Category Archives: Troops

We used to run in boots

Posted on April 6, 2009 | Comments Off on We used to run in boots

But the Army did not, and does not, make commercials as good as this Marine one. As the H.E.B. checker-military brat joked one time when she saw my ARMY cap: "Ain’t Ready For Marines Yet?" Not on the recruiting score.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Infantry OCS, Texana, Troops

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Implausible

Posted on March 10, 2009 | Comments Off on Implausible

impeccable.jpg

Looks about as seaworthy as a hollowed-out brick, the USNS Impeccable, the ship whose ambling near their submarine base got the Chinese so worked up.

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Posted in Troops

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Night bombing

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Comments Off on Night bombing

More on the B-29s, from Phil Crowther’s 6th Bomb Group memorial site. This is from the log of navigator Don Kearney:

"Briefed at 1430 [2:30PM]. Took off at 1732 [5:32PM]. It got dark when we were out just a little ways. The APN-4 Loran inverter was out. Trouble, always trouble. However, the radar did work, although it wasn’t operating on beacon.

"As we passed Iwo, hit some rough weather just north of it. We flew close to the Jap islands going on up to the Empire so that we could check course with radar. We passed within visual distance of Hachijo Jima.

"Heard Birddog 1, a destroyer, talk to 4V705, a superdumbo, about lights.

"We made landfall on the Empire at Omaesaki at 2355 [11:55PM], turned up past the east side of Fuji again. It was easily visible outside the window. Same way we started in the night before last. Way out front Charlie [Lt. Charles Hall, Bombardier] saw a bright red light going down. At first he thought it was a ball of fire but later decided it must have been a B-29.

"As we rolled out of the turn we hit our first opposition, still 15 to 20 miles west of Tokyo…Within a minute we were in it thick. About 15 searchlights picked us up and they began throwing stuff at us. A plane out to our left had 20 lights on him and was catching hell. Still in the lights, we plowed on. We never had less than about 15 searchlights on us at any one time from then on. We flew though the remainder of the target area in a bright cone of lights…"

Read the rest.  Go to the main page at the link, click on Air Crews in the left sidebar, then scroll down to crew #3909, Reamatroid, click on the number, then scroll down and start at the beginning of the log.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Scribbles, Troops

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Youth at war

Posted on February 27, 2009 | Comments Off on Youth at war

plane67a

These are some of the kids who flew the B-29s over the Pacific that napalmed, firebombed and finally nuked Japan into submission. Just in case you may have doubted that they could ever have been so young. Note the babyfaced one in sunglasses. My then twenty-two-year-old father flew B-29s in training in Kansas and Oklahoma but he didn’t go on to the Pacific.

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Posted in Library, Troops

Stimulate this!

Posted on February 12, 2009 | Comments Off on Stimulate this!

I’m actually of two minds on the issue of whether Barry’s client Big Media ought to be photographing the flag-draped coffins of fallen troops. On the one hand I do not like censorship, such as Barry’s congressional minions are preparing to practice in forging a new law that has the effect of quashing right radio.

On the other hand, the CNN questioner at Barry’s first presser put Big Media’s real interest out there when he asked if the policy of not allowing photographs of the coffins could be overturned by The One: "Ed Henry with CNN, who asked the President whether he thought the arrival of American coffins at Dover should be accessible to the media to ‘show America the real cost of the war….’"

If you want right radio to be allowed, then how can you argue for hiding the coffins? Well, one is free speech, the other is honoring the dead by not turning them into a political spectacle. Plus the coffin policy has been around since 1991. It was not created by Bushitler to thwart the NYTimes and Code Pink.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The War, Troops

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Those Iraq elections

Posted on February 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Those Iraq elections

We didn’t hear much about the Iraq elections. A few purple-finger photos, but that’s all. Why? Too quiet. Besides, making a big deal about it would only make W. look good and Big Media would never do that. But the Marine, MG John Kelley, who until recently ran Al Anbar province notes that, for its people, this was the first free election of their lives.

MORE:  On the other hand, there’s an outside chance it could all unravel again.

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Posted in Iraq, Obamalot, The War, Troops

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Barry to Pentagon: Cut 11 percent

Posted on January 30, 2009 | Comments Off on Barry to Pentagon: Cut 11 percent

Strategic retreat, indeed. B. Hussein Obama hinted at such a retreat in his interview with Al-Arabiya, looking back thirty years (the Carter administration) to a purported U.S.-Arab Golden Age. Not that the bloated Pentagon couldn’t lose its spare tire, but the times certainly are not propitious for dieting. With all that battered equipment from Iraq that needs replacing. Especially not with a trillion in civilian pork already moving through the Congressional intestine. ACORN could get a few billion. The military must cut fifty-five billion.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Obamalot, The War, Troops

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