Update: I misspoke: From My Position and Home Front Six are not related….but…have complimentary stories that link together.

A two milblogs, “From My Position” and “Home Front Six”, chronicle the beginnings of the Valour-IT program, not directly, but by telling the story of a wounded man, who has had to work his way back. He’s one of the fortunate ones, most of what he had before the IED hit his HMMVEE will be restored through the miracle of modern medical advances. Some of our service members will not ever be this lucky and may be user of the Valour-IT advances and adoption for the rest of their lives.

To bring the point home of how important and effective a program we have been pushing for 5 days now, Valour-IT, is so important, take a few moments and read a post by an Army wife, here.

The “teaser:”

Here is the bulk of the post that I made for the Project Valour-IT fundraiser last year. It still holds true today.

One of the things that MacGyver and I have talked about it how we would handle things should he be injured in the line of duty. It’s not a pretty conversation – things like that never are. But I am not a fan of surprises so I’d rather discuss this now, before he deploys.

Those of you who know MacGyver know what type of person he is. He is a very “hands on” type of person. He works a LOT with his hands.
[…]

In that post’s comments, Chuck, with a year plus of time since his wounding, comments in more detail about what it was like:

Let Macgyver (and your friend) know that it really isn’t the end of the world, it’s a setback. I love working with my hands, and do lot of projecs too… everything from brewing beer to refinishing furniture. It takes longer, and I have to take my time and actually watch what I am doing, instead of working by feel, and I think my playstation days ended a long time ago, but the hard thing to get through my head was that it wasn’t the end of the world. You have tyo adapt, and the fixes are neither immediate or easy.
Things that used to be easy, or even so simple I didn’t consider them, are now often insurmountable (like buttoning a cuff or collar.) I was once completely unable to bathe myself, my hands were so sensitive I couldn’t hold the poofy soap things.
[…]

Go and read that, too.

Fuzzilicious Thinking, the other person behind Valour-IT posted comments on Chuck’s comments, to add more depth to the discussion here. It’s also worth your time to click and to understand the issues better.
Read the rest, which is graphic, but it tell of the reality of those who suffer.

I’m getting behind in comms with the team. For you Navy team members who aren’t be ing spammed by me, ship me in an email. I’m trying to pass around ideas to keep the funds on the upward trend.

For anyone who reads this: Keep contacting anyone you can. Sometimes those people you think aren’t interested, will know someone who is very interested.

Ask blogger you read to post for us. Some of the Navy Team has done that with positive responses.

Ok, here we go! I plan to showcase the Navy Team blogs here, because there’s some great stuff, some from new bloggers, to be seen.

Steeljaw Scribe. A retired Navy Captain, who spent the bulk of his career in E-2C Hawkeye Air Early Warning flying. Weekly Posts of “Flight Deck Friday,” discussing Naval Aviation History, usually covering an particular aircraft. He was in the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. He blogged that the few days before and up to 9/11/2006.

We made it! Wide area coverage (kinda like and E-2C on station – only a lot bigger!)

From Army Times:

“Bloggers compete to raise cash for computer charity” by Karen Jowers, Staff writer

A competition is raging among Internet bloggers to see who can raise the most money for voice-activated laptops that will be given to severely disabled service members.

The Veterans Day competition, which is organized by Valour-IT, began Monday. It’s goal is to raise $180,000 in 10 days; as of Thursday morning, the total was up to $51,068.
[…]

Thanks, Karen, for taking an interest!

I’m not going to pull up a bunch of links, for much of my post is commonly known information.

Premises:

Liberals don’t like the military
Liberals think military members are too stupid to get a job “in the real world”
Liberals don’t want the Military recruiting on college campuses
Military recruiting goals continue to be met (which drives liberals crazy)

My analysis:

jfk (for he is not worthy of large letters like the man of stature with those initials who preceded him) last week on a college campus was just out there, using a different tactic to knock back recruiting numbers.

I guess he’s never head of “blowback.”

I’ve commented many times, the Democrats are chasing off the very people who would comprehend strategy and tactics…but, hey, they won’t take my advice.

If you want some real recruiter gouge, check out Station Commando, especially this post! It’s a hoot!

BTW, SC got a hat tip from Chris Muir, the author of the comic strip “Day by Day,” for getting the “Stuck in IraK” picture.

Note: I take no pleasure is seeing someone suffer. One’s misforutne, in this case helps teach us all how lucky we are and I’m passing it along.

A member of Soldier’s Angels cuts one of her pinky fingers the day before Valour-IT starts it’s drive this year.

She gets it. Not a good thing to have to suffer to understand, but this thinker and blogger sees how even a minor disability to her typing skills is but a mere shadow of what many suffer from.

“Lessons Learned – Project Valour-IT”

As you know, I cut my finger pretty severely over the weekend, and am still waiting to find out whether or not I’ll need surgery. The pain has been manageable, but what’s driven me nuts is the impediment to my typing. I normally type about 100 or so words a minute, and now I’m back to feeling like a geek while I try to adjust to not being able to use my pinky. Doing everything with my hands requires some adjustment. I can’t get the stitches wet, so I need to shower with a plastic bag over my left hand. Add that to all the other times that I hit it on something, or have to adjust to the temporary loss of that digit, and it’s annoying at best, pretty painful at worst. At the most, I’ll need surgical correction. Either way, I’ll be splinted for several weeks, and will need physical therapy.

And that’s just one pinky, on one hand. A couple of months, and it’ll likely be back to normal. I can still type, although I have to adjust, and I can still do most things with relatively minor inconvenience. And my injury was do to a moment’s stupidity – my fault.

Read the rest here… and think about it.

Many of us respond to the graphical representations of things far more quickly than a nice tabular green line, wide format data sheet.

Ken of SmadaNek has posted tracking in PICTURES (you know, for us people who didn’t do well at skool and can’t rear or rite):

See it here!

I don’t get it. A national level politician makes a statement in clear English, and, those he spoke off take offense.

The media and the staffers, now, being smarter than us troglodyte type people who can only work at McDonalds or get stuck in Iraq, have to tell us what he really said. Could it be the liberalized education system, more enthralled with telling children to feel, rather than know things (like the English language), has failed us and made us too stupid? I guess we didn’t study hard enough to know what he said wasn’t what he said…our bust, sorry….

But, the pattern I see is a national leader makes a statement in public and, when pinned down by the fire from those offended, he sneaks off to offer an apology in a completely inappropriate forum.

Senator Durbin is the first one I’m talking about. Now, Senator Kerry, makes a public statement and follows it up with more public statements telling us to just swallow the joke he bungled (jokes he loves so well), but, now posts a statement on his web site saying he apologizes for his offense “to anyone he offended” (Yeah, not like I think I did, but if it offended you, then I’m sorry).

Let me see: Durbin doesn’t go to GTMO and face those he called Nazis, but goes to a local (read: Friendly) veterans group in his district, and says he’s sorry to WWII vets. Kerry says lots in public and defends himself in public, but places a post on a website that says something differenet from what he personally is heard saying.

Yep, don’t blame President Bush, Senator Kerry, blame the poor job of liberals in completely brainwashing entire generations so we’d know you didn’t mean what you said.

As we all know, it’s the officers who have to spin the sotiry, but if you want the real gouge, get a senior “Non Comm” and you’ll get the unvarished thruth.

My experience was the Master Chief Petty Officers could deliver a factual, yet blistering report, when necessary, knowing they were in that “place” where the thruth couldn’t be avoided. Sonar Technician Master Chief Petty Officer (Surface Warfare) David Frey was one of those men who I learned early in my career to trust and rely on for straight answers. Later in my service time, I served with him again, with Dave being on many of the inspections I was tasked to run on ships all up and down the East Coast. I watched Dave, on several occassions, resolutely bring the message to officers from the division level, up to ship captains, and also to admirals with various numbers of stars on their collar.

He was polite, yet “professionally insistent” in making sure they got the story right. He was a remarkable shipmate.

This brings me to the words of an Army blogger, one of the early ones, a man of great discernment and one who can tell a story. He’s a Sargent Major now, but his blog is “Sgt Hook.” He’s been there and done it and got a drawer full of t-shirts to prove it all, and most likely has done much more he hasn’t gotten a t for. Listen to him.

He linked this site to his post, but his post, in the post-John Kerry ridiculous remarks era, is worth your careful read, for he says it best in “More Important Missions:”

I went to work this morning more than a little hot under the collar at the implication, whether by botching a joke or not, that your Soldiers were stuck defending freedom because they had somehow failed to work hard in school so I decided to get out of the office and check on my Soldiers. It has gotten quite cold here lately and I thought the crisp air combined with talking to Soldiers would help calm me down and focus on what really matters.

Stopping in the motor pool I came upon a group of mechanics, dressed in coveralls streaked with grease stains, working inside an open bay. The large bay had tall sliding doors on both the front and back of the building and were both wide open. Several mechanics were working on a 40 foot trailer parked in the middle of the chilly bay, while others were attending to a second trailer outside, waiting to be pulled in, and still a third set were atop another trailer outside, on the opposite end having just been pulled out of the bay. When I asked one of them why both sets of doors were open causing them to freeze their asses off. The young mechanic enthusiastically explained that they had devised a system whereby one team worked on the electrical and air systems of the trailer as it waited outside the bay, while another team worked on a trailer that had been pulled into the bay completing services on the undercarriage and wheels, then a third trailer had been pulled out of the bay where another team finished up work on the topside of the trailer. “Kind of like an assembly line?” I asked. “Yes sergeant major, exactly!” he replied going on to explain that they were able to knock out full services on five times as many trailers in this manner than by the three individual teams doing everything on one trailer independently. Pretty smart, I thought. Telling the mechanics to get back to work and stop waisting time talking to the sergeant major, I went in search of more Soldiers.
[…]

Read the entire thing, if you know what’s good for your soul, in these pre-election negative on everything news days.

Bradley Penniston has offered two copies of his book, “No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf”. Details from Beth on how to get them auctioned in the works. If not soon, I may have to crawl on my knees on broken glass to get John of Op-For and the USAF, to see if his guy will also run the eBay auctions for us.

on this fantastic story of leadershaip. training, courage under fire (literally) and enginnering.

Thanks to The USMC Team’s site, Villanous Company, for the header picture of the moment!

Trackbacked at: Thrid World County

Update 7 Nov 2006: More up to date auction info here.

Sorry! No stories today, ‘coz we’re raising money for the wounded troops. Valour-IT Kickoff Post

Link your good stuff (and post this link to Valour-IT at your site!)