The Milkshake Man

[Andi]

I met Jim Mayer almost two years ago at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Jim is known as "The Milkshake Man" because he delivers McDonald's milkshakes to our wound troops. Jim is also involved with the Friday night troop dinners that were once held at Fran O'Briens, but you'll remember that Hilton kicked Fran's, and our troops, to the curb.

Jim Mayer is a Vietnam veteran and double amputee. Just as Fran's wasn't about the steak, Jim's visits aren't about the milkshakes.

Retired Army Capt. Lonnie Moore benefited from that power. He lost his right leg above the knee in an incident near Ramadi, Iraq, and found himself on the receiving end of one of Mayer’s milkshakes. Two years after he met Mayer, Moore still looks to the Milkshake Man for mentoring and friendship.

“It was much more about what Jim provided to me as a mentor and as a friend than it was the milkshake,” Moore said. “Jim told me that life as an amputee is not going to end my life and I’ll be as productive and I want to be.”

Moore added that Jim deserves the recognition he received. “I know he doesn’t publicly seek it, but he’s touched many, many lives,” he said.

McDonald's honors Jim Mayer.

The troop dinners continue. I'll have more information on the status of Fran's and the dinners soon. For now, keep boycotting Hilton properties.

Lautenberg Amendment Expansion

[ArmyLawyer]

Soldiers hate it. Commanders fear it. Nobody understands it. It is the Domestic Violence Amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968, more commonly known as the Lautenberg Amendment. (18 USC 922)

Under Lautenberg, it is unlawful for any person (including military) who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to receive, own, or possess any firearm or ammunition.

This poses an obvious problem as the military tends to use firearms and ammunition...a lot.

Well, on 7 June 2006, the Army Command Policy (AR 600-20, para 4-23) “clarified” the policy on Lautenberg Amendment. (My focus is on the Army policy--though I presume other services are largely similar)

Russian Footprints

[Soldier's Dad]

via National Review

Today’s international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, in the aftermath of the1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. I witnessed its birth in my other life, as a Communist general. Israel humiliated Egypt and Syria, whose bellicose governments were being run by Soviet razvedka (Russian for “foreign intelligence”) advisers, whereupon the Kremlin decided to arm Israel’s enemy neighbors, the Palestinians, and draw them into a terrorist war against Israel.

A View of Courage

[Dadmanly]

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change links to a review Oliver Stone’s new movie World Trade Center, written by Rev. Paul W. McNellis at the Democracy Project.

Rev. McNellis’s review stands as an excellent essay on what constitutes courage, as applicable on September 10th, 2001, as it was on September 11th. The difference, McNellis poetically underscores in his piece, is that courage built in the day to day, remains constant at a moment of greatest danger, and fear:

We see people putting others first, on this, the worst day of their lives because they’ve been doing it every day of their lives. And if you spend your life as a husband and father putting those you love first, then when the crucial day comes chances are that as a policeman you’ll put the people in the North Tower first as well.

And another thought often echoed here:

Courage as a virtue is increasingly misunderstood in our society, especially among the keyboard class. As our lives become more comfortable and protected, we forget who does the protecting.

We in the military recognize this attitude of service, we’ve lived it, more or less, though always with less certainty of our own steadfastness and resilience, than what we see clearly in our fellow soldiers. “If you weren’t afraid, you’d be a moron,” one of my Master Sergeants often said.

Read the whole thing. Cross-posted at Dadmanly.

A Bang in the Salang

[Major John]

See a short clip of avalanche pre-emption in the Salang Valley, February 2005.

Cover blown on satellite work

[Eagle1]

Well, in case the Iranians hadn't figured it out for themselves, some blabbermouths have revealed a success story in spotting weapons transfers to our Iranian friends:

In the closed world of spy satellite photo analysis, it's called "crate-ology": the science of identifying a weapon or some other key component by the size and shape of its box.

The technique came into play last month when a U.S. spy satellite, looking down on an Iranian air base, captured images of military crews loading what U.S. intelligence analysts concluded were eight C-802 Noor anti-ship cruise missiles on board a transport plane, according to intelligence officials.

The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

I guess the process will now be moved indoors or under other cover because the idiots "not authorized to discuss the incident" couldn't keep their yaps shut and USA Today couldn't help itself in revealing the process.

Cross posted.

Advancement Exams

[SMASH]

Is the Navy the only service that still puts its enlisted members through the torture of advancement exams?

I know Sean Dustman personally. He's a bookworm. He reads more than most people would consider healthy. And even he is complaining about the sheer volume of material he is expected to "know" in order to pass his HM1 exam.

I needed a break so I decided to figure out how much we were actually studying, I'm a number type of guy and I'm good at laying down figures and stats. So I pulled up every piece of information that the bib said we should know about and added it all up. Five thousand four hundred and forty four pages. Egad! 5444 minus 1500= 3944 divided by 15 days till the exam, each day I need to read 263 pages of adult Snoppy language and let it sink into my noggin. Bleh.

Good luck with that, Doc.

Happy (Golden) Birthday, Angel!

[Greyhawk]

If the meda were in the business of celebrating American heroes (and if this particular humble hero would allow it) this lady's name would be a household word. The time and effort she devotes to wounded troops in Germany (many of whom are treated at locations other than Landstuhl and would otherwise be unnoticed as they transit homeward from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere - or return to the front) is amazing. I won't reveal her home, but her weekend trips (Mon-Fri she works for a living) to the Kaiserslautern area are the equivalent of someone driving routinely from Pittsburgh to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in DC.

Her birthday is this week. Y'all know the drill.

Whither Martial Verse?

[ArmyLawyer]

Is there such a thing as "martial" poetry nowadays? Antiquity is rife with such poetry--come on, who doesn't get a little choked up reading In Flanders Fields, The Charge of the Light Brigade, or Simonides' Thermopylae epigram? But as for modern examples of such verse, I am at a loss. Lord knows local bookstores don't exactly have a big (i.e. any) selection of the stuff.

A Google search for "Iraq Poetry" gives you crap like Death Is All Around Me written by "Mal the Best" who says:

I'm 12 years old and I write poems about war when I'm depressed.

Great, now I'm depressed and I can't get that Google search back damn it.

You get the idea. So any suggestions/recommendations for some quality modern martial verse?