Category: Pandemic

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What A Horrible Year We Have Been Through in 2020

Thank you for the connection.

Doug

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Whew!! What a horrible year we have had. 2020 will be one we will try to forger but probably will not. Just too many negatives in one year:

The pandemic is still raising its ugly head.. We still don’t know for sure who our next president will be. We faced wild fires like we have never seen before. The rioting took its toll as well. Other than that 2020 was fine. 🙁

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I got a great Christmas present! My wife gave me a subscription to Netflix. . It was so needed. I had run out of “free,” movies,” to watch that were mediocre at best.

Now I have my subscription all set up for only the kind of movies I like. What kind? Military movies of course. I have watched three or four of them already.

Three of them were true stories. Two of them broke my heart. I will be sharing the titles with you as I go through the list of movies.

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I just can’t forget my brothers and sisters who are deployed and in harms way. Talk about loneliness!

One of the movies I watched was about a British company that was sent to Africa to protect to people from the rebels who were trying to overcome the people.

There were 150 British soldiers, and they were attacked by 1,500 rebel warriors. The British held them off for three days, and then had to surrender, because of the overwhelming numbers against them.

The real story here, was that not one man was killed of British troops, but hundreds of the enemy were. The soldiers never gave up. They were going to fight until the last man, but their commander decided he didn’t want any of his men slaughtered.

A interesting side story is that the commander went to the city, and went into a bar to have a drink. He met a man who invited him to drink Cognac with him. The commander did and they got along fine. Then the commander found out the the leader of the enemy was this same man.

The two of them actually met in the middle of the battlefield to discuss surrender. The enemy soldier ask the commander to surrender, because he has so many men on his side that wanted to kill them all. The commander said, “Actually I was going to ask you to surrender.”

The enemy leader was impressed, and reached out his hand and they shook hands, and each went back to their lines.

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I will leave you up in the air as to the final outcome. Here is the title of the movie. Watch it if you can:

The Siege at Jadotville

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Well…I have done my movie review for the day. It is time to check up on you.

How are you doing.? The Christmas rush is over. However, are you still feeling the jet lag?

Does is seem like each hour is like a month?

You are not lone, my friend. There are over 10,610 fellow veterans here that have your back.

I know there are times you feel you can’t handle things. If so GET HELP!!

Here is a toll free number that is free 24/7. Their advice is even free. There are highly qualified counselors there to help you, and they will not hang up until they know you are OK.

1-800-273-8255 Option # 1

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Remember:

You are never alone.

You are never forsaken.

You are never unloved.

And above all…never, ever, give up!

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Not All Heroes are on the Front Lines. A Marine Saved a Life in California

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My last post a shared some sad stories about heroes who gave their all in WWII. Today I am wanting to share a more uplifting story about a hero that wasn’t on the front lines.

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A Marine’s quick thinking meant the difference between life and death for a motorist on an isolated desert road in California last year.

Capt. Stephen Alexander, the executive officer for the Marines’ recruiting station in Dallas, was driving through Elora, California on his way to the Marine Corps ball to celebrate the service’s 245th birthday when a vehicle going the other way lost control and flipped onto its side.

“Once the vehicle came to a final stop, I pulled over immediately,” Alexander said in a press release. The Marine was awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal in a ceremony in Texas on Dec. 11.

“There was a vehicle in front of me that also pulled over with [3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment] Marines,” said Alexander, who at the time of the incident was a first lieutenant with 3/4 stationed in California. “I’d never met them before; they were from a different company. We all ran over to the vehicle; at this point the vehicle was on its side and the driver was at the bottom and not coherent.”

The driver was unconscious and critically injured, and the Marines could not open any of the car doors due to the vehicle damage from the crash. Undeterred, one Marine broke through the back window while Alexander smashed through the windshield so that he could start applying trauma care.

“Once they smashed in the window I hopped in and started treating as many injuries as I could find,” Alexander said. “Every once and a while the driver would come back to consciousness and say he couldn’t breathe.”

There was no cell service in that part of the desert, and the nearest ranger station was about an hour away. The Marines would have to make do until help arrived. Alexander found that the driver’s leg was partially severed, so he used belts as tourniquets to stop the bleeding before another Marine provided an actual tourniquet.

“We came to Vegas with our dress blues, not tourniquets or our emergency field kits,” Alexander said. “Had the other Marines not been there, there’s no way I could have acquired the things needed to treat him. I would have tried my best, but there’s not a whole lot I could have done once I got in the vehicle had they not continued to provide whatever resources they could find.”

After about an hour, park rangers arrived, followed by a nurse who took over treatment for the driver. The nurse found that the driver also had a punctured lung which was causing his shortness in breath. After about two hours, a helicopter arrived to take the driver, but it couldn’t find a place to land. Luckily, an ambulance came by, at about the same time and Alexander moved the driver into it so he could get to a hospital.

A former infantry officer, Alexander had been trained for this sort of situation. But in the end, he said no amount of training can fully prepare you for the real thing.

“I think reacting to something like that, you either do or you don’t,” said Alexander. “There’s no Marines Hymn playing in the background as you run across the road; you just do something.”

Alexander himself suffered a traumatic brain injury which could have killed him just four months prior to the car accident. He never expected he would wind up treating a driver suffering the same injuries, he said in the release. Though he never found out what happened to the driver, the quick actions of Alexander and the other Marines deserve praise.

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There are many of these kind of stories I will be sharing in the future. But, my next post will be all about my new book, Signs of Hope for the Military: In an Out of the Trenches of Life.”

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How are you doing my friend? The rush of Christmas and the pandemic that doesn’t allows us to see family, and it can pull us down like a huge magnate.

Hope everything is going great for you, but if it isn’t, remember over 10,370 fellow veterans follow this site, and they all have your back.

However, if it is getting too overwhelming, GET HELP!

Here is a toll free number to call 24/7. They have highly qualified counselors there to help you. They will not hang up until they know you are OK.

Don’t take on anything alone in this not so friendly world.

1-800-273-8255 Option # 1

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Remember:

You are never alone.

You are never forsaken.

You are never unloved.

And above all…never, ever, give up!

__________________________

+If you like what you see, please subscribe at the top of this page where it says, “subscribe.” When you do, all future posts will come directly to your inbox. Also, if you know some else who could benefit for the site, please let them know about it.

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Sexual Harassment, and Rape Are too Common in the Military

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Things are heating up now that President elect Biden is choosing his cabinet. The following example shows you what I mean:

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Once again, lawmakers must decide whether to allow a retired general officer to serve as defense secretary even though he has been out of uniform for less time than the seven years required by law.

Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin left active-duty in 2016 after 41 years of service. He is a Silver Star recipient and has had extensive command experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he would also be the first Black man to lead the Defense Department.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who worked with Austin when he was on active-duty, said she has deep respect for the retired general. 

However, the defense secretary’s job is to ensure civilian control over the military, added Slotkin, who served as acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 2015 to 2017.

“That is why it requires a waiver from the House and Senate to put a recently retired military officer in the job,” Slotkin said in the statement. “And after the last four years, civil-military relations at the Pentagon definitely need to be rebalanced. General Austin has had an incredible career — but I’ll need to understand what he and the Biden Administration plan to do to address these concerns before I can vote for his waiver.”

Biden added that he understands and respects the reason why officers are legally required to be out of uniform for a certain period of time before assuming the mantle of defense secretary.

“I would not be asking for this exception if I did not believe this moment in our history didn’t call for it – it does call for it – and if I didn’t have the faith I have in Lloyd Austin to ask for it,” Biden said.

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Sexual harassment, or even rape, has been going on for far too long in the military. I have a whole chapter in my new book, Signs of Hope for the Military: In an Out of the Trenches of Life, on rape, and an interview with a nurse who took care of two women who had been raped. Heart breaking stories.

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a big win for survivors of sexual assault in the military by closing a loophole that allowed three convicted rapists to walk free.

“I fought so hard to get the justice to have him put away for what he did,” Air Force veteran Harmony Allen told CNN about her rapist, Master Sgt. Richard Collins, in an article last year.

Collins raped Allen in August 2000, but he was not convicted until 2017. But a year later, a 2018 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) instituted a five-year statute of limitations on military rape cases between 1986 and 2006, and Collins walked free.

“To have that ripped away after finally getting it is so hurtful and crushing and it just questions my belief in the justice system,” Allen said.

CAAF’s 2018 ruling reversed decades of precedent. Under Article 120(a) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, rape is one of several crimes that is punishable by death in the military, and thus has no statute of limitations. But in 2018, CAAF pointed out the Supreme Court’s 1977 ruling in Coker v. Georgia that the Eighth Amendment forbids a death sentence for the rape of an adult women. 

So if rape cannot be punished by a death sentence under the Constitution, CAAF reasoned, then military rape is not a capital offense and thus is subject to statutes of limitations. But the Supreme Court disagreed.

“Respondents argue that the logic of the decision in Coker applies equally to civilian and military prosecutions, but the Government contends that the military context dictates a different outcome,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in his opinion. “Among other things, the Government argues that a rape committed by a service member may cause special damage by critically undermining unit cohesion and discipline and that, in some circumstances, the crime may have serious international implications.”

Further, while Coker led to Congress changing the maximum penalty for rape in civilian cases from death to life imprisonment, Congress made no such change in the UCMJ, the justice wrote.

“On the contrary, in 2006 Congress noted that death would remain an available punishment for rape,” he added.

Alito pointed out that the “trauma inflicted by such crimes may impede the gather of the evidence needed to bring charges. Victims may be hesitant for some time after the offense about agreeing to testify. Thus, under current federal law, many such offenses are subject to no statute of limitations.”

A former Chief Prosecutor of the Air Force celebrated the decision.

“The unanimous nature of this opinion is a testament of just how wrong the lower court’s opinion was,” said Col. Don Christensen (ret.), president of the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, in a press release. “Justice has been restored for three survivors and hope has been restored for countless others.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not vote in the decision because the case was argued in October, before her confirmation.

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The Christmas rush is, hard at best, to handle. Then there is the ugly pandemic raising up even more.

How are you holding up, my friend? Is the rush and the world too fast for you?

You are not alone! There are over 10,350 other veterans on this site who have your back.

BUT! If it is just too overwhelming for you, Get Help!

Here is a toll free number to call 24/7. There are highly qualified counselors there to help you. They will not hang up until they know you are OK.

Don’t live in this world alone!

1-800-273-8255 Option # 1

_____________________________________

Remember:

You are never alone.

You are never forsaken.

You are never unloved.

And above all…never, ever, give up!

_______________________________________

+If you like what you see, please subscribe at the top of this page where it says, “subscribe.” When you do, all future posts will come directly to your inbox. Also, if you know some else who could benefit for the site, please let them know about it.