The reader will kindly forgive any tendency to rough language or behavior on the part of the site owner...
TMGlogo2006-2007phs-copy.jpg
"Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
TMGbloglabel1 copy.gif

TMGbloglabel3 copy.gif
TMG MONTHLY ARCHIVES
[-]



TMGbloglabel10 copy.gif

TMGbloglabel2 copy.gif
The Mudville Gazette Feeds

 

Add to Technorati Favorites
Technorati Profile
add.gif
Add to Google
addtomyyahoo4.gif
ngsub1.gif sub_modern5.gif

xml.gif rdf.png atom feed.jpg

digg.jpg

Find the best blogs at Blogs.com.

pl-news.gif

tvc_logo_small.png

Mrsg- Greyhawk's Profile
Mrsg- Greyhawk's Facebook profile
Create Your Badge
TMGbloglabel5 copy.gif
TMGbloglabel6 copy.gif
350.jpg
Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by!
« Number Three (updated) | Main | A correction »

December 11, 2009

greyhawk copy sm.png

The Extreme (Part two)

By Greyhawk

(Part one here)

*****

gwfwell.jpg"It is not the meaning nor within the compass of this Address, to detail the hardships peculiarly incident to our Service, or to discribe the distresses which in several instances have resulted from the extremes of hunger and nakedness, combined with the rigors of an inclement season. Nor is it necessary to dwell on the dark side of our past affairs. Every American Officer and Soldier must now console himself for any unpleasant circumstances which may have occurred, by a recollection of the uncommon scenes in which he has been called to act, no inglorious part; and the astonishing Events of which he has been a witness."

"CJ at A Soldier's Perspective had made a comment regarding the troops but I just could not write fast enough and have a poor memory," wrote Mrs Greyhawk of their September, 2007 visit with the President of the United States. "Seems CJ could not remember his question either, but for good reason."

cjandbush.jpg
CJ explains: "I can't remember exactly what I asked the President because I was choking up having just mentioned my good friend SSG Stevon Booker who died in front of me in Iraq. I just started babbling after that. It was pathetic, you should have seen it. I thanked him for finally taking the fight to the enemy and having the nerves of steel to see it through to the end - whatever that means. Those guys did not die in vain."

"I'm Nothing Special," writes CJ. "I just happen to be a blogger."

I started They Have Names because of a specific person, CPT James "Alex" Funkhouser, but he was just the catalyst that brought together the various reactants of losing friends and feeling like no one else cared about it. The hardest one to accept has been the loss of SSG Stevon Booker, a friend and fellow Tusker who was killed during the first Thunder Run into Baghdad on 5 April 2003. He was a combat proven veteran of Operation Desert Storm in the early nineties and knew his stuff. He cared deeply for his Soldiers and died trying to protect them. But, you won't find Booker's story on THN yet. I still can't write it, but one day I will. Earlier this year a building at Aberdeen Test Center was renamed after his memory. I write so that people don't forget people like Booker.

And when you read a quote like this one, you know it's from someone who knows what he's talking about, and means what he says: "I know [CJ] loves what he's doing," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, the Army's point man for social media issues, who has known Grisham's name for years. And "any time we lose someone of that caliber, there's a certain amount of loss for the Army." A different sort of loss - CJ is alive, if not fine - lose in that statement just means the bastards have ground him down - at least enough. For now.

"Blogging is no longer worth the trouble," Grisham recently wrote on his blog, A Soldier's Perspective, under the headline "ASP Closed for Business."

cjgcover.jpg

*****

Wired magazine's Danger Room: "Not surprisingly, Grisham has finally decided to stop posting on his site. But be sure to read this story of how this soldier went from highly-praised veteran to pariah, because he spoke up on his blog."

WorldNet Daily: "Grisham's photo is overlaid with the headline: 'The Rise and Fall of a Military Blogger - Army Master Sgt. C.J. Grisham didn't mince words. His readers loved it. His command hated it.' Grisham is in a new kind of fight after taking down a squad of Iraqis when his counterintelligence detachment was pinned down in an ambush and earning a Bronze Star with 'V' after rushing through the gunfire by himself with just a 9mm pistol and a hand grenade."

"Even as the type of dominant news stories changed in 2008, 'durability,' a measure of the staying power for particular news stories, did not... For the military, this phenomenon is a challenge and an opportunity. Although coverage of ongoing conflicts may not persist, bad news stories seem to display less than traditional staying power... at least for the present, it seems less likely that a particular event of a less than positive nature will trigger a lasting scandal or backlash against the military, particularly in the fast-changing new media world."
    Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV, U.S. Army, Lieutenant Colonel Shawn Stroud, U.S. Army, and Mr. Anton Menning: Fostering a Culture of Engagement, Military Review, September - October 2009

*****

"During the invasion of Iraq, Grisham took down a squad of Iraqis when his counterintelligence detachment got pinned down in an ambush. He earned the Bronze Star with "V" after rushing through the gunfire by himself with just a 9mm pistol and a hand grenade."

Here's another story from the man who did that - and who saw his good friend SSG Stevon Booker die in front of him in Iraq:

There is nothing worse than when a Soldier is called upon to take the life of an innocent person. While the media and anti-war goons get a kick out of broadcasting how uncaring we are when innocents are killed, I think the fact is that anytime a Soldier realizes his actions contributed to the death of innocent people it kills that Soldier inside. Our purpose is to protect the innocent. We take great pains, many times at our own peril, to protect the innocent. But, sometimes, we have no choice. That doesn't make me feel any better about it, but I had no choice.

Such was the case on March 23, 2003. I had no choice. A member of Saddam's Fedayeen was providing covering fire for a mortar position. We had already killed the fighters manning the tube once, but they really wanted it. As fighters would approach the tube, we'd mow them down. The diner on the corner across the street from the tube no longer had any windows in it, leaving behind a 3-4 foot wall behind which Iraqis were hiding.

At one point, a Fedayeen fighter appeared behind the wall grasping an Iraqi woman by the neck. His AK-47 was resting on her right shoulder and he was firing at our position. There was no clear shot. Blood was pouring out of the woman's right ear as she screamed with each squeeze of the trigger by the fighter. She was a wearing dark, long sleeve traditional Iraqi dress that buttoned up to the neck.

This event took no longer than about 10 seconds from start to finish, but it felt like hours. I aimed straight for her chest, hoping to take her and the fighter out in one shot. As she fell to the ground, I squeezed another round at the now-exposed fighter who was also beginning to duck behind the wall. The force of impact forced him to fall backwards and I never saw either of them again.

Only their ghosts: "I see that woman often in my dreams and sometimes while I'm just sitting, minding my own business. I see her lifeless body fall to the ground in super-slow motion and the look of shock in the fighter's eyes as he probably realizes how exposed he now is without his flesh shield. His AK is still resting on her shoulder as she falls and before he can lift it, he is propelled backward as he himself falls victim to my aim."

CJ Grisham is a Soldier with PTSD. Not the imaginary sort of soldier CNN spent days explaining to America Nidal Hasan was after he slaughtered 14 people at Ft Hood (before they found out he had never deployed - then it became the imaginary sort of PTSD you catch from actual combat veterans). And he's not the sort of hypothetical Iraq veteran Fox News' Shepard Smith said the DHS had warned us about when a 90 year old WWII vet/Nazi killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum. Those are just some of the stereotypes that really need to be put to rest.

CJ is the sort of Soldier who writes a post called "The Power of Seeking Help" that explains why he did just that:

One of the things I wanted to do was convince troops out there that it's okay to seek help. The Army has made a very public plea to troops to get help without worrying about their jobs. I promised to document this here and I plan to do so honestly and openly.

Let me start by saying that my unit completely pissed me off after my announcement. After reading my post, my higher headquarters undermined my efforts to seek personal help and performed a command referral citing ONLY what I had written and not my job performance, actions, or leadership ability. How can I tell Soldiers about the self-referral process when I'm now being FORCED into counseling?

It's important to understand what a command referral is since it's not always negative. A command referral forces the health care system to see me. Appointments must be timely and there are repercussions if the system doesn't do their part. Once that was explained to me, I calmed down a bit, but I didn't like the fact that now my unit would have access to some of my records. The Doc explained that they don't get specific information, even for a command referral. I was told the unit wanted to ensure that I got the help I needed as a basis for their decision. Great! So, why hasn't anyone in my chain called or emailed me in over six weeks since I began this process to see how I am doing?

Thankfully, I don't need their fake interest to get better. I'm doing this for ME and no one else. I need to get fixed because PTSD can be (and has been) destructive to me and those I care about, not because someone in the military told me to. So, while I ask the question about where they are, I really don't care.

Well, they were busy, of course:

Last summer Grisham got into hot water when someone complained to officials that he encouraged readers to vote against gun control measures, called for a wholesale changing of the guard in Congress and questioned Obama's truthfulness.
<...>
Not long after, Grisham was fired from his job as an intelligence company first sergeant at Redstone and punted to a garrison position. The firing also came not long after he announced on his radio show -- during an interview with Gen. Peter Chiarelli -- that he was wrestling with post-traumatic stress disorder and planned to seek help. During the show, Grisham said he wanted to lead from the front when it came to reducing the stigma of PTSD.

He had appeared on local TV, too. "The stigma is hereby dead," Grisham had written in his first post on the topic of his PTSD months earlier. "I challenge all leaders to understand this and apply it where they can. Our troops need to understand that there is nothing weak about seeking help. I know because it has been much harder to acknowledge these issues than to hide them."

"Not long after, Grisham was fired from his job" - maybe because he was wrong about the stigma of PTSD, maybe because he made the wrong people uncomfortable, or maybe both. Not knowing the truth of it could really set some people off, I suppose. But not CJ - he took his lumps and moved on.

To where something worse was waiting.

(More to follow. Meanwhile, see Milblogger and dear friend needs your help at Bouhammer's.)


Posted by Greyhawk / December 11, 2009 4:16 PM | Permalink

1 TrackBack

Milblog silence from Mudville Gazette on December 16, 2009 1:54 PM

Link Free speech from those who help make it possible - since 2003, the motto of the MilBlogs Ring. Comments are disabled here, too. You aren't allowed to speak today. ***** Previously: The Extreme (part one) The Extreme (part two) Zero Tolerance... Read More

1 Comment

As I read everything from,"The Extreme (Part 1)", I noticed something I wrote. "I grew", this is the old *fool* who needed to grow.

Last I heard, it is a Federal Felony to have any role in the creation or projection of a Falsified Federal Report. It is in the best interest of the Military and CJ, to make sure the records, both service and medical, are accurate. To the best of my knowledge, The US Military is still a function of the US Government (Federal). CJ just might want to consider the pros and cons of doing a "Freedom of Information Act/ Privacy Act Request", both together. Then talk with a competent Federal Attorney, JAG or even an older retired JAG, about options.

As you already know,always,

Grumpy

350.jpg
Mrs G copy.png

November 26, 2010


America@war
[Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit.

That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary.

From their about page:

The Naval Institute shall remain

INDEPENDENT - A non-profit member association, with no government support, that does not lobby for special interests;

NON-PARTISAN - An independent, professional military association with a mission, goals and objectives that transcend political affiliations; and shall encourage

IDEAS - Through its respected journals Proceedings and Naval History, its conferences, its books and its online content, in support of those who serve.

"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation:

The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism.

Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented.

I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are.

"Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result.

Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web...

And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed.

The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down.

*****

But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:

Closing Blogs is nothing new. So many site's owners just give up on their own. They come and go, you know, these MilBloggers do. Like any other sort of blogger. Many post in the lonely down hours far from home, spill their guts for the world, then abandon their spots when the tour of duty is up. They have lives again somewhere in the world, and no need to share the details. So it goes.

Many are truly gone - no site left at all. "The page cannot be found." Other blogs remain, like abandoned defensive positions in shifting desert sands.

Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down.

If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real.

And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale.

We've already made history, it's time to save it.

(More to follow...)




Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

TMGbloglabel7copy.gif
The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
TMGrecentcomments.gif
TMGbloglabel2 copy.gif
The Dawn Patrol Feeds

 

Add to Google Reader or Homepage Subscribe in NewsGator Online Add to netvibes Add to Plusmo myaol_cta1.gif

xml.gif rdf.png atom feed.jpg

TMGbloglabel8copy.gif

TMGbloglabel9 copy.gif
Blah Blah Blah
me220.JPG

The Mudville Gazette is written and produced by Greyhawk, who recently retired from 24 years of active duty in the US military, but will maintain this disclaimer: Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components.

Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house.

I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email.

Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed.

Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com

andsm.jpg

*****

Tending Distant
Fires


Far from hearth and home, watching
Cold alone but not alone
On distant shore and only wanting
Safe return and little more

What tales we'll tell
When that time comes
When tales can be told

When things grim
Seem far away
When other fires go cold

Some distant sunset, vision fading
Memories remain
And tired eyes gaze 'pon folded flags
While distant drums beat their refrain

Saluting fallen friends whose names
And youth will never fade
Here's to those on other shores,
for them live well, the price is paid

- Greyhawk,
Baghdad,
December 2004