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Damn the torpedoes . . . full speed ahead!
Another letter from my father, describing some of his experiences at the end of WWII in the Pacific, when he was a crewman on the USS Bolster, an auxiliary repair ship: At the end of WWII the USS Bolster was on its way to Ulithi Atoll to join the assembled fleet poised for the invasion […]
Another letter from my Dad, this one about his World War II service as a navy gunner aboard the merchant tanker MS Chester Sun. While at boot camp all of us recruits had to take a battery of tests. The top scorers got to choose which school they wanted; all the others had to take the […]
After my father died, I said I’d write more about him. My Uncle Lindley unearthed a letter Dad wrote to me in 1992, describing the ship he was assigned to at the end of World War II, when he was a sailor in the US Navy. Here are some excerpts from Dad’s letter: The Bolster, an Auxiliary Repair Ship […]
My friend Dick Herman, in a comment to an earlier entry, asked for my thoughts on the warrior ethic. For a few years, back when my career was on fire, I was on the staff of a joint command, working with Army, Navy, and Marine officers. Army and Marine officers could philosophize about the warrior […]
My God, we started our Saturday morning bike ride at 6:30 and were toast by 8:00, with a few miles still to go. But we gutted it out to the end, then sat outdoors . . . albeit under patio umbrellas . . . at our local coffee shop. My one concession to the heat was drinking […]
Toward the end of my military career, US Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak instituted a host of changes. He was one of those egomaniacs who, put into a position of great power, are compelled to change everything. He killed Strategic Air Command. He made us rewrite every USAF regulation because he didn’t like the word “regulation.” He […]
. . . or does anyone else see this coming? Even I, a peacenik from way back, have to admit: we can’t leave Iraq. Ever. No matter how bad it gets. So the Iraqis turn out to be unredeemably venal and corrupt, a nation of murderers bent on ethnically cleansing themselves out of existence. So […]
Ever since Ethiopian forces went into Somalia, and more so since this week’s US AC-130 gunship attack on what is said to have been a Somalian Al Qaeda encampment, news commentators and reporters have been talking about Black Hawk Down. As in: “US forces strike Somalia again, more than 13 years after Black Hawk Down.” When […]