Xerox has a website up where you can select a greeting card and then send your mesage to our troops (click on the image above to get to the site)!

Why is Xerox doing this? from the FAQ:

Q: Why is Xerox sponsoring this program?
A: Social responsibility has been ingrained in the Xerox culture since our earliest days as a company. The Let’s Say Thanks program provides one more outlet for the company to deliver value to the community and support the men and women stationed overseas.

Thanks, Xerox and the employees who make this happen!

Here’s the link to what the troops say about this program.

Along the way, the site highlights the support of Give 2 the Troops and the work the two programs do together.

So, there are two more ways to help out. Anyone can spare a few words to brighten a day, even if the bank account is looking a little slim right now….

Trackbacked to:
Stuck on Stupid

Simon of Blogasm did a little unscientific survey, but it yielded some data worth scanning:

Premise: After reading a Newsweek article that discussed the lack of diversity in the blogosphere, I instantly became fascinated with the discussion of how the semi-anonymous blogosphere’s diversity compares to the diversity of traditional media. When talking about this Newsweek article, several bloggers pointed out that in many cases, you don’t know the race or gender of a blogger, which theoretically means that there is a somewhat-even playing field based on quality of content alone. But I was surprised that not much was done to actually chart the diversity of the blogosphere to create a frame of reference for these diversity dicussions to take place. So I set out to not only map the diversity of the blogosphere as a whole, but to also map diversity within individual niches.

Methods of experimentation: I emailed 1,000 different bloggers with a 4-question survey that enabled me to statistically chart the diversity of both gender and race within each niche. The 4 questions were:

1. What niche does your blog fall into (Examples: Political, gadget, movie, etc…If more than one, please list)?

2. What are the genders of all the bloggers who write for your site?

3. What are the races for all the bloggers who write for your site (if there are any that you’re not sure about, just indicate that you don’t know)?

4. What do you think of the diversity of the blogosphere, both in your niche and as a whole?

There’s more to read, but here’s where us MilBloggers fell out:

Military Blogs:

Male: 76%
Female: 24%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 100%

More grist for the mill….

It was a quiet day Sunday, so I reached for the remote and scanned the guide list of shows playing. “Patton” was on and had been playing for about an hour….I clicked to the channel and settled back on the couch.

The scene that was playing, when I cut in, was Patton giving a speech to a French audience on Corsica, talking about how he would soon be at work, liberating the homeland of Lafayette. Lots of cheers from the crowd. As he completed the speech, his aide told him the press wanted a few minutes with him.

If this “docudrama” has anything to do with reality, then I’m projecting that George S. Patton suffered as our current day commanders do, but with out instantaneous news cycles:

One an editorialist disguised as a reporter asked him about his future assignments: No comment. Some other questions, then Patton said: “Off the record, they are sending me to Malta.” To that, the editorialist disguised as a reporter asked: “will you be slapping any soldiers in Malta?” as Patton was walking away. Patton stopped, but did not turn around. After a moment, he then stepped off through garden and kept walking away. Sound familiar?

A few scenes later, a German staff officer delivers a message to a general. The General expresses dismay (this part was subtitled) that Patton was now moving to the central Mediterrean and starts barking orders to get more troops moved to Greece and Crete, and to let the Italians defend their own country. They had to get ready for the offensive Patton would surely be heading up.

So, once again, if the story presented has a degree of truth, then the media was leaking critical information to the enemy back in the early 40s.

There were other scenes where the press dogged the great military mind and General Bradley had to corral him several times, to prevent the Allies and later the US from being embarassed.

So what has really changed, except the speed of the news cycle?

Just thinking….

Oh, and speaking of the accuracy of the movie, I found this site that discusses the very issue:

Despite the way the movie makes it seem, Patton did not sack men without a moment’s regard to them, he did not curse like a sailor, he did not believe in “victory at all costs” in spite of casualty lists. He had a paternal care for his men unlike any other great military leader – he knew that little things, like a hot meal and dry socks, contributed more to victory than all the ammunition in the world. Why did Patton’s men love him so much? Because he never expected more from them than he was willing to give himself. A Third Army sentry recounted his only meeting with Patton as,“Oh, yes, I knew Patton, though I only saw him once. We were stuck in the snow and he came by in a jeep. His face was awful red, and he must have been about froze, riding in that open jeep. He yelled to us to get out and push, and first thing I knew, there I was with General Patton pushing right alongside of me.”

Quoted from “Patton Uncovered” by B. E. Boland.

After reading this page, the secondary lesson is Hollywood, as now, was distorting the true nature of military leaders in order to grab the audience….so what else is new?

And…for you staff officers, or those subject to a higher headquarters, this quote that indicates the some of the materiall on B. E. Boland’s book:

Yet, incredibly, General Patton himself was removed from the command of Third Army in disgrace. In >“Patton Uncovered” you can delve into the high-level politics surrounding the military maneuvers, and learn of the deceit, treachery, betrayal and back-stabbing that were commonplace at headquarters.

So, once more, as I said above: “so what else is new?”

Three lessons, one movie, and discovery of a book that seeks the truth of it all.

It might be true, it might be not, but it came into my email inbox today:

LETTER FROM A FARM KID
(NOW AT San Diego MARINE CORPS RECRUIT TRAINING)

Dear Ma and Pa,

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. but I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.

Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you until noon when you get fed again. It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.

We go on “route marches,” which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it’s not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

The country is nice but awful flat. The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don’t bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move, and it ain’t shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home. I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5’6″ and 130 pounds and he’s 6’8″ and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Alice G

It’s Wednesday once more. Send your trackbacks!

The “sea story” of this day is not a humorous one, but is a story of my experience the one time I personally had to inform someone they had a family member in the hospital, with about 0% chance of survival. It’s one of those things you may have to do in the performance of your duties while on deployment and up the chain of command.

I was executive officer (XO) and we were deployed to the Persian Gulf. It was in the latter half of the deployment and, thankfully, they had modified the operational schedule for us to patrol the northern area of the gulf, as a reward for having spent the first half of deployment operating in the Straits of Hormuz (SOH)/North Arabian Sea (NAS). This change put us close to Mina Sulman, Bahrain and the logistics head of the 5th Fleet.

The Captain called me to his cabin and handed me a Red Cross message. Generally, that’s not a good thing. In this case, it was a very bad thing. The few month old baby of one of our petty officers was in the hospital back home on life support, having been taken there when his wife found the baby not breathing in his crib. It was now my job to get things rolling to get him home ASAP, and I also would be the one to notify him of the medical emergency.

I got back to my stateroom and called down to admin and got PN1 Weber going on cutting orders. I called the Ops Boss and put him to work contacting the ASU in Bahrain. I had the Combat Systems Officer find the man and bring him to my stateroom.

In that short time, while I awaited his arrival, the crew involved had arranged for a helo to come and get him, and a seat on the contract air carrier out of Bahrain after midnight. Better yet, the helo had been flying and would be able to get to us soon. The logisitics in support of this difficult moment clicked together in less than 30 minutes.

I had the petty officer come in and sit down while I closed the door for some privacy. The moment was difficult, and it’s hard to know what to say, keeping in mind you’re 6,000 miles from home and a life is hanging by a thread. It is more than humbling to realize the right words are elusive, even if you have a good vocabulary.

I told him his son was in the hospital in Charleston and we had arranged for him to be flow into Bahrain for a flight home that night. I handed him the Red Cross message and sat silently while he read the few short lines of (bad) news from home. He said nothing. I told him how sorry I was, and he needed to get below and get a bag packed, so he could get home. He was not a man who drew attention to himself, but he was one of those who got the job done, and sort of stayed back in the shadows, but he was even quiter now. I can only figure the emotional shock was gripping him. He stood, I opened the door and told him to let us know what we could do, and to contact the squadron when he got home. We would notify them of the case.

Off he went to pack, and shortly there after, we set flight quarters for the “Desert Duck” to do the “pax transfer.”

The sad part was the baby had no hope, but he was able to be with his wife for the decision on whether to continue life support.

In the military, you are fully engaged in the lives of those you serve with. There are the good times, the parties and tactical successes to tell of in later years, but these type of moments are a part and parcel of the experience as well.

Cross Posted at:

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Stuck on Stupid

Welcome back and remember: Inline tracks backs are working! C’mon…show me your work!

Today’s “sea story” is not one of humor, but one of finding out I was in the presense of a man who almost was one of the original Project Mercury astronauts….

It’s a repeat, but from my earlier days of blogging, and a story I think is worth sharing once again. Capt Hawkins was quite a man. I include why such a fine leader never made flag rank, either….

Posted in the comments by Station Commando as a “war story” (he’s in the Army):

Being that I’m in the Army I don’t have any sea stories but here’s a good story along the same lines as yours. When the movie Tears of the Sun was being filmed I was stationed in Hawaii (where they filmed the movie.)

We received a request for any black Infantrymen who we thought we could do without for a few weeks to go be extras for the movie. They wanted black soldiers because they were playing the Nigerian soldiers in the movie. Our company sent four people over. One of them returned later that day because the movie people didn’t think he had dark enough complexion to pass for a Nigerian soldier, the other three were accepted.

They were going to be working on the movie all day every day for about 4 weeks. About 2 days into it they kicked one of our guys back. This guy was the biggest, dumbest klutz you’ve ever seen. Whenever the movie people would film a scene he would always be falling down or losing his fake AK-47. In one scene where all the Nigerians run through a small river bed he actually ran the wrong way, realized he was going the opposite direction as everyone else, and then promptly dropped his rifle in the river and had if float away. While everybody else was charging ahead he was chasing his rubber rifle down the river, falling down the whole way.

They gave him his check and sent him on his way.

The rest of the guys got paid pretty well (about $700 a week if I remember right) and got to tell everyone they were in the movie. They did say that for all you hear about Bruce Willis supporting the troops he never once came and said a word to any of the guys there and they were instructed by someone with the movie that if they said anything to him, even in passing, they would be promptly fired.

They also said that Bruce Willis didn’t so much as run up a hill. They had the stunt double do anything that would result in so much as breaking a mild sweat. I guess that’s Hollywood for you.

Part III left us hanging with lots and lots of engagements with simulated TASMs of simulated and constructive targets, and now we got around throught the Striats of Florida and parked south of Eglin AFB for the firing to two test rounds.

Not only was there tight OPSEC (operational security) around this because of the implication of the Soviets getting wind of the exercise and gathering data, but a family member of one of the staff at EGLIN was a member of Greenpeace and that organization had a plan, also. Something about finding out the time the Tomahawks would jet across the Flordia panhandle, overflying I-10, so they might park an 18 wheeler, equipped with barrage balloons to be sent aloft in a tethered configuration to try to stop the missiles.

I’m not sure if they figured they’d work in a deterrent mode and we’d just not launch, or if they thought they’d be able to “wing” a 450kt, one ton flying machine and bring it down. If the latter, rather than the former, I think they hadn’t thought out the negative pblicity that might come the way of Greenpeace if bits of high speed debris smacked into homes, vehicles or playgrounds along the ballistic path towards “the scene of the crash.”

Be that as it was, no balloons were sighted on the day of the test firing. We were embarked aboard USS CONOLLY (DD-979), and the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office (JCMPO) officers accompanied us as well. As officers, we all demonstrated our concern by standing behind the well trained fire controlmen of CONOLLY. Many, many things were double, triple and quadruple checked, but the firing went as planned inthe late morning. The afternoon was scheduled for the IOWA’s shot. Long story short (shortened because I don’t recall all the details), problems arose and the decision was made to wait until the following morning to try again. We had heloed over to IOWA after CONOLLY fired and got the grand tour by Capt Larry Seachrist. She certainly was a magnificent ship and the crew very proud of their charge. Gun Plot was quite a highlight of the tour, with the WWII era computational equipment still in pristine order and able to put 2000 lb rounds on targets 23 miles away.

Back to CONOLLY for the night, then up for the shot. By mid-day, things had cleared up and the bird left the armored box launcher as planned. The rest of the flight was not a success. Part way along the flight path, the missile suddenly deployed the recovery chute, which, as one might expect, caught the chase pilots by surprise. The good part was the TLAM was over land and an unpopulated area. The standby explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) detachment scrambled from Eglin in an Navy SH-3 and secured the missile.

We packed up our cruise boxes on CONOLLY and heloed off to Eglin, where BOQ accomodations awaited. We anxiously awaited a chance to sleep, as we had pretty much had none over the last 6 days. We checked in and I got in my room, set my bag down and the phone rang: “Get down to the Commodore’s room so we can capture the lessons learned while they are fresh in our minds.” So much for sleep, but we did get some useful stuff on paper. The next day we flew back to Norfolk in a Navy 707 from Pax River, one equipped for data collection and had been used for the Tomahawk shots. We got a little sleep then.

We were “blooded” now with Tomahawk experience and one of the reports we had committed to in our own Op Order was a lessons learned report to the chain of command in a few months. Part V will provide the interesting details of the “fallout” of the development of tactics for a notional battleship battle group (BBBG), in addtion to the value of digging up enough detail to know what you’re talking about when you have to take some performance data forward.

Up for reading: Part V – The Final Chapter!

“Something in the air” is a recent post at Neptunus Lex.

Subject matter: As the political debate in the execution of the GWoT continues, how is this affecting those who serve?

The main post is a well thought out, well stated point of view of a prefessional warrior, an aviator, and a man who has held command in a combat role. He is no stranger to the intricacies of conflict, and a well studied man, or men and events, as well.

The discussion is a sane, polite discourse, wtih those on both sides of the issue, complete with some links to supportive information for consideration.

If you need to see such temperate, yet controversial, discussions can still be held, it’s up to you to click and go read…and join if you will, in the sharing of ideas.

Over on Black Five, a story sent in by a soldier known to the blogosphere as “Questing Cat” talks about the junior soldiers in the light of the reality of youth, combat, and NCOs, and he uses that long known term “The New Guys” to describe the message.

QC is back in Iraq, on his second tour. During his last tour, he posted a raw, detailed and intense story of exercising his Combat Life Saver (CLS) skills one day on the battlefield. He wrote it shortly after returning from the mission and it was the kind of writing that told the story of what that medical aid person is going through as he takes care of a wounded comrade. That blog is no longer available (see note), but will most likely be featured in Black Five’s upcoming book, where he has collected and edited the best of military blogs. The book is close to being published.

For those who have served, you will instantly know you were one once. The comments by the readers have add on stories to confirm and amplify on QC’s excellent shot of life via his writing.

History. The military taking the lead in the changing of the society on the issue of racial integration.

In 1943, on this day: Commissioning of USS Harmon (DE 678), first Navy ship named for an African-American Sailor.

This is the quick story of the man the ship is named for:

Poster featuring Mess Attendant Harmon and USS Harmon (DE-678), which was named in his honor. He was killed in action on board USS San Francisco (CA-38) during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, 13 November 1942. For his heroism in that action, Mess Attendant Harmon was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. The poster also features the text of his award citation and a representation of the Navy Cross medal.

A fitting namesake for the ships that are at the tip of the spear, even today.