SOmething for you from a couple winters ago

I posted a poll a while back asking you guys if I ought to get a snap brim cap, a fifty mission ‘crush’ or a leather helmet and goggles for driving the Miata in.

Actually, I’ll probably drive it bareheaded, but I have an invite to go for a ride in a Stearman when the weather breaks and I’ll be damned if I’m going for a once in a lifetime flight in anything but a helmet and goggles.

So I put on my flight jacket and drove out to Ohio to buy me a leather helmet and goggles. The place was having a special. Buy both and they throw in a scarf. Cool.

It was as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra when I left the store, so I left the regalia on and hopped into my pickup and headed home. I left the stuff on and promptly forgot about it as I drove along the Ohio Turnpike. After a while, I wanted a cup of Joe, so I pulled into a rest stop. I was almost into the restaurant area when I realized that I was still wearing a silk scarf, helmet and goggles, but it was so cold I said ‘The hell with it’ and walked in.

I was in the McDuck line when a trio, obviously three generations by the family resemblance fell in behind me.

The teenaged boy, about sixteen or so, asked his dad "What’s with him," looking at my outfit. I couldn’t help myself. I turned and introduced myself.

"Crash Murphy," I said. "I’m one of the last of the Old School stick and rudder men. Headed to New York City to guard the Empire State Building. That idiot Robert Denhart the third pulled another one of them oversized apes offa Skull Island and he’s gonna show it. They pulled me out of retirement to keep the Empire State Building safe. Best piece of flying I ever did was back in ’33 the first time a gorilla busted loose."

"They don’t have screamers like Faye Wray anymore, either," I added. "I had a radial engine roaring and 4 thirty caliber machine guns going off and I could STILL hear her above it all."

The father smirked, but the look the grandfather gave me was truly devilish. The kid didn’t know what to think. He wasn’t scared, nor really too uncomfortable. Still, he decided to pass me off to someone else.

"My grandfather flew fighters during WW2," said the kid.

"What was his name?" I asked.

"George Bailey," said the kid.

"I taught a George Bailey to fly back in ’43," I replied.

"It was ’42," interrupted the old man. "Crash, is that really you? I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!" He looked at his grandson. "He’s the guy that taught me to fly during the war," he explained.

The look on the kid’s face was priceless. His eyes were as round as saucers and his lower jaw was resting on his waist. At least until he saw the look on the faces of his grandfather and I. Then he turned real red. He had just been had by a couple of pros and knew it. He turned beet red.

The father chuckled, Gramps and I smirked. The father had actually stepped aside. He was enjoying the show.

One look at George Bailey and I knew he was probably something like a very successful used car salesman. He was clear eyed and as sharp as a tack.

"You look good, George," I said. "Last time I saw you, you were as skinny as this youngster is. You’ve grown downright handsome in your middle age."

"You, too, Crash. How did you do it?"

"I used to tell you young guys not to drink that cheap whiskey," I said. "But you never listened to me. I told you to drink good whiskey off of the top shelf, and plenty of it."

"I remember," said George Bailey. He turned to his son. "Do we still have any of that good Bourbon left that Jimmy gave you last Christmas?"

"Sure," answered the son.

"Good. I’m going to have me a drink of that when we get home," said George Bailey.

"But dad," said the son.

"Heck, I might have two."

"But, dad…"

"I might even have six or eight if you don’t stop telling me what to do, Son. I’m still your father!"

The clerk called "Next!" so I went up and ordered my coffee and bid them a hasty adios.

As I was leaving, I heard the kid ask his father and grandfather who the hell I was. I heard George Bailey tell him "A friend."

Then George Bailey turned to his son. "I really am going to have that drink," he said.

I laughed all the way to my pickupmy other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Louie and I Man the fighting tops.

Louie and I were in our third year of Cub Scouts and the fall tour sponsored my the military was a visit to the USS Constitution, ‘Old Ironsides’, located in Charleston, Mass.

This was not really as exciting as it sounds. My aunt had taken me to see ‘Old Ironsides’a few months earlier during the early part of the summer when my mother was in the hospital. My aunt was a new schoolteacher and decided her nephews needed some ‘cult-chah’ and dragged my kid brother and I through the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (booooring), the Boston Science Museum (pretty neat) and to keep our interests up, we went to see Old Ironsides The Navy’s ‘canned tour’ was pretty good, and they had let my brother and I play with the smashers, the heavy 32 pound guns.

Still, I wasn’t going to miss out on a trip with the guys, so I went. Louie and I teamed up again, as usual.

This was a great deal. Mrs. Broomstick was no longer our Den Mother, Mrs. Lewis was ands she was pretty good in that she didn’t over mother us and raise hell over what we ate. She had several kids of her own, mostly older, and she had a lot of things figured out. She figured out that simply feeding us was good enough and that there were better things to raise hell about than a couple of lousy peas left on the dinner plate.

One other thing she had figured out is that Dr. Spock was an idiot.

I heard her tell my mother that once. She raised her kids the old fashioned way. She used common sense.

‘Mother’ Davis was Cub master. This was about three or four years before we started calling him ‘Mother’. Back then he was simply Bob Davis to adults or Mr. Davis to us kids. A couple years later, he became a Boy Scout leader where he earned the nickname ‘Mother Davis’.

Mr. Davis, I later learned had been a Navy veteran of WW2 and his battle station on an Attack Transport was the helm. During Okinawa, he had spent a hellish 70 hour-long stint at the wheel dodging Kamikazes. He was pretty proud that ‘his’ Marines had gotten into Okinawa all right. I learned this later in Boy Scouts.

He was also sometimes a real character with a real deadpan sense of humor.

At the Pack meeting, he explained that we were going on the tour with another Pack from across town. This was pretty neat because we knew most of the guys in the other Pack from school.

Two Packs of Cub scouts, almost 100 kids were lined up and Mr. Davis got in front of all of us and carefully explained that Constitution was a bona fide Naval vessel and that we were to show her some respect. We were supposed to board her properly and demonstrated the proper way to board.

We started up, following Mr. Davis. He was wearing his old Navy cap.

When he got to the top, he faced the Officer of the deck and saluted.

"Former 1st Class Petty Officer Davis requests permission to board, Sir," he said.

"Granted."

Mr. Davis faced aft and saluted the colors.

Then he stood next to the Officer and watched almost a hundred Cub Scouts board.

"Cub Scout Johnny Smith requests permission to board, Sir," giving the two fingered Cub Scout salute.

The officer of the deck returned the salute, and the Cub Scout faced aft and saluted the colors.

Mr. Davis watched the scene repeat itself almost a hundred times with a big self-satisfied look on his face. The poor officer of the deck must have worn out his arm returning all the salutes, but he did, returning every single one crisply.

Another officer, one with oak leaves on his collar, watched and chuckled at the hapless officer of the day. So did a Chief. Louie and I knew what Chiefs were from out trip to Wasp, two years earlier.

"Hey, Chief," I asked. "You let the captain run the boat?"

Mr. Davis laughed out loud, the Chief grinned appreciatively and the officer with the oak leaves on his collar points smirked.

"The Chief does a pretty good job of keeping an eye on me," he said.

They all laughed.

"I like you, kid," said the Chief.

They laughed again.

After the last of us boarded, the tour started.

The Navy was smart, figuring that no human should be forced to give a tour of any type to 100 children of Cub Scout age, split us into a couple of groups. Anything over one thousand, two hundred and thirty four questions in a two-hour period was enough for anyone. The two packs were split up, which was a pretty good deal, considering we got to pal around with other guys we knew, but shared Cub Scouting in common.

Seeing that I had been through the tour and had briefed Louie, we plotted out escape.

We didn’t want to be sailors. We wanted to be Marines.

Mrs. Lewis had shown us a picture book about Constitution at our Den meeting. One of the pictures was a picture of US Marines on the fighting tops. They were shooting muskets at the British from a platform halfway up the masts. We asked her about what the guys there were doing. She read us the cutline.

‘Marines man the fighting tops during a battle in 1814’, read the cutline.

The mentality of being a basic rifleman is something that someone is born with, or one does not have it. Louie and I must have had it at the time. The picture fired our imaginations.

We both knew where our spiritual battle stations were.

Anyway, we sneaked out of the tour and hid near the officer of the day. Sometimes the best place to hide is in the lion’s mouth.

"Wait until he’s talking to a pretty lady," said Louie.

We waited. Shortly thereafter, a woman from the Baltimore area showed up and came up the gangway. She had to be from Baltimore because she had a set of breastworks that looked like they came from Fort McHenry.

While the officer of the deck was busy with her, Louie and I interrupted.

"Permission to man our battle stations," I asked, giving the Cub Scout salute.

"Granted," snapped the officer, returning our salutes.

Our little asses were now covered!

John Paul Jones would have marveled. The Gunnery Sergeant of Bon Homme Richard would have been in tears of joy seeing the speed the ‘tops were manned!

We did not climb the rigging, nor did we scale the mast.

No way in hell. There is a proper nautical term for what happened next.
Louie and I swarmed up the ratlines, and in record time, too.

Seconds later, two ten-year-old wannabe Marines were on the fighting tops of the forward mast. How we got up there without being caught is still, forty-two years later, beyond me.

Still, we were there.

We sat there, out of sight and enjoyed the view.

Then we did sort of a dumb thing. We looked down.

We were a bit scared. The Officer of the Deck looked like a small dot from there. Slowly we relaxed, and the inevitable happened. We started fucking around, which is to be expected of ten year-old boys.

It wasn’t long before one of us did something stupid like shout "Land, Ho!" or something dumb like that. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t take much, either.

That’s when the shit hit the fan. Chaos reigned on the main deck. Orders were being barked and suddenly we saw a sailor start up the ratlines toward us. He was coming up the starboard side. At a glance, we saw that all the action going on below was on the starboard side.

So Louie and I started down the port side ratlines as fast as we could. I guess we figured that if we could hit the deck running, that we could scurry below and mix in with another group of Cub Scouts. They’d probably give up if we did that.

We were pretty close to the deck when we both saw that there were people headed toward us to head us off, so when we were pretty close to the deck, we both jumped.

Busted!

I landed in the arms of a pretty beefy Chief. The grip he held me in let me know that I wasn’t going anywhere.

The officer with the oak leaves caught Louie and they both fell in a heap. Louie bounced up like a cat and took off like a shot. He almost made it, but was nailed cold by a sailor that scooped him up like a sack and returned him to the Skipper, the Chief and I.

"What were you doing up there," asked the Captain.

"Me and Louie are going to be Marines when we get bigger," I said. "We were just manning our battle stations."
"We had permission," added Louie.

"Who gave you permission?" asked the Skipper.

"He did," we both said, pointing at the Officer of the Deck. "He said we could man our battle stations!"

"Mister," said the Skipper. "Do you have any children?"

"No, Sir"

"When you have children, you’ll learn."

"Yes, Sir." He looked embarrassed.

The Skipper and the Chief exchanged looks. They seemed somewhat amused. But were trying to hide it.

"I’m glad I have girls," said the skipper.

"Hell, Sir," said the Chief. "In a couple of years, you’ll gladly trade stuff like this when the girls discover boys and you find a dozen young men outside their window baying like hounds."

The Skipper turned ashen.

"That’ll be enough of that, Chief. But I do take your point."

We got off pretty easily, with a lecture of sorts. The skipper also told us that we couldn’t do Marine things until we were actually old enough to be Marines.

"We figured that if we learn to do Marine things now, we’d make stripes faster when we went in," said Louie.

"You two will do OK just the way you are," said the Chief.

The Skipper and the Chief were both kind men and they escorted us back to the tour.

"Why did you guys start running? Asked the Skipper.

"Because you were chasing us," I answered.

The Chief actually laughed outright.

"Yeah," said Louie. "And if we were caught, we’re supposed to try and escape."

"You two will make pretty good Marines," said the Chief.

It was well over thirty years before I found out why we never caught hell for this from Mr. Davis or Mrs. Lewis. I found out from ‘Mother’ Davis a couple years before he died.

He told me that he figured that two ten year old boys that had been caught raising hell by a Navy Chief had gotten whole lot more of a punishment than they deserved.



edited to add, these days it's pretty funny telling Marines that 'When I was a whole lot younger than you, I was manning the 'tops on Old Ironsides!'



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Happy St Patrick's Day

Well, that idiot Santorum is doing a great job of talking himself out of the Oval office again. He's talking about tearing up the first amendment with a so-called war on pornography among other things.

He's already made it clear that he wants to govern the reproductive systems of women and tell them that they have to have children if they want to have sex.

What he seems to be promising us is that if he gets elected he is going to spending most of his time trying to make sure that the government will be strictly enforcing the laws of the Catholic church and regulating behavior of consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes.

None of this whatsoever is any business of the government.
The imbecile should simply be telling us how he is going to get the country back on their feet and working again.

If he would simply realize that government has no place in our private lives and start worrying about how to get the country off of its ass and up and working again he would be a shoo-in.

While I will not vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances, I will not vote for anyone that wants to take my freedom away.

If Santorum gets the nod I will be in the middle of a dileimma. I very well may not go to the polls for the first time in my adult life.
Why bother?

It only serves to encourage them.
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Spring is starting to show its head and I have a feeling that this is going to be a long summer full of sultry nights and you know what that means when the Grandfather's Club meets on my back porch.
We have a snort together and sometimes even two and plot against the government and their high-handedness. Our big thing is to make sure that the grandchildren get a real taste of true American freedom.

I think that this summer we are going to illegally and criminally take the grandchildren out for a ride through farm country in the back of a pickup truck and endanger their lives a little more often than we did last summer.

After we commit this reckless crime against humanity we retire to the back porch and strike yet ANOTHER blow for liberty. We have a drink of bourbon.
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Today is St. Patrick's Day and if I was home I would put my yarmulke on and head straight on down to the local Jewish deli for a corned beef on rye and a side of slaw because the way the Irish serve corned beef and cabbage is an abomination.

Yesterday someone came along and tried to ruin it by making references to the Catholic church and calling it a fariy tale. He ought to have his ass kicked for trying to ruin a perfectly good holiday for the rest of us that use it as an excuse to eat corned beef and suck down a Guiness or two.

Saint Patrick supposidly chased all the snakes out of Ireland. I wish he would come to this country and do something close here. He could run the snakes out of this country. He could leave all the legless creatures that slither on the ground but it sure would be nice to wake up and find Washington DC with a pretty good sized portion of the population gone.
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Someone ran a poll a while back over who would emerge as victor in a fight between Chuck Norris and the Most Interesting Man in the World.

While I will not go so far as to even venture a guess as to who would emerge victorious in such a bout, I do firmly believe that watching such a fight would prove to be.........................interesting.
　
　
　

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Today is a blah day.

I really do not have a whole lot to say for a change but I have pretty good news.

No, I did not save a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to GEICO.

I got in touch with my nephew last night and he is going to pay me a visit and hang out for a few days. That is pretty important to me because he is going to get a little responsibility dumped on him when he gets here.

One of the things that I want to get taken care of while I am alive and in one piece is what is to be done with me after I cease to exist.

He's getting that little chore dumped on him. It will be his job to see that the box containing my remains is turned over to the United States Navy for burial at sea.

I can imagine how that's going to work out and I can see a circus in the making but he's the guy for the job.

I suppose if the pickup I own still runs he can save a few bucks by throwing the box in the back and heading off to Norfolk to deliver the body. He's smart enough to tie the load down and cover it with a tarp.

Then again maybe I should find someone a little less responsible for the job as it would be a lot more fun to look down from the heavens and watch a 3 ring circus as the box falls out of the pickup while going up a hill. I can see it now. A couple of drunks trying to drag the box back and reload it on the pickup on the Pennsylvania turnpike as a trooper drives up and beer cans roll out of the bed.

Or pulling up to the base entrance with a pickup full of beer cans and a casket in the bed.

"May I help you," asks a spiffy sailor.

"Yeah. I got my Uncle Pic in the back here and I want to take him to where you bury people at sea."

"Hmmm," says the sailor. "I gotta inspect this vehicle."

"OK, but Uncle Pic's gettin' kinda ripe and I was hoping to get him into a refrigerator before he starts too stinky. Ya might really want to freeze him. The pizza and six-pack he had before he died really tore his ass up."

He exits the vehicle and there is the ringing noise of an empty Jameson's bottle hitting the pavement.

Still, I look forward to seeing my nephew because he is no longer a damned kid. He is a good man and I respect him. I have a lot of things to do before he arrives.

It'll be a pretty good three or four days with him hanging out and doing dopey guy things.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

One of my shipmates live on a pretty nice boat.

He bought it for peanuts and probably got what he originally paid for. It wasn't much of a boat when he bought it but after a lot of sweat equity is is now a pretty fine yacht. There was a lot of sweat and, over time, a pretty good chunk of change he coughed up to put the vessel together.

The boat has twin diesels and a pretty good sized fuel tank and uses fuel at the rate that you would expect of a yacht of that size. At current fuel prices that is about $25/hour. That comes to about $600/day.

Of course, he doesn't take it out a whole lot, partly because of that and partly because he simply put it together to live on and partly to resell.

He does this as a way of making a few extra bucks and saving a few extra bucks because slip space is cheaper than renting an apartment. I suppose to a certain extent he is playing 'flip this boat'.

He reports to me that an awful lot of people generously offer him, say, a bottle of wine or a case of beer to either go for a boat ride or to take them fishing. He also reports that when he points out that at 6 gallons of diesel an hour for an 8 hour fishing trip is 48 gallons of diesel at about $3.75 a pop comes to about $180 and when you add oil changes and other maintainence $200 really won't cover it.

Of course when he points this out to someone they seem to get a bit upset and think he is a jerk. He isn't.

He's just another working stiff that doesn't happen to have a few spare extra couple hundred bucks kicking around to piddle away and impress someone.

To a certain extent anyone that owns a pickup truck or a van runs into this sort of thing from time to time. They get asked by someone to help them move. Generally this really isn't a problem when the pickup owner agrees after being offered a tank of gas and a case of beer. DUI laws have pretty much quashed 'moving parties'.

An awful lot of people don't think. Fuel costs money. A case of beer which the skipper can not drink anyway while the vessel is underway really doesnt to start to begin to come close to compensate for what you are asking someone to do. Especially a case of beer that the passengers are going to drink themselves anyway.

We're talking about a fifty foot yacht here and not some dinky little jon boat with a 5 horse kicker stuck on the back.

Back when I lived on a 24'7" sailboat with a 9.9 horsepower Honda for auxillary power things were an awful lot different. If someone showed up with some beer or a jug or something I could easily afford to blow off a day and go sailing because it would only cost me a couple of cups of gasoline at about a buck or so a gallon to get me out of the harbor. The wind was free. I think to a certain extent that is still is because nobody has found a way to tax it yet, but I imagine someone will come along with a way.

There's an awful lot of difference between a 24'7" cruising sailboat and a 50 foot motor yacht, both in size and operating costs yet there are an awful lot of people that think that a bottle of wine will cover the operating costs of a 50 foot motor yacht.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

The killings in Afghanistan. Part 2

I started a thread on another website I frequent with a link to yesterday's post and as of 8 hours after I posted the opinions seemed to run for and against having the Staff Sergeant turned over to face Sharia law. They seemed to be roughly split into 3 opinions..

A few tried to compare it to the major that killed 13 in Texas but that was a case of a GI killing other GIs on a military post. That is clearly a case that is covered entirely by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

There were a couple people that said that trying the Staff Sergeant by the Afghani court system was barbaric. I do not doubt that one bit. Perhaps the Staff Sergeant should have thought of that before he perpetrated such a barbaric act himself.

A GI in a foriegn country to a certain extent is governed by local law. While on duty he is protected by the military and that is the way it is supposed to be. Inflicting casualties on the enemy is not considered to be a criminal act. That's what GIs do. They inflict casualties on the enemy.

What they do not do is leave firebases and the legal protection afforded by them and wander downtown and commit crimes. They do this at their own risk.

As for the three opinions I have had expressed over yesterday's post, they run about 1/3 expressing we ought to drag the Staff Sergeant back to the States for trial. Some of them stated that if we turned the Staff Sergeant over to Afghani authorities that they would be brutal. I have no problem with this. The murders were brutal.

He went into their town and murdered their people and I have no problem with them extracting justice by their rules.

Others expressed that by doing so it would make us look weak. I disagree. It would make us look fair and just. There's a difference.

A sense of justice is a strength and not a weakness.

Another school was in 100% agreement with my post.

There was also another school of thought and when I think about it it may not be a bad idea. The third school of thought is that we try the Staff Sergeant by courts-martial in country, expedite the appeals process and if he is convicted, execute him in Afghanistan.

I don't have a problem with the latter proposal at all.

The biggest thing is to make it clear to the people of Afghanistan that what the Staff Sergeant did will not be tolerated at all by the United States military.

To be honest with you I feel this way not because of some type of emotional sympathy for the Afghanis. I think that this is a necessary thing to do for the troops serving over there. The troops should know that anything that endangers them needlessly will be dealt with.

While we can't undo the damage the Staff Sergeant did, we can certainly make it clear that we do not tolorate this. That in itself will help make it clear to the Afghanis that the average GI doesn't go along with outright murder of civilians.

The Afghanis should be made well aware of this and the troops damned well deserve to know that anything endangering them needlessly will be dealt with immediately.
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I just asked one of the troops what he thought ought to be done to the jerk and his reply was brief and to the point:

"Firing squad of US troops in the village square."

It should be noted the GI that said this is a paratrooper woth 5 tours under his belt.

I have no problem with that. It might even do a better job than simply turning him over to Afghan authorities. It would send a message to the Afghans that we don't tolerate that kind of behavior at all.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

I'd be surprised if this post doesn't get me a lot of crap

I didn't get the cattle prod I mentioned yesterday because I really didn't want to deal with some humorless boob.
　
Yesterday I read a story about a couple and their kid getting tossed off of an airplane because the kid wouldn't behave. Good call on the pilot's part. I support him 100%. There is no reason 175 people should be cooped up on an airplane with a kid that won't behave itself.


In other news, the troops are now most likely going to experience the Taliban increasing activity thanks to some Staff Sergeant going off and killing a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan. Of course, there is simply no reason for this whatsoever. The Staff Sergeant has just put a lot of GIs at risk and that is never a good thing. While the Staff Sergeant is being detained in safety the rest of our GIs will be at increased risk.

Of course, the Army will courts-martial him and if he is deemed mentally incompetent he will wind up in the screw factory for rethreading. If he isn't considered incompetent he will wind up in Leavenworth and probably have to spend the rest of his life in isolation because the GIs there will probably extract justice from him if he is not isolated.

Frankly, in this particular instance he has committed a civilian offense against the people of Afghanistan. He ought to be turned over to them and let him face Sharia law.

If a GI in, for example, Germany or South Korea committed a crime against local law by there he would most likely have to face criminal prosecution by the Germans or Koreans. I'm pretty sure that the German police have carted in more than one GI for getting drunk and tearing up a bar and taken him to court.

Turning this GI over to the Afghans would do several things. It probably wouldn't get the Taliban settled down but it would show the average Afghani that we don't tolorate that kind of behavior in this country and we don't tolorate our people behaving like that over there.

Over the years I have spoken with a number of professional GIs, both Army and Marine and almost to a man they have told me stories of little acts of kindness paying off in huge dividends.

"Don't go down that street today, Marines," said one kid to a Marine patrol. Sure enough the engineers located a pretty good sized IED a few hours later. Right down the street the kid steered the patrol clear of.

Betcha that won't happen as often after this incident. Innocent GIs are going to pay heavily for this act of cruel stupidity.

This does not mean that GIs are Kumbaya singers, either. They are not. Nor are they wild-eyed killers. They are professionals. They kill when they have to, without hesitation, compassion or remorse. It is just another part of their job.

Right now I believe we have the most professional military that we have ever had in history. They are to a man, volunteers. A large percentage are not still on their first enlistment. They are on professional status. Most of them have at least one deployment under their belt, and many of them have several deployments.

This also isn't another war where the young first enlistment privates and corporals constitute the overwhelming percentage of casualties.
If you look at the casualty reports there are an awful lot of officers and NCOs leading from the front and getting hit. This means to me that the professionals are not simply time servers. They are leading from the front where they belong.

It doesn't really matter if they are reservists or regulars, most of them have been overseas and gotten their hands dirty.

I'll bet there are not a whole lot of GIs out there that support the recent cowardly killings of all those civilians. It would be interesting to see how many GIs would be in favor of handing the Staff Sergeant over to Afghan authorities for trial and punishment.

An awful lot of keyboard commandos out there are going to try and tell me that I'm wrong here but I'd sure like to hear what the boots on the ground over there think. The man has disgraced his uniform, his service and himself. What is a whole lot worse is that it sounds like a lot of GIs are going to pay for these acts with arms, legs, sanity and their very lives.

I'd bet an awful lot of the troops would go along with throwing the Staff Sergeant to the wolves. I'll bet they don't condone that kind of behavior, either for a number of reasons, either moral, practical or both.

Then again I may very well find myself wrong with this post because it is going to take time before all the facts trickle in but this is what it looks like now.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/