A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day....01-05-04....Military Monday

01-05-04 | Billie, The Mayor

[Billie]

Thank you and God Bless you all for your service.

Below are names of some of our FReepers' loved ones who are serving our country. If you have someone you would like to add, please address a post to Billie; Mama_Bear; Dansangel; Dutchess; Aquamarine; and we will add their name to this list. As we pray for them, we pray also for all our nation’s leaders, and military personnel, and their families and friends. May God hold them close to His heart.

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OhioWfan........................son mystery-ak..........son, husband Gogrammy................grandson Inspectorette...................son Blessed American..........nephew Slip18..........................nephew anniegetyourgun...........nephew Diver Dave.......niece, nephew Pippin....niece,nephew,loved one Doug from Upland......son-in-law weldgophardline.....brotherinlaw Future Snake Eater..........cousin WaterDragon..son-in-law,grandson BeforeISleep...................son The Mayor........................niece LadyX.........................grandson fawn796.......................nephew Dubya............................nephew StarCMC......................brother kimmie7.....................brother ValerieUSA..................2 sons TexKat................son, step-son Spruce.....................daughter Warrior Nurse...........active duty SK1 Thurman...........active duty David Osborne.........active duty fc2tomschermuly......active duty bkwells..................active duty LongCut..................active duty Trish.......................active duty ODC-GIRL.................active duty thumperusn.............active duty

Maigrey................cousin ladtx....................2 sons Mama_Bear.........2 nephews gator girl............husband severa.......husband, brother Hostel..................cousin MozartLover......son, nephew LBGA........................son cookcounty..............son SpookBrat...........nephew Himyar.....................son boxerblues............2 sons the piper...................son sheeza...............husband kemathen7...........husband Tiffee4Bob.......boyfriend deadhead................cousin JimRobinson.....2 nephews Armymarinemom.....3 sons Consort..2 daughters,son-in-law Darheel..................niece Donaeus...............nephew dixie sass.............nephew BeAllYouCanBe.........son AgThorn...............2 sons homeschoolmama.......nephew kneezles.................son Atomic Conspiracy..half-brother Atomic Conspiracy...nephew Atomic Conspiracy...niece visualops..cousin,adopted Marine

[Molly Pitcher]

Afternoon greetings on Military Monday, and Happy New Year, too!

Thanks for the thread Mr. M!

This morning a couple hundred or so of us were out to bid Godspeed to the 1484th Transportation Co., ONG, as it left Akron for camp in Indiana, and then on to Kuwait and Iraq.

We waved our flags and signs, shouted our farewells, and the men and women in the trucks responded with heartwarming appreciation. Definitely took the chill out of the damp, cold air!

[Dubya]

"WHAT MAKES A MARINE A MARINE:
Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "esprit de corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit, and where does it come from?
The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that recruits people specifically to Fight. The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (its a great way of life). Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's life is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at the risk of his/her own.
Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket.
Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet.
The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful and invigorating, and safe.
There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.
The Marines Hymn, by contrast, is all combat.
We fight our Country's battles, First to fight for right and freedom, We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve.
The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school.
You join the Marine Corps to go to War!
But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps.
The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now, soldier".
The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off bus at the training center.
The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse, (a lot worse), but never a MARINE.
Not yet, maybe never.
He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.
Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October through December of 1968.
In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade River, had not even begun, yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one.
Note that this was post -- enlistment attrition; every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service.
But they failed the test of Boot Camp, not necessarily for physical reasons at least two were outstanding high school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play.
The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but-in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines.
Heavy commitments and high casualties not withstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.
History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard.
Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomes McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated.
I am not carping, and there is no sheer in this criticism.
All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it.
But - ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, fifth and sixth regiments.
Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill -- advised.
It was insane.
Artillery support was absent and air support hadn't been invented yet, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit.
A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a bitches, do you want to live forever"?
He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality, he already had two of them.
French liaison-officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire.
Their action was so anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses, but -- the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to this.
So the Marines took Belleau Wood.
The Germans called them "DOGS FROM THE DEVIL."
Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum.
Every Marine will always be taught them!
You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the E.G.& A. and claim the title you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful.
So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps you can take your place in line. And that line is as unified in spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit.
Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy.
Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges.
They know why the uniforms are the colors they are and what each color means. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to.
You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner.
The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations.
No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.
Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and Always!
You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that Wheatfield!
Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, or automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary -- the Corps does them because it must.
The modern battle requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice.
"For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead".
They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest.
But their actions are immortal.
The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever.
Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning -- if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you may die and no one will care.
If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals.
All Marines die in the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on.
Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today.
It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive our own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.
Passed on to a Marine from another Marine!
SEMPER FI BROTHERS AND SISTERS!"

[Dubya]

Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a
man who lived far away called his brother and told him, "Do
something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill."

Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next
month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid,
figuring it was some incidental expense.

But, when the bills for $200.00 kept arriving every month,
he finally called his brother again to find out what was
going on.

"Well," said the other brother, "You said to do something
nice for Uncle Charlie. So I rented him a tuxedo."

---

Are you paying too much for things that perish?

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of
the Father, but is of the world.

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he
that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. -1 John 2:15

[dixie sass]

Evening!

[dixie sass]

Dog is GOD spelled backwards. Who also returns your love unconditionally! Cats are heavens guardian angels...

[HiJinx]

I've been watching the defenselink.mil site for news on another who was wounded on New Year's Day when I spotted this. These stories are withheld until next-of-kin are notified.

DoD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Capt. Kimberly N. Hampton, 27, of Easley, S.C., was killed on Jan. 2, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq.

Hampton was the pilot of a Kiowa, OH-58, Observation Helicopter when it was shot down by enemy ground fire and crashed. Hampton died as a result of her injuries.

Hampton was assigned to 1st Battalion, 82nd Aviation Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

[Aeronaut]

Capt. Kimberly N. Hampton, 27, of Easley, S.C., was killed on Jan. 2, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq.

My prayer for a fallen warrior.

[dixie sass]

Okay, now I can type. I looked at pictures of the whirly birds and saw the faces of the guys that I knew who trained at Hunter Army Airfield and of course the couple that I dated. It brought back the sights and sounds from the late sixties and early seventies.

I can hear the sound of Tom buzzing the house with one of his students. The news that another chopper had gone down in training. The first Viet-namese pilots coming to and training in Savannah at Hunter. It always seemed that it was then we started having a lot of "incidents".

Thank you for showing the pictures.

[dixie sass]

I just read your post. For several days, the only thing that I heard was that the pilot was female and from South Carolina (local). This morning for the first time, I found out that she was the first female chopper pilot. I heard her name, but I hadn't had any coffee, so I was half asleep. I did see her picture and must have heard that she was a graduate of Presbyterian College and an only child. She was very pretty.

Nothing on the national news about her. But then she's a woman and we don't count for much, do we? Even when we give our lives.

The last was probably uncalled for, but it really makes me wonder about the priories in this country. This woman was more of a hero to me than the media princess from West Virginia. She is the one who should have her name and contribution splattered all over the news.

For what it's worth, thats my opinion...

[LadyX]

Thank you so much, Jinxie, for finding this article.

It threw me that while all television coverage from Day One clearly related "the pilot was killed and the other pilot injured," the newspaper coverage sloughed it off as simply a "soldier" was killed.
(yawn, yawn - moving right along...)

An observation helicopter surely is a high risk aircraft when assigned in combat, and I felt she deserved full recognition, not seeing any national follow-up.

She flies in true glory now....

[dixie sass]

Hello LeadPenny! Happy New Year! Hope to see you at CPAC.

[dixie sass]

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Geeze, MnM!!!!!

[dixie sass]

Hugs, Dansy. Hope you had a great day - short lunch break and all!

[dixie sass]

She was an only child. The only thing her parents have of her is the memories, the pride in her accomplishments, knowledge that she loved her country and...

a medal and a form letter from the government.


She was a graduate of Presbyterian College, a small but very good college here in South Carolina.

[Dubya]

Dog is GOD spelled backwards. Who also returns your love unconditionally! Cats are heavens guardian angels...

Good info, thanks.

[dixie sass]

Thanks HiJinx, for posting this. Here is a link to the thread - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1051743/posts

[dixie sass]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1051743/posts

A thread on Capt. Hampton.

[Dubya]

[FreeTheHostages]

Good evening!