Poland and Slovakia were greenlighted this week for over $350 million in U.S. weapons sales.
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A former Marine involved in the death of a homeless subway rider in New York City this week said he did intervene and subdue the erratic-behaving man with a chokehold but never intended to harm him.
The U.S. will provide $1.2 billion more in long-term military aid to Ukraine to further bolster its air defenses as Russia continues to pound Ukraine with drones, rockets and surface-to-air missiles, U.S. officials said Monday.
Days come and days go, but it is how you use them that counts. As veterans we often fall into the darkside, and let past memories over take us. We wake up screaming with Vietnam nightmares.
Here is what I do when something like this happens:
Clear out your mine of all of the negative things.
Is it that simple? I think so. I know it is hard to eliminate some thoughts. They are embedded into your brain, but always keep trying to push them out and it will happen eventually. You are too important to others to let the darkside win.
Checking in on you. How are you doing? Is everything going OK, or are you fighting back memories?
FEAR NOT!
There are over 15,219 Veterans on this site who have your back.
If you are battling mentally, but you are losing, GET HELP!!
Here is a toll free number that you can call 24/7. There are highlyqualified counselors there to help you, and they will not hang up until they know you are OK. 1-800-273-8255…texting 838255.
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Here is another excerpt from my upcoming book, Signs of Hope for the military: In and Out of the Trenches of Life.
Loneliness Sucks the Life Out of You
I have written about loneliness already in this book, but I think one of the biggest battles a person in the military may battle is the loneliness that creeps up on them.
Many civilians do not understand how you can be lonely when you have so many other soldiers around you.
It may be hard to comprehend, but all those other soldiers are from all over the country, and do not relate to your needs of needing to connect with your home. They all have their own worlds of loneliness from not hearing from their own loved ones.
I think the worst time of my own loneliness was while I was stationed in Korea. We were stationed on a small base called Camp Red Cloud. There weren’t a lot of soldiers there. I was with the Army Security Agency, and we were there to help keep the peace plus monitor the radio waves to make sure there were no breaches of security.
Being there made me really feel isolated. I was in a foreign country that didn’t speak my language.
That was only part of it. We realized once we settled in to our duties that the people there didn’t want us to be there. We heard rumors about people throwing rocks at the military trucks as they drove from one place to the next. We were protecting them from North Korea, and they wanted us to leave. Didn’t make sense to me, and I am sure it didn’t make sense to any of you who have gone through the same thing.
My task was to be stationed on top of a high hill-they were all numbered- outside of the camp monitoring the radio waves for breaches of security. My hill was hill 468. Talk about being isolated. It was just one person, alone on top of that hill for twelve hour shifts. I was alone inside a deuce and a half ton truck that was full of radio equipment.
The silence was deafening! Just a slight scratch on the roof of the truck had you grabbing your rifle and aiming it at the door. We had antennas attached to the roof to help us get good reception, and the wind often caused the antennas to rub against the roof of the truck. It sounded like someone was on the roof.
You had to be tough. You couldn’t call down to the camp and ask someone to come up. The rest of them had to go through the same things and they knew exactly why you would be calling. No sissy people allowed!!
During the twelve hours shifts you had free time to think, and I mean deep thinking. It wasn’t good to have such long quite times. You thought about home. You thought about that girlfriend waiting for you. You thought about the fun times you were missing, such as fishing in the lake near the farm where I grew up.
So, I know what loneliness is all about. I know what you each have gone through. I feel your pain.
Loneliness is something we allow to happen. We let it creep into our system like the plague. We don’t fight it enough to make it go away.
After about a month of battling the loneliness in Korea I came up with some ideas to conquer loneliness, and survive. Hopefully it will help you as well, if you are deployed or even a veteran back in civilian life:
Write a journal. Don’t worry about what to write, just write. I wrote about some fun times I had in high school. I wrote about the biggest fish I ever caught as a youngster. I even wrote about being bullied in grade school. By putting down the good and the bad, I was able to release my feelings down on paper. It was like I was having a session with a counselor, only on paper.
I became an avid reader. Reading takes you into another world. A world you become a part of. You feel the pain; the happiness, and the fear the characters go through. They become family and you are guided through their lives in in a way you can learn about coping in your own life.
Send letters home. I know many of you now have SKYP and many other ways to communicate, but the written word seems so much more personal to me. Sending a letter to your family is a direct connection that I can almost guarantee you they will cherish, and keep forever.
Among the books I read was the Bible. I read it every day. I found comfort through many of the passages. I recommend Psalms, Isaiah, Jerimiah, Genesis, and Proverbs from the Old Testament and all of the New Testament.
Don’t let loneliness control your life. Take steps to rid the darkness that it can cause in your life. God is always there for you. He loves you. He even loves me warts and all.
IWILL
Loneliness is a direct cause of depression, and sadness. Try to fill your life with things you enjoy. Don’t sit and think of negative things. Don’t hide from the world where you are stationed overseas. Find things to fill your day that will change your attitude, and give you hope.
Think about this
Isn’t it great that the more we communicate the happier we are?
Keep coming back for more true stories like this. Better yet…go to the top of this page and click on “Subscribe. ” When you do all future posts will come directly to your inbox.
Checking in on you…How are you doing? Are you struggling with memories?
FEAR NOT!
There are over 13,900 fellow veterans here who have your back.
If you are battling mentally, because of your love for others, but it isn’t working, GET HELP!!
Here is a toll free number that you can call 24/7. There are highlyqualified counselors there to help you, and they will no hang up until they know you are OK.
+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 from this site, please let them know.
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It is Thanksgiving. I am searching for things to be thankful for. This year it is hard. So many negative things happening around us.
I will whine a little more here and then show some reasons we should be thankful.
The rioting, the pandemic, and the messed up election, would cause anyone to complain. What can we find to be thankful for?? I have found it by searching and doing research:
We are thankful we live in a free nation. That is because of our brothers and sisters who are deployed today as we speak. They are in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world. There are away from their loved ones. They can’t hug their families. However, they are proud of what they are doing and I say God bless them.
What follows is an actual story about Marines saving a woman’s life. They jumped into action and moved quickly.
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Whenever an emergency arises, people in danger have no better friends than motivated Marines.
Such was the case when a woman on a scooter was struck by a car recently near Marine Barracks Washington, D.C.
With the woman pinned under the car, Marines with Guard Company quickly had to come up with a plan to free her.
Cpl. Denny Bohne and Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Belko quickly realized that they needed to find a way to raise the car so that the woman could be pulled to safety.
Bohne said he and another Marine opened the car’s trunk and found a jack.
“As soon as I grabbed the tire iron, I started jacking the car up from the rear, and Staff Sgt. Belko proceeds to run over to a civilian’s car, grab their jack from their vehicle, and then start jacking up the front of the car,” Bohne said.
Their actions significantly cut down the time it took for emergency responders to pull the woman from underneath the car and start treating her, said Washington, D.C., firefighter Lt. Leo Ruiz, of Engine 18.
“Honestly: If they hadn’t done what they had done, it could have delayed care for that patient,” Ruiz said.
With the help of the Marines and others on the scene, the woman survived.
Belko noted that a lot of people came together to make sure the woman was freed and treated as quickly as possible.
“Marines run to the sound of the guns, so it didn’t surprise me at all that the Marines were there,” Belko said.
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Here is another update of ne equipment the military is getting for the future:
After years in development, soldiers are officially putting the Army’s next-generation short-range air defense system through its paces ahead of its eventual delivery and fielding in Germany. Soldiers from the 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment out of Ansbach, Germany traveled to the White Sands Missile Range to conduct training and operational testing of the Army’s Initial Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (IM-SHORAD) system, the service announced last week.
The IM-SHORAD system consists primarily of a Stryker-mounted 360-degree Avenger air defense turret loaded up with Stinger and AGM-114 Longbow Hellfire missiles (the latter of which are traditionally used in air-to-surface roles), an XM914 30mm cannon, and a 7.62mm machine gun.
The 5-4 ADA will be the first unit to receive the IM-SHORAD system in Germany to replace its aging Humvee-mounted Avenger systems, a move that comes amid the U.S. military’s resurgence in Cold War-style tactics in Europe in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014Top of Form Bottom of Form”There’s a lot of equipment on this machine that will change a lot of aspects for the Air Defense Artillery,” Spc. Andy Mendoza, an air and missile defense crewmember with the 5-4 ADA, said in a statement. The operational training and testing come just weeks after General Dynamics Land Systems announced that the Army had awarded the defense contractor a $1.2 billion contract award to produce, test, and deliver 28 Stryker IM-SHORAD Strykers to the service.
The Army had previouslyselected an IM-SHORAD solution engineered by Leonardo DRS back in June 2018. The service plans on eventually spreading 144 systems across four battalions by as soon as fiscal year 2023. According to Army budget documents, the service plans on spending an additional $1.575 billion through 2025 on acquiring a total of 180 IM-SHORAD Stryker vehicles.
The IM-SHORAD system “provides the Army improved capabilities for defense of maneuver formations and other tactical echelons from low altitude air attack and surveillance,” according to the service’s fiscal year 2021 budget documents.
At the moment, however, the IM-SHORAD is “not quite ready for full production,” hence the soldier testing by the 5-4 ADA, according to the Army statement.
Soldiers “need to get their hands on the system, learn to use it, and then use it just as they would, including trying new things, making mistakes, and otherwise doing the sort of thing that the system designers may not have prepared for,” per the Army.
“Everything might look good on paper, on the board, but until we get through the testing and putting it through its paces, understanding what it’s actually capable of, we won’t know if we’re producing the right system for the Soldier,” Steven Powell, acquisition logistics lead with the IM-SHORAD Program Office, said in a statement.
Sorry the small print here. This old soldier can not figure out how to enlarge. __________________________________________
I would be unforgiven if I didn’t check into how everything is for you. How are things going for you? Is the world turning too fast? You are not alone. There are over 10,160 fellow veterans here and they all have your back.
BUT! If it is too overwhelming for you GET HELP!
Here is a toll free number for you to call 24/7 and the help is free.. There are highly qualified counselors there to help you, and they will not hang up until they know you are OK.
And above all….never, ever, give up! _____________________________________________
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