WWII 5th Armored Division holds last-ever reunion in Bangor
"“We’re too old. I’m as young as anyone in the outfit and I’m 86 years old,” said Galen Cole, who served as a private with the 5th Armored in Europe and lost half of his squad to a German shell."
Thank you to these great men. Let's not squander their sacrifice.
“Only imbeciles and fools fight fair, and won't do so for long.”
I love that quote because it captures the mentality needed to survive and overcome – anything. Do what you need to do. Does that preclude a “fair fight?” Nope. If you’re in a consensual contest, then rules are in place, whether you understand them completely or not. In Olympic TKD, punching your opponent makes you a loser, since the rules preclude it. In an attack, it’s de rigueur to hit your opponent wherever you need to, and as hard as you need to, with whatever you have to, in order to survive and win.
Sgt. Peoples was not deterred."I've been through five deployments. I've fought the Muqtada militia, everybody you can think of, so weapons getting pointed at me, it doesn't really bother me anymore," he said. "I took the weapon away from him and put him on the ground and the rest was history."Deputies arrested 34-year-old Matthew Rogers. He is charged with armed robbery."Every time I get deployed, I always tell my children I'm going to fight the bad men. When I walked back in the bank, my oldest boy said 'did you get the bad men?' and I said 'yep, I got the bad men' and everyone applauded," Peoples said.Rogers has a long criminal history, including arrests for burglary, auto theft and reckless driving.
On the last Monday of every May, we remember those US service members who have died to bring us the freedom and prosperity we enjoy.
Let’s use this time to celebrate and remember those who have laid down their lives for us. From USMemorialDay.org:
Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.
There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50's on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye's Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.
To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the "National Moment of Remembrance" resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans "To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to 'Taps."
For more information:
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Here’s a fascinating Blackfive post on a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger discovered intact in a Russian forest in 1989, and then, later, restored to flying condition in the U.S.
The original discovery lead to the plan being moved to England, and then it’s eventual restoration in California.
Per the post, a fascinating discovery was made that probably explained why the 190 went down:
A technician from Vintage Wings took apart the engine to find a dirt clod in an oil line, which had pinched off the lubrication. Consequently, an internal shaft overheated and failed, disabling the fuel and oil pumps, which led the engine to fail.
How did that dirt clod get in there? It was a new engine, just installed. BMW did not do major engine maintenance in the field. When an engine needed repair they removed the entire "power egg," the engine on its mount, and shipped it back to the factory in Germany. Some of the work was performed by slave labor. One theory is that a slave laborer sabotaged the engine, stuffing some dirt downstream from the oil filter, so that the engine only worked for a few minutes.
Paul Rätz made it only a few miles before he was captured and not shot on the spot. He was instead taken prisoner where he remained for sixteen years, released by the Soviets in 1959. Only ten percent of the German prisoners taken captive by the Soviets survived, so Rätz was double lucky. His opinion may differ. Unfortunately, Rätz died in 1989, having never learned his airplane had been found. Perhaps it was better for him never to know he spent sixteen years in a Soviet prison because his plane had been sabotaged, that a tiny little dirt clod had determined his fate. However, his family learned that his fighter had been recovered. They have the clock.
Apparently, it’s part of the Flying Heritage Collection and is now ready to fly, in original condition. Read the whole thing!
If you have, or know someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder, please go to When Our Troops Come Home to read about, then download this free ebook by Ken Jones, PhD, a Vietnam vet who’s still serving his brothers and sisters in arms long after his active service has ended.
Via my friend, TKD instructor Gordon White, it looks like the military is finding applications for smart phone apps (I had to resist writing “there’s an app for that!” – whoops!).
Excerpt of the post at AndroidGuys:
The U.S. Military has spent several billion dollars and over 20 years to develop hardware and software communications for our troops. With the recent advancement of smartphones the U.S. Military sees the opportunity to cut costs and speed development.
Here comes the Android OS in conjunction with custom designed apps to save the day.
Special Operations Command, aka SOCOM asked Android developers for some Android applications to keep commandos linked up while on missions. Some of the features desired include chat functions, file transfers (audio,video,images), video display and "white boarding" to assist on missions. SOCOM calls the App division"Tactical Situational Awareness Application Suite", or TactSA, and it must also work in low-connectivity areas. Do I hear Global Phone?
I’m not sure about the viability of the current hardware, but the advantages of Android’s open-source platform in developing applications is a plus for military use. If a truly “Mil-spec” hardware platform can be built, and the right data network is available, it’s a winner, to me.
What do you think?
The general in charge of training and equipping Marines for the future fight said Nov. 16 that it is still unclear how infantry units will need to adjust to replace their light machine guns with the service's new automatic rifle.
Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who heads the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, told reporters at a Washington, D.C. breakfast that the service plans to finish outfitting five battalions with the new M-27 Infantry Automatic Rifle next month and then will observe how those Marines use it on deployment before changing the organization, training, and tactics of infantry units around the new weapon.
But Flynn pushed back at critics of the M-27, saying the improved accuracy of the Heckler and Koch-made automatic rifle makes up for a lower rate of fire compared to the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon it's being fielded to replace.
"The initial feedback was that the IAR performed pretty well," Flynn said of early evaluations of the M-27. "Accuracy has a suppressive power all by itself."
The introduction of the M-27 is a return to the roots of the Marine infantry squad, Flynn argued, which featured an "automatic rifleman" that eventually evolved into a light machine gunner with the introduction of the SAW in the 1980s.
The Corps' adoption of the IAR has been fraught with controversy, with critics arguing the limited firepower of an M-27 -- which shoots a 30-round magazine -- would leave Marines vulnerable. The lead-spitting power of the M-249 and its 200-round drum helps keep bad guys in place while grunts maneuver in for the kill, skeptics argued.
In March interview with Military.com, then Commandant Gen. James Conway cast doubt on the utility of the IAR, saying the service had to wait and see whether it should be adopted. But field tests performed in Twentynine Palms, Calif., last summer turned skeptics into converts.
At a recent "town hall" meeting at Quantico, incoming Commandant Gen. Jim Amos raved about the M-27, saying it's in the running to replace all SAWs in the inventory.
"I fired the [IAR] ... and this thing could -- notice I didn't say 'would' -- could replace the SAW," Amos said. "Any of you grunts in here who have not fired that weapon, you need to fire that weapon."What do you ex and current military readers think of it? Anyone fired it?
