignations of Ms. Suchan-Rothgery and Mr. Garrison. It also noted that it had opened an investigation.

Mr. Friend said in an email on Thursday night that he would not be commenting further until that investigation was concluded.

In a statement issued on Thursday on Twitter, James W. Oxford, the national commander of the American Legion, saluted Mr. Kemter for his efforts to highlight the “important role played by Black Americans in honoring our fallen heroes.”

“We regret any actions taken that detracts from this important message,” Mr. Oxford said. “Regardless of the investigation’s outcome, the national headquarters is very clear that The American Legion deplores racism and reveres the Constitution.”

Mr. Kemter, who grew up in Hudson and had been invited by the local American Legion post to speak at the event, said he had researched his 11-minute speech and practiced it several times.

As a courtesy to the event’s organizers, he said, he sent a copy of his speech to Ms. Suchan-Rothgery three days before the service. On Sunday, he said, she replied.

“She just said she wanted changes made,” said Mr. Kemter, who lives in Pataskala, Ohio, which is more than two hours from Hudson.

Mr. Kemter said that Ms. Suchan-Rothgery had forgotten to save her notations on the word processing document that he had sent to her, so he just went ahead with his speech on Memorial Day.

“I did not have time to rewrite a speech,” he said.

As he took the microphone, Mr. Kemter mentioned his roots in Hudson and said that Memorial Day was a “day of solemn contemplation over the cost of our freedoms.” He said the observance had been born out of necessity when the nation was faced with the task of burying 600,000 to 800,000 Civil War dead.

“Memorial Day was first commemorated by an organized group of Black freed slaves less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered,” he said on Monday, citing research by David W. Blight, a Yale University history professor.

On May 1, 1865, Mr. Kemter said, a large group of formerly enslaved people organized a tribute to Union soldiers who had died at what had been a Confederate prisoner of war camp in Charleston, S.C.

“The ceremony is believed to have included a parade of as many as 10,000 people, including 3,000 African American schoolchildren singing the Union marching song, ‘John Brown’s Body,’” he said.

That was when Mr. Kemter’s microphone was silenced.

“It’s sad that it had to develop like that,” he said. “My whole intent on the speech was to be informative, educational and to pay tribute to African American contributions to the Memorial Day service and traditions.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/american-legion-ohio-mic-cut-speech.html?

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Paying tribute

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Memorial Day,

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Military.com -- Memorial Day

"See link for more details":
https://www.military.com/topics/memorial-day

George W. Bush Honors Veterans, Parents, on Memorial Day

Thousands of Troops from Past Wars Are Still Missing. We'll Never Stop Trying to Find Them

How You Can Honor a Fallen Service Member This Memorial Day

Vets Return to Memorial Day Traditions as Pandemic Eases

They Gave the 'Last Full Measure of Devotion.' Here's What We Need to Do to Honor Them

MUCH MORE

[...]

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Biden awards 1st Medal of Honor to 94-year-old Korean War veteran

Dylan Stableford·Senior Writer
Fri, May 21, 2021, 2:14 PM·2 min read

Joe Biden

Ralph Puckett
President Biden on Friday awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, to Ralph Puckett Jr., a 94-year-old Korean War veteran and retired Army colonel who was wounded in a battle against Chinese soldiers in Korea more than 70 years ago.

"Today we are hosting a true American hero and awarding an honor that is long overdue," Biden said during an East Room ceremony that was also attended by South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

It was the first Medal of Honor awarded by Biden as president.

Biden said that when Puckett was told of the White House's plans for the award ceremony, he asked, "Why all the fuss? Why can't they just mail it to me?"

The president then recounted the story of Puckett's "extraordinary heroism" during the Korean War.

In November 1950, Puckett, then a first lieutenant in the Eighth U.S. Army Ranger Company, led more than 50 fellow Rangers on a mission to capture and defend a hill from a Chinese assault. He intentionally ran across an exposed area multiple times to draw enemy fire away from his soldiers.

During the siege, he was wounded by a hand grenade and two rounds of mortar fire but refused evacuation, moving from foxhole to foxhole, directing artillery support and inspiring his fellow soldiers to fight.

"Knowing his men were in a precarious situation, First Lieutenant Puckett commanded the Rangers to leave him behind and evacuate the area," the White House said in a statement announcing the award.

President Biden presents the Medal of Honor to retired U.S. Army Col. Ralph Puckett Jr. in the East Room of the White House on Friday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Biden presents the Medal of Honor to retired Army Col. Ralph Puckett Jr. in the East Room of the White House on Friday. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Two of his Rangers disregarded the order and pulled Puckett off the hill to safety.

"First Lieutenant Puckett’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service," the White House added.

Puckett earned two Distinguished Service Crosses for his actions on what was then known as Hill 205. He had a 22-year career in the Army, later serving in the Vietnam War, during which he also saw combat, before retiring from active duty in 1971. He earned five Purple Hearts for injuries suffered in combat.

According to a bio provided by the White House, Puckett is still active in community and military affairs in Columbus, Ga., where he lives with his wife of 68 years, Jean. They have three children, one of whom is deceased, and six grandchildren.

After Biden placed the medal around Puckett's neck, the president invited family members who were in attendance to join them onstage for photos.

Biden and Moon knelt down to pose with Puckett, who stood for parts of the ceremony but was helped onstage by younger service members.

Puckett was also greeted by Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-medal-of-honor-ralph-puckett-jr-moon-ceremony-181422873.html

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Biden awards 1st Medal of Honor to Korean war hero
Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:10 PM
President Joe Biden awarded his first Medal of Honor Friday to 94-year-old retired Army Col. Ralph Puckett Jr. for bravery under enemy fire more than a half-century ago in the Korean War. (May 21)

Video Transcript
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Today we are hosting a true American hero, and awarding an honor that is long overdue. More than 70 years overdue. Colonel, I'm humbled to have you here today. I really am, along with your loving family, and I award you the Medal of Honor. And though I understand that your first response to hosting this event was to ask why all the fuss? Why all the fuss? Can't they just mail it to me? I was going to make a joke about the Post Office but decided not to do that. Colonel Puckett, after 70 years, rather than military I would have walked it to you. You know, your lifetime of service to our nation I think deserves a little bit of fuss. A little bit of fuss.

Korea is sometimes called the forgotten war. But those men who were there under Lieutenant Puckett's command-- they'll never forget his bravery. They never forget that he was right by their side throughout every minute of it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-awards-1st-medal-honor-191026363.html

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Jeff Fox, 52, Dies; Balanced Baseball With Protecting Presidents
A star college athlete who later worked in the Secret Service, he played for decades in elite amateur leagues around Washington. He died of Covid-19.

By Clay Risen
May 1, 2021
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

It was a hot and dusty afternoon in 2010, with the Northern Virginia Red Sox up by 10 runs over the Prince William Yankees. Jeff Fox, playing third base for the Red Sox, was probably the only one on his team of elite amateurs still eager to play as they trotted onto the field for the ninth inning.

No one moved very much when a batter for the Yankees drove a line drive toward left field. No one except Mr. Fox: He dove for the ball — and injured his shoulder so badly that he needed surgery.

“We all looked at each other and said, ‘What are you doing?’” his friend and teammate Jeff Horwitt said.

Mr. Fox had once dreamed of a shot at the major leagues, but he hurt his knee during his senior year in college. Instead he entered the Secret Service, protecting presidents — Bill Clinton was his first — while playing in leagues around Northern Virginia, including the Industrial Baseball League.

“He was in his 50s, and still playing at the highest level possible,” Mr. Horwitt said.

Mr. Fox, who later joined the Defense Department and moved to San Jose, Calif., died on March 16 at a hospital there. He was 52. The cause was Covid-19, his father, Jerry, said.

Jeffery Lynn Fox was born on Nov. 10, 1968, at South Ruislip Air Station, a British military installation near London leased to the U.S. Air Force, in which his father was serving.

His family later moved to Taylorsville, N.C., tucked up against the Blue Ridge Mountains, where both his father and his mother, Martha (Price) Fox, worked in a furniture factory.


Along with his father, Mr. Fox is survived by his mother and his wife, Kristina Fox.

He was a standout baseball player in high school, and in 2019 he was inducted into the Alexander County Sports Hall of Fame. He was a starter on the team during all four years at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, playing both catcher and center field.



Mr. Fox won a reputation among the die-hard amateur baseball players of Northern Virginia as a dependable, affable teammate.Credit...via Fox family
After college, he quickly won a reputation among the die-hard amateur players of Northern Virginia as a dependable, affable teammate — always on time, despite his life-or-death duties defending the president, and always willing to play whatever position was needed.

“He was the glue that helped those teams stay close while we competed and continued to be the leader in keeping teammates together today,” a former college teammate, Mike Shildt, now the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, said in a statement.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Fox joined the Federal Air Marshal Service, where he met a flight attendant for United Airlines named Kristina Capuyon. They struck up a friendship during twice-a-week hauls between Washington and San Francisco, and they married in 2008.

Mr. Fox later worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, performing background checks for security clearances. He did the same work for the Department of Defense, a job that in 2019 took him and his wife to San Jose.

“What set Jeff apart was, whether he was protecting the president or playing with his team, he was all in,” Mr. Horwitt said. “Whether he was at the White House or a dusty high school field, the situation didn’t matter.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/obituaries/jeff-fox-52-dead-covid.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage

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Photos From America’s Longest War

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/world/asia/afghanistan-war-photos-pictures.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Photographs by The New York Times
Text by Rod Nordland and David Zucchino
Feb. 29, 2020
Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States military’s attention turned to Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda’s leaders were based. Many knew an invasion was sure to come.

What no one knew was that Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion to rout Al Qaeda and its hosts, the Taliban, would turn into a war that is now in its 20th year — America’s longest.

It has vexed four American presidencies and outlasted 14 American military commanders. It has also opened a window, for much of the world, onto a country where modernity still clashes with ancient customs and religious edicts.

Here, in chronological order, are images showing the long arc of the war, as seen through the eyes of New York Times photographers.

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Admiral McRaven Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS | One of the Best Motivational Speeches

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A Black WWII veteran was beaten and blinded, fueling the civil rights movement
A new documentary explores how Isaac Woodard changed America

By
DeNeen L. Brown
March 31, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

On my list
In February 1946, Sgt. Isaac Woodard, a decorated Black soldier just returning from World War II, rode a Greyhound bus, heading home to South Carolina.

Woodard, who had just been honorably discharged from the Army and was still wearing his uniform, asked the bus driver to stop so that he could use the restroom.

The driver reluctantly pulled over after calling Woodard “boy.”

Woodard, who had just returned from more than three years of military service in the Pacific, stood up for himself and other Black veterans, telling the driver not to talk to him like that.

“I’m a man just like you,” Woodard said.

At the next town, Batesburg, S.C., the driver called the police. The Batesburg police chief pulled Woodard off the bus and immediately began beating him, plunging a blackjack into each of Woodard’s eye sockets and blinding him.

Woodard was taken to jail, where he would later explain that someone poured whiskey on him to say that he had been drunk. He spent the night in excruciating pain. The next morning, he was taken to court and ordered to sign papers that he could not see or read.

A new documentary, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard,” directed by Jamila Ephron and narrated by André Holland, premiered Tuesday on “American Experience” on PBS. The documentary explores the story of Woodard’s life and how the beating fueled the civil rights movement and changed the trajectory of U.S. history.

How Harry S. Truman went from being a racist to desegregating the military

“Based on Richard Gergel’s book ‘Unexampled Courage,’ the film details how the crime led to the racial awakenings of South Carolina Judge J. Waties Waring and President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later,” according to PBS.

The documentary uncovers “how a single individual can be the spark that ignites a movement and creates a seismic shift in public opinion,” said Cameo George, the film’s executive producer. “Although his name is little-known today, Isaac Woodard’s story changed hearts and minds — and the law of the land.”

Two months after he was blinded, Woodard traveled to New York City, where he met with Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP. The NAACP’s legal team, led by Thurgood Marshall, had been looking for civil rights cases that could help dramatize the impact of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, white supremacy, police brutality and racial violence committed against Black people.

Image without a caption
Thurgood Marshall outside the U.S. Supreme Court in 1958. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP)
Hundreds of Black veterans had been attacked and an unknown number were lynched. The NAACP offices were filled with harrowing reports of Black veterans lynched. One Black veteran had been murdered for casting a vote in a primary.

In July 1946, four Black people, including George W. Dorsey, a distinguished veteran who had served in World War II in the Pacific and North Africa, were beaten, tortured, fatally shot and hanged from the Moore’s Ford bridge in Walton County, Ga., in what is called the last mass lynching in America.

America’s first post-World War II race riot led to the near-lynching of Thurgood Marshall

“So many people did not survive their encounters with police officers,” Jamila Ephron, the film’s director, said in a telephone interview. “Here, someone had survived. Isaac Woodard’s face bore the evidence of the crime committed against him.”

Unlike so many other Black veterans who had been lynched, Woodard lived to tell his story.

The NAACP was “able to use Isaac Woodard to galvanize people,” Ephron said. Woodard traveled the country on a speaking tour. A benefit concert, headlined by huge stars including Billie Holiday, Woody Guthrie and Duke Ellington, was organized to raise money for Woodard. Heavyweight champion Joe Louis co-chaired the concert.

Woodard took the stage, speaking in a low voice. The audience of more than 20,000 people fell silent. “I spent 3½ years in the service of my country and thought I would be treated as a man when I returned to my country,” Woodard said. “But that was a mistake.”

Woodard’s story resonated. More than 900,000 Black men fought in World War II. Most of them returned home to the South carrying themselves with dignity of having fought for their country, hoping they would be treated with respect. Instead, many were attacked, simply for wearing their uniforms.

“It coalesced with a moment when, yet again, Black men had gone off to fight for human rights to come home and have those rights denied them,” Ephron said. “It reached a tipping point amongst Black veterans and Black communities that enough was enough.”

The NAACP asked the actor Orson Welles to use his weekly radio show to highlight the brutal attack on Woodard. Week after week, Welles pounded at the question: Who was the officer who beat and blinded Woodard?

Welles asked for help in identifying the town where Woodard was beaten and the name of the officer. “Officer X,” Welles announced, “I’m talking to you. ... You are going to be uncovered.”

Within days, the NAACP received a letter from a Black soldier who wrote he was on the bus when Woodard was pulled off. The letter writer identified the town where the beating occurred as Batesburg, S.C.

“Officer X,” Welles announced. “We know your name now.”

Image without a caption
Veteran Isaac Woodard, who was beaten and blinded by police, applying for maximum disability benefits. Woodard’s mother stands at right. (Library of Congress)
On Sept. 19, 1946, White led a delegation of civil rights leaders to meet with President Harry S. Truman, to urge him to work to pass anti-lynching legislation.

“When White realizes Truman isn’t going to move forward,” according to PBS, “he tells the president, also a veteran, the story of Isaac Woodard. Truman was enraged.”

“He had taken this meeting with civil rights leaders reluctantly and was prepared to brush them off,” Ephron recalled.

When Truman heard about the police attack on Woodard, a veteran, “He exclaimed, ‘My God! I didn’t know it was this bad. We’ve got to do something,’” Ephron said.

The next day, Truman ordered his attorney general to bring federal charges against Batesburg Police Chief Lynwood L. Shull, who was charged with violating the civil rights of Woodard, by blinding both of his eyes.

A month later, on Nov. 5, 1946, Shull’s trial began in Columbia, S.C. The trial was presided over by Judge J. Waties Waring, the son of a Confederate soldier.

During the trial, Woodard testified that he was pulled off the interstate bus on the night of Feb. 13, 1946, in Batesburg, S.C.

“Shull was waiting for him at the bus door, he said, and struck him before he could say anything,” according to a 1946 United Press news article. “Two war veterans — a Negro and a white — who were discharged at Augusta the same day as Woodard and rode on the bus with him, testified that the Negro was not drunk and had not created a disturbance.”

The all-white jury deliberated only 15 minutes before acquitting Shull.

“Judge Waring and his wife are appalled at the blatant miscarriage of justice,” according to PBS. “Waring will devote the rest of his career to the fight against racism. The Warings become the targets of threats and violence.”

A month after the trial ended, on Dec. 5, 1946, Truman signed an executive order, creating the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. On June 28, 1947, Truman accepted an invitation from the NAACP’s Walter White to speak at the organization’s annual convention.

“There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry, or religion, or race, or color,” Truman said in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial. “We cannot any longer await the growth of a will to action in the slowest state or the most backward community. Our national government must show the way.”

A month later, on July 26, 1946, Truman signed Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, racially integrating the U.S. military and the federal government workforce.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/03/31/isaac-woodard-truman-integration-military/

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We took our son there and I showed him some names I was familiar with.

You really can't see it until you come across it.

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The Making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Though now celebrated for its modern, minimal design and contemplative space, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was once the subject of heated debates.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-making-of-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial/



------------

Photos of the Viet Nam War Memorial

https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=Vietnam+War+Memorial&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNzLOo_tjvAhUQ26wKHfkHDEgQjJkEegQIAhAB&biw=1609&bih=880

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Vietnam Veterans Day -- Celebrated every March 29,

Vietnam Veterans Day is set aside as a day for Americans to honor the courage and sacrifice of those who served in the Vietnam War.

At Military.com we know that the benefits you earned through service matter -- from discounts, to the Department of Veteran Affairs veterans ID card program, to need-to-know information about your VA healthcare.

01:59
https://www.military.com/veterans-day/vietnam-veterans-day
Military.com honors the selfless service of Vietnam veterans from the Coast Guard, Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps.

History of Vietnam Veterans Day

Officially designated in 2017 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day by President Donald Trump, the holiday is marked by ceremonies and celebration across the U.S.

SLIDE SHOW, 1 of ?


YES, THANK YOU

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National Vietnam War Veterans Day 2021

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Vindman twin set for promotion after bad evaluations from Trump appointees
Army personnel officials determined the negative reviews weren't objective.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/15/yevgeny-vindman-promotion-post-trump-476038

Thanks to missy for pointing this out.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=162579303

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For anyone who didn't understand the flyover it added up to 55.

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President Biden pays his respects to Brian Sicknick, the officer who died from injuries from the Capitol riot.



President Biden traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday evening to pay his respects to Brian D. Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died from injuries sustained during a Jan. 6 mob attack and whose remains were brought to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. Biden spoke with members of Mr. Sicknick’s family in the days after he was killed, according to White House officials, but his visit to the Capitol was not announced until the president’s motorcade departed the White House. Jill Biden, the first lady, joined him.

On Tuesday around 9:30 p.m., Mr. Sicknick’s remains were delivered to a silent Capitol on a cold and windy evening. Officers from Mr. Sicknick’s unit, some on mountain bikes, lined up near the steps outside. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood to the side during the arrival. His remains passed through a set of doors still shattered from the events on Jan. 6.

Mr. Biden departed the White House minutes later.

The memorial for Mr. Sicknick, who was 42, was not open to the public, but police officers and lawmakers are scheduled to be given the opportunity to pay their respects before Mr. Sicknick is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Two Capitol Police officers placed an urn containing Mr. Sicknick’s remains and an American flag on a dark gray table in the same rotunda that rioters stormed last month. His fellow officers surrounded the table, alongside lawmakers including Mr. Schumer, Ms. Pelosi and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader.

A private ceremony was held for Mr. Sicknick’s family.

One by one, officers saluted their former colleague before filing out.

The Bidens arrived soon after. They walked hand in hand around the center of the rotunda, stopping briefly in front of a Capitol Police flag, an American flag, and a set of wreaths on display for the ceremony. Mr. Biden could be seen shaking his head.

It is rare for people to lie in honor in the Capitol, a distinction reserved for private citizens, while government officials, like former presidents, lie in state. Congress authorized the distinction in 1998, after two Capitol Police officers were killed by a gunman. Rosa Parks, the civil rights leader, and the evangelist Rev. Billy Graham are the only other two individuals who have received the honor.

“The family of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick thanks the Congressional leadership for bestowing this historic honor on our fallen American hero,” his partner, Sandra Garza, and his family said in a statement. “Knowing our personal tragedy and loss is shared by our nation brings hope for healing.”

At least 14 other Capitol Police officers were injured in the attack, according to a memo issued by the F.B.I., which said in January that it would investigate Mr. Sicknick’s killing. Two police officers who responded to the attack have since died by suicide.

— Katie Rogers and Hailey Fuchs

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/03/us/biden-administration#bidens-brian-sicknick-rotunda

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West Point accuses more than 70 cadets of cheating in worst academic scandal in nearly 45 years
Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
Mon, December 21, 2020, 7:48 PM EST
WASHINGTON – More than 70 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point were accused of cheating on a math exam, the worst academic scandal since the 1970s at the Army's premier training ground for officers.

Fifty-eight cadets admitted cheating on the exam, which was administered remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them have been enrolled in a rehabilitation program and will be on probation for the remainder of their time at the academy. Others resigned, and some face hearings that could result in their expulsion.

The scandal strikes at the heart of the academy's reputation for rectitude, espoused by its own moral code, which is literally etched in stone:

“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Tim Bakken, a law professor at West Point, called the scandal a national security issue. West Point cadets become senior leaders the nation depends on.

"There’s no excuse for cheating when the fundamental code for cadets is that they should not lie, cheat or steal," Bakken said. "Therefore when the military tries to downplay effects of cheating at the academy, we're really downplaying the effects on the military as a whole. We rely on the military to tell us honestly when we should fight wars, and when we can win them."

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said West Point's disciplinary system is effective.

“The Honor process is working as expected and cadets will be held accountable for breaking the code," McCarthy said in a statement.

“The honor system at West Point is strong and working as designed," Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, the academy's superintendent, said in a statement. "We made a deliberate decision to uphold our academic standards during the pandemic. We are holding cadets to those standards.”

Army Col. Mark Weathers, West Point's chief of staff, said in an interview Monday that he was "disappointed" in the cadets for cheating, but he did not consider the incident a serious breach of the code. It would not have occurred if the cadets had taken the exam on campus, he said.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who leads the personnel panel of the House Armed Services Committee, said she found the scandal deeply troubling and West Point must provide more transparency to determine the scope of cheating.

"Our West Point cadets are the cream of the crop and are expected to demonstrate unimpeachable character and integrity," Speier said. "They must be held to the same high standard during remote learning as in-person."

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., of the House Armed Services Committee says West Point must be more forthcoming about the scope of cheating among cadets.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., of the House Armed Services Committee says West Point must be more forthcoming about the scope of cheating among cadets.
Instructors initially determined that 72 plebes, or first-year cadets, and one yearling, or second-year cadet, had cheated on a calculus final exam in May. Those cadets all made the same error on a portion of the exam.

Recently concluded investigations and preliminary hearings for the cadets resulted in two cases being dismissed for lack of evidence and four dropped because the cadets resigned. Of the remaining 67 cases, 55 cadets were found in violation of the honor code and enrolled in a program for rehabilitation Dec. 9. Three more cadets admitted cheating but were not eligible to enroll in what is called the Willful Admission Program.

Cadets in the program are matched with a mentor and write journals and essays on their experience. The process can take up to six months. Cadets in the program are essentially on academic probation.

The remaining cadets accused of cheating face administrative hearings in which a board of cadets will hear the case and decide whether a violation of the code occurred. Another board will recommend penalties, which could include expulsion. West Point's superintendent has the final say on punishment.

How it's different from the 1976 scandal
One of the biggest cheating scandals among the nation's taxpayer-funded military colleges occurred in 1976 when 153 cadets at West Point resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical engineering exam.

The current cheating incident is considerably less serious, said Jeffery Peterson, senior advisor, Character Integration Advisory Group which reports to the superintendent and a retired colonel.

"They're early in their developmental process," Peterson said. "And so on occasion, these incidents happen, but we have a system in place to deal with them when they do."

Less than half as many cadets were involved in the current cheating case, and all but one was a first-year student, Peterson said. The first-year students are relatively new to the expectations and programs designed to develop ethics and leadership at the academy. In 1976, the scandal involved third-year cadets. Of those caught cheating, 98 returned to West Point and graduated with the class of 1978, Peterson said.

Other military academies have been tainted by academic scandals: In 1992, 125 midshipmen at the Naval Academy were caught in a cheating scandal, and 19 cadets at the Air Force Academy were suspended for cheating on a test.

In 2020, the pandemic has overturned college life as distance learning and exams supplanted in-person learning. West Point isn't alone in discovering misconduct among students. The University of Missouri caught 150 students cheating in the spring and fall semesters, the Kansas City Star reported.

West Point switched to remote learning after spring break last year as the pandemic spread.

The honor code remains strong at West Point despite the pandemic, Weathers said.

"Cadets are being held accountable for breaking the code," he said. "While disappointing, the Honor System is working, and these 67 remaining cases will be held accountable for their actions."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: West Point accuses 70 cadets in worst cheating scandal since 1976

https://www.yahoo.com/news/west-point-catches-more-70-200415653.html

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Chuck Yeager, Test Pilot Who Broke the Sound Barrier, Is Dead at 97
A World War II fighter ace and Air Force general, he was, according to Tom Wolfe, “the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff.”

By Richard Goldstein
Published Dec. 7, 2020
Updated Dec. 8, 2020, 12:44 a.m. ET
Chuck Yeager, the most famous test pilot of his generation who was the first to break the sound barrier, and, thanks to Tom Wolfe, came to personify the death-defying aviator who possessed the elusive yet unmistakable “right stuff,” died on Monday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 97.

His death was announced via his official Twitter account, which cited his wife, Victoria, and confirmed by John Nicoletti, a family friend, by phone.

General Yeager came out of the West Virginia hills with only a high school education and with a drawl that left many a fellow pilot bewildered. The first time he went up in a plane, he was sick to his stomach.

But he became a fighter ace in World War II, shooting down five German planes in a single day and 13 over all. In the decade that followed, he helped usher in the age of military jets and spaceflight. He flew more than 150 military aircraft, logging more than 10,000 hours in the air.

His signal achievement came on Oct. 14, 1947, when he climbed out of a B-29 bomber as it ascended over California’s Mojave Desert from what was then known as Muroc Air Force Base, and entered the cockpit of an orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-powered experimental plane attached to the bomb bay.

An Air Force captain at the time, he zoomed off in the plane, a Bell Aircraft X-1, at an altitude of 23,000 feet, and when he reached about 43,000 feet above the desert, history’s first sonic boom reverberated across the floor of the dry lake beds. He had reached a speed of 700 miles an hour, breaking the sound barrier and dispelling the long-held fear that any plane flying at or beyond the speed of sound would be torn apart by shock waves.

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“After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a letdown,” he wrote in his best-selling memoir “Yeager” (1985), a collaboration with Leo Janos. “There should’ve been a bump in the road, something to let you know that you had just punched a nice, clean hole through the sonic barrier. The Ughknown was a poke through Jell-O. Later on, I realized that this mission had to end in a letdown because the real barrier wasn’t in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.”

Nonetheless, that exploit ranked alongside the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 and Charles Lindbergh’s solo fight to Paris in 1927 as epic events in the history of aviation. In 1950, General Yeager’s X-1 plane, which he christened Glamorous Glennis, honoring his wife, went on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

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ImageChuck Yeager, center, as an 8th Air Force fighter pilot in Europe in front of his P-51 Mustang with his ground crew.
Chuck Yeager, center, as an 8th Air Force fighter pilot in Europe in front of his P-51 Mustang with his ground crew.Credit...Courtesy of Chuck Yeager
But General Yeager, in the headlines for a time, became a national celebrity only after the publication of “The Right Stuff,” by Tom Wolfe, in 1979 and the movie based on it four years later, in which General Yeager was played by Sam Shepard. In the opening scene, he was depicted breaking the sound barrier.

In his portrayal of the astronauts of NASA’s Mercury program, Mr. Wolfe wrote about the post-World War II test pilot fraternity in California’s desert and its notion that “a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness to pull it back in the last yawning moment — and then go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day.”

That quality, understood but unspoken, would entitle a pilot to be part of “the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.”

Mr. Wolfe also wrote about a nonchalance affected by pilots in the face of an emergency in a voice “specifically Appalachian in origin” that was first heard in military circles but ultimately emanated from the cockpits of commercial airliners.

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“It was,” Mr. Wolfe said, “the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.”

In his memoir, General Yeager said he was annoyed when people asked him if he had the right stuff, since he felt it implied a talent he was born with.

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“All I know is I worked my tail off learning to learn how to fly, and worked hard at it all the way,” he wrote. “If there is such a thing as the right stuff in piloting, then it is experience. The secret to my success was that somehow I always managed to live to fly another day.”

Charles Elwood Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in Myra, W. Va., the second of five children of Albert Yeager and the former Susie Mae Sizemore. He grew up in nearby Hamlin, a town of 400, where his father drilled for natural gas in the coal fields. By the time he was 6, he was shooting squirrels and rabbits and skinning them for family dinners, reveling in a country boy’s life.


Image
The actor Sam Shepard, left, and General Yeager on the set of the 1983 film “The Right Stuff.”
The actor Sam Shepard, left, and General Yeager on the set of the 1983 film “The Right Stuff.”Credit...Warner Bros.
He enlisted in the Army Air Forces out of high school in September 1941, becoming an airplane mechanic. One day he took a ride with a maintenance officer flight-testing a plane he had serviced and promptly threw up over the back seat. But he joined a flight program for enlisted men in July 1942, figuring it would get him out of kitchen detail and guard duty. He received his pilot wings and appointment as a flight officer in March 1943 while at a base in Arizona, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant after arriving in England for training.

In 2016, when General Yeager was asked on Twitter what made him want to become a pilot, the reply was infused with cheeky levity: “I was in maintenance, saw pilots had beautiful girls on their arms, didn’t have dirty hands, so I applied.”

He possessed a natural coordination and aptitude for understanding an airplane’s mechanical system along with coolness under pressure. He enjoyed spins and dives and loved staging mock dogfights with his fellow trainees.

He flew P-51 Mustang fighters in the European theater during World War II, and in March 1944, on his eighth mission, he was shot down over France by a German fighter plane and parachuted into woods with leg and head wounds. But he was hidden by members of the French underground, made it to neutral Spain by climbing the snowy Pyrenees, carrying a severely wounded flier with him, and returned to his base in England.

Downed pilots were not generally put back into combat, but his pleas to see action again were granted. On Oct. 12, 1944, leading three fighter squadrons escorting bombers over Bremen, he downed five German planes, becoming an ace in a day. In November, he shot down another four planes in one day.

After the war, Yeager was assigned to Muroc Army Air Base in California, where hotshot pilots were testing jet prototypes. He was chosen over more senior pilots to fly the Bell X-1 in a quest to break the sound barrier, and when he set out to do it, he could barely move, having broken two ribs a couple of nights earlier when he crashed into a fence while racing with his wife on horseback in the desert.

The Air Force kept the feat a secret, an outgrowth of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, but in December 1947, Aviation Week magazine revealed that the sound barrier had been broken and the Air Force finally acknowledged it in June 1948.

But life continued much the same at Muroc. The pilots and their families had quarters little better than shacks, the days were scorching and the nights frigid, the landscape barren. The pilots flew by day and caroused by night, piling into the Pancho Barnes bar, where the liquor was plentiful.

In December 1949, Muroc was renamed Edwards Air Force Base, and it became a center for advanced aviation research leading to the space program. In December 1953, General Yeager flew the X-1A plane at nearly two and a half times the speed of sound after barely surviving a spin, setting a world speed record.


Image
General Yeager broke the sound barrier again in an F-15D on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight in 1997.
General Yeager broke the sound barrier again in an F-15D on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight in 1997.Credit...Michael Caulfield/Associated Press
In the fall of 1953, he was dispatched to an air base on Okinawa to test a MiG-15 Russian-built fighter that had been flown into American hands by a North Korean defector. Battling stormy weather as he took the plane aloft, he analyzed its strengths and weaknesses. In 1962, he became commander of the school at Edwards that trained prospective astronauts.

He commanded a fighter wing during the Vietnam War while holding the rank of colonel. He flew 127 missions, mainly piloting Martin B-57 light bombers that attacked enemy troops and their supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

After serving as head of aerospace safety for the Air Force, he retired as a brigadier general in 1975. His decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

NASA’s administrator, Jim Bridenstine, described his death in a statement as “a tremendous loss to our nation.” The astronaut Scott Kelly, writing on Twitter, called him “a true legend.”

General Yeager later became a familiar face in commercials and made numerous public appearances. Flying F-15 planes, he broke the sound barrier again on the 50th and 55th anniversaries of his pioneering flight, and he was a passenger on an F-15 plane in another breaking of the sound barrier to commemorate the 65th anniversary.

His first wife, the former Glennis Dickhouse, with whom he had four children, died in 1990. In addition to his second wife, the former Victoria D’Angelo, whom he married in 2003, he is survived by his children: Susan Yeager, Michael and Don Yeager, and Sharon Yeager Flick.

In his memoir, General Yeager wrote that through all his years as a pilot, he made sure to “learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment.”

It may not have accorded with his image, but as he told it: “I was always afraid of dying. Always.”

Mike Ives and Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/chuck-yeager-dead.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[BOREALIS]

Proclamation on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 2020

Issued on: December 4, 2020
All News

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese forces ambushed the Naval Station Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Tragically, 2,403 Americans perished during the attack, including 68 civilians. On this National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, we solemnly honor and uphold the memory of the patriots who lost their lives that day — “a date which will live in infamy” — and we reflect on the courage of all those who served our Nation with honor in the Second World War.

Seventy nine years ago, Imperial Japan launched an unprovoked and devastating attack on our Nation. As torpedo bombers unleashed their deadly cargo on our ships and attack aircraft rained bombs from above, brave members of the United States Navy, Marines, Army, and Army Air Forces mounted a heroic defense, manning their battle stations and returning fire through the smoke and chaos. The profound bravery in the American resistance surprised Japanese aircrews and inspired selfless sacrifice among our service members. In one instance, Machinist’s Mate First Class Robert R. Scott, among 15 Sailors awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of valor on that day, refused to leave his flooding battle station within the depths of the USS CALIFORNIA, declaring to the world: “This is my station and I will stay and give them air as long as the guns are going.”

Forever enshrined in our history, the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked all Americans and galvanized our Nation to fight and defeat the Axis powers of Japan, Germany, and Italy. As Americans, we promise never to forget our fallen compatriots who fought so valiantly during World War II. As a testament to their memory, more than a million people visit the site of the USS ARIZONA Memorial each year to pay their respects to the Sailors entombed within its wreckage and to all who perished that day. Despite facing tremendous adversity, the Pacific Fleet, whose homeport remains at Pearl Harbor to this day, is stronger than ever before, upholding the legacy of all those who gave their lives nearly 80 years ago.

On this National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, we recall the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor,” which stirred the fighting spirit within the hearts of the more than 16 million Americans who courageously served in World War II. Over 400,000 gave their lives in the global conflict that began, for our Nation, on that fateful Sunday morning. Today, we memorialize all those lost on December 7, 1941, declare once again that our Nation will never forget these valiant heroes, and resolve as firmly as ever that their memory and spirit will survive for as long as our Nation endures.

The Congress, by Public Law 103-308, as amended, has designated December 7 of each year as “National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim December 7, 2020, as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. I encourage all Americans to observe this solemn day of remembrance and to honor our military, past and present, with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
I urge all Federal agencies and interested organizations, groups, and individuals to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff in honor of those American patriots who died as a result of their service at Pearl Harbor.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-national-pearl-harbor-remembrance-day-2020/

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Pearl Harbor Day 2020: Photos from the Attack on the 79th Anniversary
BY JAMES CROWLEY ON 12/7/20 AT 6:00 AM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/pearl-harbor-day-2020-photos-attack-1552539

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Date which will live in infamy': What to remember about Pearl Harbor, 79 years later
Joshua Bote
USA TODAY

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/07/what-to-know-national-pearl-harbor-remembrance-day/3839353001/

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Abraham, Martin and John - Lyrics - Dion

November 22, 1963, least we forget.

Abraham, Martin and John

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day...

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

[BOREALIS]

Veterans Day across America

18 Pictures | Wed Nov 11, 2020 | 5:35pm EST

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/veterans-day-across-america-idUSRTX88VZT



Remembering the sacrifices of war

46 Pictures | Wed Nov 11, 2020 | 6:16pm EST

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/remembering-the-sacrifices-of-war-idUSRTX88T8I

[BullNBear52]

For Veterans Day, Some Former Military Officers Reflect on Lessons From Their Parents
The values that shaped them include leadership, optimism and charting your own course.


By Debra Weiner
Nov. 10, 2020

14
Debra Weiner is interviewing 100 newsmakers, thought leaders and other people who’ve made an outsize difference about the most valuable thing their parents taught them. Following are excerpts from a few of those stories, edited and condensed.

Leadership
JIM DUBIK, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general

Commanding general for training the Iraqi forces during the surge of 2007-08; Senior Fellow, Institute for the Study of War; author, “Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics and Theory.”


ImageJim Dubik with his father, Sam Dubik.
Jim Dubik with his father, Sam Dubik.Credit...via Jim Dubik
My dad was an Army corporal in World War II and a sergeant in the Korean War, and worked at a plastics factory in the shipping and receiving department, so from a world standpoint, a regular guy. But he knew so much about how to lead, how to get the best out of somebody and, as a boys’ baseball coach, he taught me things about leadership that have been fundamental for the rest of my life.

I was probably 12, and it was the bottom of the last inning. There were two outs. The bases were loaded, and this kid was up but refused to bat because he was so anxious. He implored my dad to put somebody else in, but my dad said, “No, this is your turn. I have confidence in you.”

Well, the kid swung, missed and got even more nervous. He swung again, fouled, and this time walked out of the batter’s box. My dad was coaching third base and came down, talked to him, hugged him and put him back in the box. Then he turned around and told the parents in the stands to cheer. And whack, he got a hit.

In high school, I started coaching with my dad. I’d say, “You know, if we play this other guy longer, we’ll have a better chance of winning.” And he’d say, “Yeah. But I’m not here to win. I’m here to have every kid be proud of himself and how he was part of the team.”

It was the same philosophy when I went into the Army. I was 21, right out of college, commissioned to be a second lieutenant in the infantry, and Dad said, “Remember, you’re an officer and people are going to look up to you. But the people looking up to you may die as a result of your orders. Don’t treat them like cogs in a wheel. Treat them with dignity. Respect them for what they’re willing to do.”

When I was a major, I was a deputy commander of a Ranger battalion and one of the higher-ups, a colonel, was really not good. He told me at one point, “Stop thinking. I’ve thought of everything. I don’t need suggestions from you.” At the time, I didn’t know he was going through a personal crisis and stress from a recent combat tour.

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But when you’re a major and go head-to-head with a colonel, you lose. It’s that simple. So I said to myself, “What are you going to do? Change your M.O. and suck up so you succeed, but in the process screw the people that work for you? No way.” Getting promoted was not worth my integrity. That time I didn’t need to talk to my dad. I was channeling him. Luckily, that colonel was an anomaly in my career.

Just before my brother died of cancer, he asked me what I thought about death. I said “Bob, in wartime death is random, instant and final. It’s completely out of your control. What is in control is how you live, and you lived well.” And that’s back to my dad. If you live your life with the right set of values, when death arrives you’re able to, in military terms, come to the position of attention, do an about-face, and be proud of what you see.

Be Your Own Person
JAS BOOTHE, former U.S. Army major

International public speaker and founder of Final Salute Inc., a nationwide nonprofit that provides homeless women veterans and their children with transitional housing.


Image
Jas Boothe with her father, Mickey Grayson.
Jas Boothe with her father, Mickey Grayson.Credit...via Jas Boothe
I saw way too much as a kid. Mom was a strong woman but struggled with health issues and because of that got taken advantage of emotionally, mentally and physically. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with my father. He always made sure I had what I needed, and would feed my two older sisters — we don’t share the same dad — and even the adults in my mom’s house, just to make sure I ate. But I rarely stayed at his place. Mostly he picked me up and brought me over to his sister’s or his mother’s.

My father was a fear-of-God, worst-case scenario kind of person. Every time he talked to me, it was about being strong and protecting myself. I’d be 8 or 9, and he’d be like, “Don’t go down that street or you’ll get shot in the head.” Or “Boys don’t care about you; they just want to have sex with you, and then you’ll get pregnant and be damaged goods.” I thought, “Dang, why is he so hard on me? Why is he so mean?” But I think that was his way of trying to keep me out of trouble.

My father grew up in the ’60s, which was a harsh time to be a Black man in America. He talked about being chased home as a kid, and as an adult, people trying to take advantage of him because they didn’t think he was educated enough to understand. So he was always in survivor mode and fighting something. Fighting the power, the man, something. Even with the doctors, up until his last days, he was like, “I don’t have pancreatic cancer. They’re just trying to get my money cause I’m Black and they think I’m stupid.”

He was always training me to be like a warrior. Crush people if they need to be crushed.

When I was around 12, some neighborhood kids were messing with me. My mom talked to their parents, but they kept doing it. Finally I told my dad that these kids had jumped me.

We drove over to where they lived, and he grabbed a little bag from under his truck seat. And he pulled out a gun. It was a silver revolver. I was like, “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

And he was like, “This isn’t a game. What did you think I was going to do?”

“Uh, not murder a whole houseful of people because their kids are bullies. I don’t like this. Let’s just go.”

I’ve never been religious but I’ve always felt spiritually led; that there was a protective presence around me pushing me away from negative influences and behaviors. I mean, I respected my parents. And there probably were reasons I never knew about that caused them to live their lives a certain way. But I realized I had the ability to shape how my life would turn out. It wasn’t like I got a notepad and wrote down all the ways I’m not going to be like my parents. But I guess I took subconscious notes. “Nah, that’s not for me. I won’t go down that route.”

I never called my father dad — he was always Mickey — until I was 27. I was getting ready to go to Iraq when I got head, neck and throat cancer. I was in the hospital for six months and was talking to him on the phone one day, when he said, “Hey, you think you can start calling me Dad?”

I think because I was, quote, “weak and very vulnerable,” he finally saw me as his little girl and felt like I needed a daddy. It was like the universe letting me know I was going to get through the cancer. And after that, until the point he passed, we had the greatest relationship. Despite how different we were, I’m still my father’s daughter.

The Golden Rule
STANLEY McCHRYSTAL, retired U.S. Army general

Commander of Joint Special Operations Command in the mid-2000s; commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, 2009-2010; currently a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.


Image
A teenage Stan McChrystal, back row center, with his parents, Maj. Gen. Herbert J. McChrystal Jr. and Mary Bright McChrystal. In front are his younger brother Peter S. McChrystal, in glasses, and John Overman, a cousin.<br /><br />
A teenage Stan McChrystal, back row center, with his parents, Maj. Gen. Herbert J. McChrystal Jr. and Mary Bright McChrystal. In front are his younger brother Peter S. McChrystal, in glasses, and John Overman, a cousin.

Credit...via Stan McChrystal
My mom always treated people kindly and with consideration. She never talked about it or wore it on her sleeve. It was just what she did.

I remember, when I was 6, my brother and I spent two or three weeks in Lafayette, Ala., at the family homestead, this big, brick, Victorian-looking thing which my great-grandfather had built. My mother flew down to pick us up and when she arrived in her traveling clothes, which in those days were nice clothes, some of the relatives came out to greet her. Then the cook, a heavyset African-American lady who had been with the family for years, came out and was effusive with my mother. And then this one-armed guy who wore a straw hat and worked on the farm, Old Mose they called him, came up and goes, “Miss Mary Gardner.” It was almost like you were at Twelve Oaks or something. And my mom greets him in a really personal way, like he mattered. I wasn’t real conscious of race before that trip to the South, but I was struck by how my mom acted differently than my relatives. Not that they were mean. They were just of that society.

I played in a very competitive Little League and there was one game, I was pitching, when a father on the other team started heckling me. Who heckles a 12-year-old? So I heckled back. I thought I was very clever standing up to this old guy. But after the game, my mom goes, just because somebody acts the fool, doesn’t make it OK for you to act the fool. I said, point taken.

When you get to be very senior, not just in the military but also in politics and business, it can make you feel entitled. Privilege, which is a kind of power, can corrupt insidiously. When I was in Afghanistan, American soldiers would sometimes look at the Afghans who were working on the post and literally see through them, as if they were not people. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t, “I hate Afghans.” But it’s what people do with the “help.”

My mother died when I was 16. She got up New Year’s Day — she hadn’t been out or drinking a thing the night before — and started feeling strange. My father took her to Walter Reed. She was having some kind of kidney failure and by 2 the next morning, she was dead. But even now, when I act in a way that isn’t the best I can be, I go, boy, my mom would not be happy about that.

Being respectful of people is the compass I try to live by. But you can do everything right and fail. You can do everything wrong and win. So where I’ve come to is, intentions and effort matter more than the outcome. I try to do what is right simply because I know that’s what I should do.

Optimism
JAMES STAVRIDIS, retired U.S. Navy admiral

The 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO; former dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; author of nine books, including a novel to be published in March.


Image
James Stavridis’s father, Colonel George Stavridis, in Vietnam in 1967.
James Stavridis’s father, Colonel George Stavridis, in Vietnam in 1967.Credit...via James Stavridis
In 1922, my father’s mother was living in Smyrna in western Turkey when the Greeks and Armenians were herded down to the harbor and the Turkish army burned the city behind them. She was rescued by Greek fisherman who came across the Aegean to bring them to Greece. In Athens, she met my grandfather and these two 20-somethings took a ship for America and went through Ellis Island.

My grandparents always believed that was a profoundly positive experience and transmitted that to my father. In all the 50-plus years I was around him, I never saw him fail to meet the moment with a sense that things will work out. Not in a Pollyanna way — he was a combat Marine; he saw plenty of the dark side of the world — but that if you move with a positive force and face the challenges in front of you, good would outdo evil in the long throw of a life.

In 1966, my dad was preparing to go to Vietnam for a one-year deployment. I was in middle school and watched him pack his sea bag and put it by the door. I think most people would have been pretty downbeat, thinking I’m getting on a plane in the morning and going into a combat situation. But my dad was so positive in conveying that he would be fine.

“I’m going with a battalion of 1,000 Marines to a coastal port called Da Nang. I am their commander. We protect each other. Our mission is to ensure that our ships can come in and out.” He talked about how they would set up perimeter defenses. Fence barriers would be constructed. He took the esoteric idea of what he was going to be doing and surrounded it in my mind with reality and protection.

My father was a tennis player and spent a lot of time teaching me the game. I was in high school and would often be overmatched. I’d say to him, “I’ll never beat that kid. He’s ranked No. 2 in the state. I’m No. 20.” But my dad would say, “No, no, no. Let’s analyze his game. Where are his weaknesses? His strengths? And how do you counter them next time you meet? Even if you lose tactically, you can learn from it strategically.”

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Your business may fail; you may get terminal cancer; you may have a relationship that fails. But even if there is significant failure, draw lessons from it and apply them to the next situation.

On 9/11, I was a newly selected, one-star admiral, and my office in the Pentagon was on the side where the airplane hit. I was 150 feet away, and watched it happen. In the Navy, you learn how to firefight, so my initial instinct was to run toward the explosion. But there was so much smoke, there was nothing I could do.

It took me 3 ½ hours to walk home. My wife had no idea if I’d survived. We had a moment, then I called my father. Like everybody who would be honest about it, I was afraid. Afraid for the country, afraid for my family, afraid for what was happening. But my father snapped me out of it. He said, “We are not going to be taken down by a terrorist organization. You’re an officer in the U.S. military. You have to get back to the Pentagon. This is your moment. Admiral.”

That was not quite the last time I spoke with my father, but among the last. He died of an aneurysm days later, on Sept. 16. He was 76.

Make the Most of It
SUNITA WILLIAMS, retired U.S. Navy captain

NASA astronaut who has spent 322 days in space and performed seven spacewalks; currently training to fly the second crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station.


Image
Suni Williams at her U.S. Naval Academy graduation with her mother, Bonnie Pandya, and her father, Deepak N. Pandya.
Suni Williams at her U.S. Naval Academy graduation with her mother, Bonnie Pandya, and her father, Deepak N. Pandya.Credit...via Suni Williams
My dad grew up in Ahmedabad in India. He was 2 when he lost his dad; 11 when he lost his mom. He lived with his older sister until she got married, but by 14 he was fending for himself. He decided he needed to live around people, so he got himself into boarding school and made his way to become one of the top neuroscientists in the world.

My mom is from Euclid, Ohio. Her parents were blue-collar workers who immigrated from Slovenia. Instead of marrying a Slovenian guy from the neighborhood, she met my dad. He was a doctor in the hospital where she worked as an X-ray technician, and he dragged her to Boston. But my mom, like my dad, has confidence in going with where the wind blows. She learned to play tennis, got us involved in swimming, took advantage of the mountains and camping. She became a lifeguard at Babson College in order to get us a membership to the pool. We’d go over there and she’d be folding towels.

When I was 17, it was the morning of the Boston Marathon, and I was mowing the lawn, frumping around, feeling sorry for myself. I was getting ready to go to the Naval Academy, which was not my first choice, and thinking, man, I’ll never get to run this race because who knows if I’ll ever come home again.

Finally my mom said, “I don’t want to hear you complaining any more. Get in the station wagon.” Then she drove me to the starting line. “Here’s a quarter. If you can’t finish, call.”

At the halfway point, I saw her on a bridge and ran over and said, “I think I’m done.” I didn’t have running shoes and was running in high-tops, so it’d been tough. But then this guy ran over and asked my mom, who had a jar of Gatorade, if he could have some. My mom was like, sure. Then the guy said to me, “C’mon, you can finish this.” My mom said, “Yeah, go for it.” And I was like, “OK, but I can’t run in these stupid shoes anymore.” So I took them off, gave them to my mom and ran the second half with the guy barefoot.

The first time I applied to become an astronaut, I got rejected. But some friends in the class ahead at test pilot school were selected and they wrote telling me to apply again. “Suni, this is right up your alley. It’s so much fun.” They recommended I get a master’s degree. So while I did my sea tour, I went to night school. It was hard. I had to drive three hours to take classes, and I wasn’t sure if there’d be any benefit. But I’d seen my parents do stuff that wasn’t the most flattering or fun, because potentially it could lead to something else. So I thought, even if this sucks, just do it.

I came to the astronaut office in 1998. There were a lot of us, so who knew when you would get a flight assignment. Then in 2003, the Columbia accident happened, and it was like, “Wow, will any of us ever fly? Should I quit?” So I had a little talk with myself. “Hey Suni, you have the opportunity to get physically fit; you have the opportunity to go to Russia and learn Russian, and meet people from an entirely different space agency. Even if you never fly, you’re one of the luckiest people in the whole wide world.”

Life gives you what it gives you. Make the most of it.

And that’s how my parents were. They made the best of any situation. They looked at the big picture, then picked up the pieces and handled them with grace, whatever they were.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/well/family/for-veterans-day-some-former-military-officers-reflect-on-lessons-from-their-parents.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[BullNBear52]

A Veteran’s Search for Meaning
Why we serve, and what we’re fighting for, isn’t always clear.

By Jeremy Stern
Mr. Stern was an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the Army.

Nov. 11, 2020


Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

“I don’t get it,” President Trump is reported to have said in 2017 while standing at Arlington National Cemetery. “What was in it for them?”

Taken out of its vile context, the president’s question doesn’t have an immediately obvious answer, and the reflexive barrage of veteran worship that came in response didn’t shed much light. As with similar past flare-ups, this one was quickly extinguished with the mass incantation that America’s troops “defend our freedom.”

It’s nice to know people think that, but in the five years I spent in the U.S. military, I never met anyone who seriously thought that’s what they were doing. Soldiers who talk that way are usually in basic training, or making up for a lack of combat experience, like the civilian who overcompensates for never serving by lighting Colin Kaepernick jerseys on fire.

Truth to tell, very little of a soldier’s time is spent guarding the “American way of life,” as the Soldier’s Creed has it, and motivations tend to be fairly straightforward. Shooting an anti-tank missile at a Toyota Hilux, lighting up a fuel tank with a 50-caliber machine gun, getting blisters and dysentery and going to sleep cold and hungry in a dirt hole — these are all part of a rich personal and fraternal experience that doesn’t necessarily require any higher source of inspiration.

In 2014, I joined one of the military’s most lethal career fields, the Army’s bomb squad. I wanted the adventure and glory of Special Operations, but knew I wouldn’t make a good “doorkicker,” which left helicopters and bomb disposal. I’d seen the “Hurt Locker” recently, and the decision was a quick one. (According to the medical community, the rational part of one’s brain doesn’t fully develop until age 25.)

In the end, I got most of what I thought I wanted: adventure, camaraderie, swag. But glory, alas, lay just out of reach. I deployed to five countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, but I never fought a great battle, never defused a suicide vest with my bare hands, never liberated a village whose name I could lend to my memoirs. It’s a curious agony, not being shot at. Without such scars, one fears being seen — strictly within military circles, of course — as a loser or sucker.

Fresh from that experience, I’ve been thinking about a better answer to Mr. Trump’s question. What was in it for me?

***

It is never desirable to put troops in harm’s way, but remember to enlist is to expect just that. Many soldiers actually get upset when something goes badly wrong and they miss it.

A soldier in my platoon hadn’t skipped a combat patrol for over two months, during which he saw no action. One morning he came down with the norovirus and spent the day vomiting. When the patrol left that night, he stayed behind. The team proceeded to engage in a protracted firefight, complete with explosive belts, exploding trucks and enemy bodies. I’d never known him to sulk, but for the rest of the deployment he was nearly catatonic, struggling to conceal the depths of his melancholy.

About a thousand kilometers away, on a small base, I shared his misery. We sometimes saw nearby ballistic missile fire and would get alerts on our phones and computers instructing us to seek shelter from incoming projectiles, which we took as our signal to run outside and capture the attack on Snapchat. But the missiles were consistently inaccurate, and the air defense systems were frustratingly competent.

If being a hero is hard, and defending your way of life is not really part of the job, what makes a good soldier? Some big things, but mostly small ones. There are the true warriors, the Audie Murphys and John McCains. They belong to a rare caste I don’t pretend to understand. Suffice it to say the soldier you thanked at the airport probably wasn’t one of them.

A good soldier loves her job, and spends her free time becoming world-class. She guides younger soldiers through the byzantine promotion system, and protects them from the bureaucratic predations of higher headquarters. She has an eye for destructive behavior. She is obsessed with training her soldiers, but takes no credit for their success. She puts the mission first, but she also makes sure no one misses a graduation, an anniversary, a soccer game that doesn’t need to be missed. None of that gets you eternal glory. It just repays your soldiers’ trust, which they have no choice but to give you.

But the soldier you thanked at the airport may not be much like her, either. Soldiers are like schoolteachers. Some relatively small number are exceptional, the best America has to offer. Some small percentage are toxic, capable of ruining lives and entire organizations. And a large portion sit somewhere in the middle, meeting whatever standard has been set to keep the machine running, serving their country, earning their pay, and working toward their pension, along with a few wild stories to regale friends and family.

Soldiers are like teachers in another way: It’s hard to screw up so badly that you lose your job. Everyone in the military knows this (and knows someone who should’ve been kicked out but wasn’t), which is why many service members regard the arbitrary gratitude of sycophantic strangers with a mix of appreciation and ridicule. They know these are just the trappings of America’s post-draft bargain. Under the terms of this deal, less than half a percent of Americans serve in the active-duty military, and everyone else agrees to revere them.

When I first enlisted, I was surprised how many of the people in my life suddenly had stories about how they once — almost — joined the military, too. If it wasn’t for this asthma medication or that knee surgery or an ailing relative, my progressive California suburb apparently would’ve been overrun with military recruits. None of them took the idea seriously enough to discover that the military has had enlistment waivers for such things. But I got the point. Even people who didn’t want or have to serve still seem strangely self-conscious when faced with those who chose to, or had no choice.

When asked why I did it, I usually prattle on about patriotism and giving back. That’s part of it, too. But I still don’t have a frank, pithy answer, because when I think back, I don’t really know. I don’t know why anyone does it, other than that it’s a good job with a slightly higher risk-reward ratio. There are certainly other jobs to choose from, even if glory is what you’re after.

It is a trying and amusing life. Within a few weeks of taking over a platoon, a newly minted lieutenant nursing martial fantasies will quickly find herself occupied instead with a parade of eccentric melodramas: one soldier’s former spouse demanding disciplinary action under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for giving her chlamydia; an angry call from the president’s Secret Service detail accusing a soldier of helping himself to a morning buffet without wearing pants.

Even in the heat of the fight, she may find herself less the protagonist of an epic than the bewildered witness to a series of bizarre spectacles: a soldier testing out a new-generation armored vehicle by intentionally driving it over an I.E.D.; a soldier trying to locate a buried vat of white phosphorus by kicking the ground and lighting his foot on fire.

There are the long nights and early mornings, the compressed discs and fractured hips, the last-second missions and ambiguous orders, the cutting-edge technology and shortages of food, the labyrinthine bureaucracy and paperwork. There are the waits, delays, postponements, setbacks, extensions, reversals, retractions and cancellations, the myriad spouses and children cowed by experience into anticipation of disappointment.

I take my hat off to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who make the military a life’s work. I didn’t do in five years what many of them have done in an afternoon, and to the military they will give the remainder of their youth, if not, in the end, their lives.

As for me, I’m finished. I left last year, and for whatever reason, I hadn’t thought about it much since. But back in September, when I saw reports of Mr. Trump’s comments at Arlington, certain memories resurfaced.

I got out the pictures, the videos, the passports, the patches, the uniforms. My old helmet, my old bag of tools. It was an odd sensation. I felt as though I was never a soldier, so much as I played one once. Would that have been different if I’d been shot? If I’d liberated a village? If I could point to a great cause and say, “I fought for that.” In a word, if I found meaning?

It’s only at the end, when you think less of the battles you fought than the places you saw and the people you loved, that you realize there was meaning all along, and that’s what was in it for you.

Jeremy Stern (@JeremySternLA) was an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Army from 2014 to 2019. He was chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin from 2019 to 2020 and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/opinion/veterans-day-trump.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[EZ2]

THANKS VETS !!!

[BullNBear52]

Happy Birthday!

Does the uniform still fit?

[EZ2]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARINE(s) !!!

[BOREALIS]

In a Biden Administration, Changes for the Military Could Start on Day One

8 Nov 2020
Military.com | By Richard Sisk

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany, the military's transgender ban, the diversion of military construction funds to build a wall on the Mexico border -- all of these controversial policies and others could be history on Day One of Joe Biden's presidency.

As soon as he's sworn in, Biden would have the authority with a stroke of a pen to reverse a string of controversial military and national security policies put in place by President Donald Trump's executive orders or use of his emergency powers. The Associated Press and major news outlets projected Biden the winner Saturday, although the result still must be certified and is expected to face legal challenges from the Trump campaign.

Read Next: Joe Biden Has Been Elected President. Here's What That Means for the Military
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/11/07/joe-biden-has-been-elected-president-heres-what-means-military.html

Various advocacy groups are already lining up to hold Biden to his campaign promises to reverse Trump's controversial military policies.

In a statement Saturday, the Modern Military Association of America, a non-profit LGBTQ advocacy group, said Biden was expected to reverse Trump's executive order that effectively banned transgender military service.

"Thankfully, President-elect Biden has pledged to quickly take action and reverse Trump's unconstitutional transgender military ban," MMAA said. "Every qualified American patriot -- regardless of their gender identity -- should be able to serve."

Trump's surprise decision in July to remove nearly 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, shifting some eastward and sending others home, could also be reversed rapidly under Biden's stated objective to shore up NATO and strengthen partnerships with allies.

The early indicator of how far the new president will go in abandoning Trump's "America First" policy will be "whether Biden will move to reverse Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany," said Christopher Skaluba, director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

"Doing so will be a down payment on ensuring adequate resources are available to deter Russia," Skaluba wrote in an analysis Saturday shortly after Biden claimed victory.

To the end of shoring up alliances, Biden could also immediately end the impasse with South Korea over how much Seoul pays to support the presence of 28,000 U.S. troops on the peninsula.

South Korea currently pays about $900 million and has offered a 13% increase, which has been rejected by the Trump administration.

Biden has also pledged to move quickly to halt construction of the border wall and possibly move to withdraw the more than 4,000 active-duty and National Guard troops the Trump administration has deployed to the border to support Customs and Border Protection, and Homeland Security.

At a joint convention in August of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Biden vowed to halt construction of the border wall.

By declaring a national emergency at the border in 2019, Trump began diverting $2.5 billion in funding from military construction and counter-drug programs authorized by Congress to the border wall. Biden could begin to reverse that by declaring an end to the national emergency.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at [e-mail].

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/11/08/biden-administration-changes-military-could-start-day-one.html?ESRC=mr_201109.nl