Tag: combat

A Day to Honor America’s Combat Wounded and Fallen Heroes

By Executive Order 9277, dated December 3, 1942, the decoration was extended to be applicable to all services and required that regulations of the Services be uniform in application as far as practicable. This executive order also authorized the award only for wounds received.

PURPLE HEART RECIPIENTS

   War I:                     250,000¹

   War II:                    964,409

   Korea:                    136,936

   Vietnam:               200,676

   Persian Gulf:                590

   Afghanistan:             3,495 *

   Iraq:                         34,808 *

   Total Estimated:      1.7 M¹

   NOTE¹:  Estimates only.  Battlefield awards and incomplete records; 1974 fire in St. Louis repository.

   *Data as of 6/20/2009

For Marines serving in Afghanistan, mail call can be a little bit like Christmas in July. A package from home can supply everything from basic needs to small luxuries.

snip

At a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in North Carolina, customers have been donating goods for Marines deployed with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment out of nearby Camp Lejeune.

Assistant Manager Rosa Hamilton says some of the items catch shoppers off guard. “They were like, ‘Clothes pins, huh? I never would have thought about that.’ And we’re like, ‘Well, they don’t have anywhere to hang their clothes,’ ” she says………..Rest Here

Or bring up the NPR Player with this link amd listen to the report

“Camp Hell”!! Pay attention ‘kombat keyboard chickenhawk rambo’ cheerleaders, as well as the greater majority of this population that have forgotten our Two Occupations and the Veterans of, this is what Service in and War, Wars of Choice, Occupations, Look and Sound like!!

Despite 100 Attacks, Unit Leaves Afghan War With No Casualties

‘Camp Hell’ Attacked More Than Any Other Outpost in Afghanistan

A number of reports have sprung up in the last few days following the very tragic shooting by one soldier in killing five of his fellow soldiers at an in country military stress clinic, of which he himself was receiving care.

Military training alone starts the process of the change needed from how most are brought up and what they are taught and told to be able to serve and defend, if needed, this country.

Place these now trained soldiers in a War Zone creating the Occupation of same lasting many years and now in these times many tours being served and not only in one but two and for many the stress of war, what they experience, their individual incidents, what they see, feel, and just know, is overwelming!

They aren’t the only ones, think of those who live in these occupied countries! It also isn’t only a war that creates the traumatic nightmares, individuals that experience trauma in theirs lives also can suffer, most silently, from those traumas!

Below is a number of recent reports, this subject should have been takin seriously many years ago after finally realizing what War and Trauma can do to a Human Being!

Ilona Meagher has just posted on her blog site, PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, an outstanding collection of links and a few video’s on what the subject title describes “Art For, By And About Veterans Begins Sunday” and the link just above will take you to it.

Yesterday, March 8th, was International Women’s Day.

To often when reporting on War the women involved, from those living in the invaded conflict countries to those who are serving in greater numbers and rolls, combat included, are not mentioned enough.

Nor is it brought up enough of the effects of Conflicts on these women involved.

Something to think about this Saturday morning

promoted by ek hornbek

There’s a piece being written on in a number of blogs about a poll that indicates Bush has little support among military families, who probably are not going to vote for a Republican president next year.  It’s surprising to a lot of people who think of the military as an undifferentiated mass that gets told what to do (which is true) and how to think (they get told, but most eventually believe their experience instead).  Their families get lumped in there, too.

Those families used to vote the way their military members did, and military members used to uniformly (sorry) support “conservative” candidates.  I grew up in a military family, right after World War II.  I thought what I was told to think, that conservatism equaled patriotism, until I had enough education and work experience to know differently.  The votes of these families are going to reflect painful and terribly unjust personal experiences.

Any other subject and I would be able to write an essay about defeating a Republican into a masterpiece of clever snark.  This subject encompasses too much pain, too much suffering, and too much destruction.  The magnitude of what has happened to these families, the stories that underly the result of that poll, are just too awful.  I won’t  be able to touch it here, but I offer links that can get readers close, and I defer to them for a description of the ordeals that military families endure.