Sixty-one years old, and runs a sub-5 hour Boston Marathon. Bad-ASS. Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is a warrior.
I first met Joe Dunford almost 30 years ago, when he was a newly-minted Major, the Marine Officer Instructor at Holy Cross. Even to a First Lieutenant, there was something special about him, his leadership, his command presence. General Dunford went on to do pretty well. I next saw him as a Colonel in Iraq, serving as Chief of Staff of the 1st Marine Division, under MajGen James Mattis. The ADC? BGen John Kelly. (The shirt he is wearing in the photo, "Team Kelly", is in honor of Marine 1st Lieutenant Robert Kelly, the son of General John Kelly. 1stLt Kelly was killed in Iraq Afghanistan in 2010) General Dunford was promoted quickly through the General Officer ranks of the Marine Corps, in fact never wearing two stars, as he was selected for Lieutenant General before he'd pinned on his Major General promotion. Of course, General Dunford went on to serve briefly as the 36th Commandant of the Marine Corps before being selected as the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have served with and under some of the legends of the Corps. Marines such as James Mattis, Joe Dunford, John Kelly, SgtMaj Carlton Kent, Jim Conway, Larry Livingston. And it is a damned good feeling to have the adults in charge, men like Joe Dunford and Jim Mattis steering the Pentagon.
Heartbreak Ridge, one of the classic motivational movies of the reborn Reagan-era military, was released thirty years ago last week, on 5 December 1986. The Navy's Top Gun, released in May of 1986, is, of course, the other biggie from that time.
I was a Fort Sill as a brandy-new 2nd Lieutenant when the film was released, and went with a bunch of the Marines in my class to see it immediately. Of course, the Army Lieutenants were kinda pissed because it was such a motivating flick and the Army had nothing comparable to it or to Top Gun. Clint Eastwood played the lead as the Medal of Honor awardee and Korean War Veteran Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, Marsha Mason the ex-wife he still loves.
Heartbreak Ridge is no masterpiece, to be sure. The movie of course has goofy Officers, including the commander of the division's Reconnaissance Company who supposedly "transferred over from supply", not something the Corps would ever countenance. The Recon Lieutenant is also portrayed as a broke-dick, which I have never seen or even heard of. They tend to be more than a little motivated and physically tough as nails, leading from the front. Camp Talega, a WWII-era set of Quonset Huts, and the arid terrain of Pendleton, pass for Camp Lejeune, which is marshy, humid, and pool-table flat. The battle scenes are a fanciful portrayal of Grenada, which had occurred three years previous (1983), and were filmed in Vieques. Like most cult favorites, Heartbreak Ridge has a ton of favorite scenes and quotes to unwrap when the beer flows, and once upon a time you were persona non grata if you had not seen the film at least once.
For all its flaws, the movie does get some things right. The special comraderie of young Marines is well-depicted, as is the widely varied racial and ethnic composition of the Marine Corps, then and now. And Gunny Highway's instilling in a platoon of undisciplined and beaten down Marines a sense of unit and individual pride is not far from the mark. Inspired leadership does work wonders. Highway himself is not as implausible as he might seem. Then, there were still a handful of Korean War Veterans still on active duty, and most of the Combat Arms Field Grade Officers and SNCOs were Vietnam Veterans and many were walking legends in a Corps which had few who had seen combat on any scale whatever. A good many of those Vietnam Veterans shaped the 1980s Marine Corps into something far better than they had endured in the 1970s post-Vietnam Carter years. The movie is also a not so subtle tribute to the honorable service of those men who came home from Southeast Asia to a nation that was at best indifferent and at worst, ungrateful.
The best part of Heartbreak Ridge from a cinematic standpoint was the opening credits. Brilliant and moving, the film opens to authentic B&W footage showing the horrors of war in Korea, set to the guitar and voice of the late Don Gibson's 1961 "Sea of Heartbreak". (Finding the opening in its original form is nearly impossible due to copyright issues, but here is the opening credits with a different arrangement of Gibson's hit.)
Oh, and h/t to DB for the inspiration. Funny how the mind works. URR here, by the way, as if you didn't know...
And the Battery Gunny was pissed already this morning.... (URR here.)
Having, nearly thirty years ago, had TWO in-bores in my battalion, one on an 8-inch M110A2 and one on a 155mm M109A3, I can tell you they can be impressive. This certainly appears to be one of the (possibly Israeli) Soltam-modified M114S 155mm towed howitzers, with the 33-caliber tube and brake replacing the distinctive silver 23-caliber tube on the original design.
(URR here.) Want a scent that reminds you of your home away from home? Or maybe you just want that Combat Outpost freshness! Even if you can't have the 120-degree heat, or the flies, or the shrieking of "JIHAD" from the local minarets, you can still enjoy the olfactory delights that were part of service in Iraq or Afghanistan!
Coming soon: Essence of Burn Pit, with real dioxin!
August 7th is the halfway point of Summer. It is also the anniversary of the First Marine Division landing on Guadalcanal, in 1942. And the anniversary of Imperial Germany invading France, in 1914.
On August 7th, 1782, General George Washington created the Order of the Purple Heart. The award was originally created "for military merit", and indeed the reverse of the medal carries that inscription. The award was resurrected in 1932, by the efforts of Generals Charles Summerall and Douglas MacArthur, Chiefs of Staff of the Army between 1927 and 1936. An interesting history from the Department of Veterans Affairs:
Army regulations’ eligibility criteria for the award included: • Those in possession of a Meritorious Service Citation Certificate issued by the Commander-in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. (The Certificates had to be exchanged for the Purple Heart.) • Those authorized by Army regulations to wear wound chevrons. (These men also had to apply for the new award.) The newly reintroduced Purple Heart was not intended primarily as an award for those wounded in action -- the “wound chevron” worn by a soldier on his sleeve already fulfilled that purpose.
Establishing the Meritorious Service Citation as a qualification for receiving the Purple Heart was very much in keeping with General Washington’s original intent for the award. However, authorizing the award in exchange for “wound chevrons” established the now familiar association of the award with injuries sustained in battle. This was reinforced by Army regulations, which stated that the award required a "singularly meritorious act of extraordinary fidelity service" and that "a wound which necessitates treatment by a medical officer and which is received in action with an enemy, may, in the judgment of the commander authorized to make the award, be construed as resulting from a singularly meritorious act of essential service."
Until Executive Order 9277 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in December 1942 authorized award of the Purple Heart to personnel from all of the military services (retroactive to December 7, 1941), the medal was exclusively an Army award. The Executive Order also stated that the Purple Heart was to be awarded to persons who “are wounded in action against an enemy of the United States, or as a result of an act of such enemy, provided such would necessitate treatment by a medical officer.”
In November 1952, President Harry S. Truman issued an Executive Order extending eligibility for the award to April 5, 1917, to coincide with the eligibility dates for Army personnel. President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11016 in April 1962 that further extended eligibility to "any civilian national of the United States, who while serving under competent authority in any capacity with an armed force…, has been, or may hereafter be, wounded" and authorized posthumous award of the medal.
Executive Order 12464 signed by President Ronald Reagan in February 1984, authorized award of the Purple Heart as a result of terrorist attacks or while serving as part of a peacekeeping force subsequent to March 28, 1973. The 1998 National Defense Authorization Act removed civilians from the list of personnel eligible for the medal.
Given yesterday's anniversary, and all those who decry from the safety of seven decades of time Truman's decision to use two atomic weapons to end the war with Japan, the Purple Heart carries another sobering bit of history. In July of 1945, the War Department ordered the minting of 500,000 Purple Hearts in anticipation of the casualties for Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home island of Kyushu. Of course, the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about an end to the war, and the invasion of Kyushu (and then Honshu) proved mercifully unnecessary.
Since 1945, every Purple Heart awarded for the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, the Cold War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and all the skirmishes in between has come from that minting for the invasion of Japan. More than one hundred thousand remain unissued.
“Regulatory enforcement within administrative agencies now carries the might of military-style equipment and weapons,” Open the Books said. “For example, the Food and Drug Administration includes 183 armed ‘special agents,’ a 50 percent increase over the ten years from 1998-2008. At Health and Human Services (HHS), ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ are now trained with sophisticated weaponry by the same contractors who train our military special forces troops.”
Open the Books found there are now over 200,000 non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority, surpassing the 182,100 personnel who are actively serving in the U.S. Marines Corps.
(URR here.) From Free Beacon. Next time some bleeding heart gun-grabber tells you how much he or she (he/she?) hates guns, remind them that they actually LOVE guns. This Administration, and a Hillary Administration, would further weaponize government in both a legal and literal sense against its political opponents and the American People in general. Is it any surprise that both Obama and Hillary wish desperately to remove the People's last redress against tyranny of government?
URR here. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, and somewhat ungracious, I ask something from all of you out there.
Please, do not wish me, or anyone else a "Happy Memorial Day". Memorial Day is a day for honoring the memories of all those who traded their tomorrows so that we might have ours. Those who gave their lives in action against America's enemies. It is not a "happy" day. It is day for somber reflection. Our thoughts should be with wives, mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, children, who will spend the the rest of their mortal days bearing the loss of a loved one.
Also, don't ask how I plan to "celebrate" Memorial Day. The day is not one of celebration, but one of commemoration. And giving thanks to God for such men (and women) who gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of Liberty.
This is not to say not to enjoy the fruits of our freedoms, spending time together with friends and loved ones. By all means, do. But somewhere, between the laughter and the smiles and the enjoyment of all we cherish, take the time to remember. Just for a moment.
Of the six men, five Marines and one Hospital Corpsman, who raised the flag, three would die on Iwo Jima. The man who took the motion picture images, Bill Genaust, would be killed not far from the location of his famous footage.
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