| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Gray Shockley" |
| Date: |
06 Sep 2005 01:34:26 PM |
| Object: |
Re: good on you, friend |
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 08:14:25 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote:
Glad to see your still kicking.
Did you happen to catch the president's
jaunt through Biloxi then?
I heard about 8-10 minutes of the Mississippi Public Radio broadcast of
national as well as original programming and local newsfeeds.
It was his second stop on the ground,
and he started to babble incoherently,
making what sounded to me like a personal promise
to provide a young victim with clothing and food.
He'd get it for her, he said...
Next cutaway from the Big Easy,
and they went to Laura up in a N.Central LA evacuee center.
She looked haggard, but was coherent.
That's par, apparently, for "conservative Republicans". Our first Republican
governor in about a hundred years (an ***** named Fordice) shacked up during
his second term, got divorced, re-married, got divorced and died.
His first wife ["Pat"] is still asked to do all sorts for the state and is,
generally, respected by all for her intellience and graciousness. The line
was, of course, "We eleceted the wrong Fordice". The Democrat was only
slightly better than that Gov.
But Barbour has not been doing nearly as badly as he could have done. I'm
suspending judgment until I know more - remember you know what's going on
much more than I do.
GW wasn't shown again
until he was interfering with ***** repair.
About the only plus I've seen so far is
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore.
Everybody's eyes lighted up when we heard his last name. The phrase was,
"Wow! A three-star -------!; I didn't know we had one!". [------- is a local
- mainly Louisiana and the southwestern part of Mississippi - word which
means "Gentleman or Lady of Cajun descent and background" and, if one doesn't
know better, sounds /seriously/ racist.]
I'd add Nagin and Blanco to the list of good guys, btw.
If they leave him alone and keep him well supllied,
he'll get it under control ASAP.
Real comfortable going one on one with the enlisted.
His orders will be followed.
also, in case you haven't seen it,
i dissed your gov a bit:
Message-ID:
<1125378846.466598.271190@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
i am not a fan of him.
anyone threatening to shoot looters
before a natural disaster hits,
holds humanity in very low esteem.
With exceptions, I agree with him. Groceries and hardware for lifesaving and
drug store for lifesaving are fine.
People were breaking into stores, stealing guns and then shooting at
helicopters that were air ambulances and there was firing on people trying to
build those levies back.
I shocked a friend - who I thought knew me better - when I suggested that the
air ambulances be escorted by helicopter gunships and that - at any sign of a
weapon being fired - that the gunship(s) open up with the minigun and rockets
and try to kill the attackers.
Those who fired upon the Corps contractors yesterday (?) were killed. And
they got exactly what they deserved.
If I saw a bunch of looters going out of a store with teevees and rifles and
such, I would summarily execute them.
A woman, in New Orleans, was in labor - contractions still minutes apart -
when her 5-year-old started have really serious problems breathing (can you
imagine what asthma is like in New Orleans right now? - some of the corpses
will have stopped breathing with no external causes) and she took him,
jumpred from the window and swam for thirty minutes to get help.
I was asked what my criterion was for kicking a bad soldier out. My response
was - no matter how much I wanted to "save" someone - when my service to "the
good ones" was starting to suffer, the "bad ones" were going and going right
now.
And it's the same thing in any combat zone except - in these zones - it's
right now.
Those people looting an electronics shop are going to be quickly executed so
we can get that 5-year-old's breathing problems cured.
And I would pull that trigger and execute those looters at least as quickly
as I would a rabid animal. A little faster, perhaps, because the rabies isn't
the fault of the four-legged animal.
There's - every once in a while - a choice whether to be human or not. It's
always "interesting" to help someone realize that s/he has made that choice.
I would help that woman at the risk of my life without even thinking about it
- it would be reflex.
I would execute that looter - in a heartbeat - without even thinking about
it. It would be reflex.
Stop the poison before it kills the innocents.
Am I killing people that weren't shooting, that were just there with the
shooter? I could care less. If one can stop a killing and doesn't, one is a
killer and if that person dies with the actual killer who pulled the trigger,
sorry 'bout that.
One often hears, "You've made your decision, now live with it." It's rarer to
hear, "You've made your decision, now die for it" but it is equally true. A
thousand times a day, each and every person affirms life or affirms death. It
is everyone's choice as long as we live.
Oh, if you want a bellylaugh or giggle, I'm against capital punishment.
Gray Shockley
--------------------------------------------------------
When trouble arises and things look bad,
there is always one individual who perceives
a solution and is willing to take command.
Very often, that individual is crazy. -Author Unk
---------------------------------------
xferred message:
Ê Ê ÊAn_Ass_Innate-->Halley Barbour
Ê ÊThe Gov was on CNN saying he'd get medieval
Ê Êon anybody in Mississippi caught looting
Ê Êdon't really matter or care if his poor folk
Ê Êwho couldn't afford the gas and a motel,
Ê Êhad stuck it out on the delta lowlands,
Ê Êare hungry, and nobody's gonna be at
Ê ÊThe Winn-Dixie til next Monday.
Ê ÊAmerica has food spoilage all the time.
Ê ÊIt don't give them a right
Ê Êto steal it before it spoils.
Ê ÊThe can wait in back by the dumpster,
Ê Êpleading for some Charitable Christian handouts
Ê Êlike the rest of the no accounts, and
Ê Êthank Jesus that thay lived in the USA instead of Niger.
is governor of a state that has
human carcasses floating face down in flood waters,
and he emphasises on TV that retribution
will be swift and brutal against looters?
Now that's Pure Pro Business Politiking,
Êand compassionate conservatism in action!
.
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| User: "sue_doe_cy_ants" |
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| Title: Re: good on you, friend |
06 Sep 2005 04:50:26 PM |
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Gray Shockley wrote:
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 08:14:25 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote:
Glad to see your still kicking.
Did you happen to catch the president's
jaunt through Biloxi then?
I heard about 8-10 minutes of the Mississippi Public Radio broadcast of
national as well as original programming and local newsfeeds.
It was his second stop on the ground,
and he started to babble incoherently,
making what sounded to me like a personal promise
to provide a young victim with clothing and food.
He'd get it for her, he said...
Next cutaway from the Big Easy,
and they went to Laura up in a N.Central LA evacuee center.
She looked haggard, but was coherent.
That's par, apparently, for "conservative Republicans". Our first Republican
governor in about a hundred years (an ***** named Fordice) shacked up during
his second term, got divorced, re-married, got divorced and died.
His first wife ["Pat"] is still asked to do all sorts for the state and is,
generally, respected by all for her intellience and graciousness. The line
was, of course, "We eleceted the wrong Fordice". The Democrat was only
slightly better than that Gov.
I remember pat Fordice. She's still alive?
The Gov. is only familiar to me in name.
But Barbour has not been doing nearly as badly as he could have done. I'm
suspending judgment until I know more - remember you know what's going on
much more than I do.
My dislike for Barbour this time around was his
gung-ho looters will be shot before the storm,
but his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday
right after Aaron Broussard
broke down crying on National TV
didn't improve my attitude.
I just ran into a Wonkette post
that states it wery well with a video link:
<http://www.wonkette.com/politics//the-cavalry-didnt-come-123792.php>
GW wasn't shown again
until he was interfering with ***** repair.
About the only plus I've seen so far is
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore.
Everybody's eyes lighted up when we heard his last name. The phrase was,
"Wow! A three-star -------!; I didn't know we had one!". [------- is a local
- mainly Louisiana and the southwestern part of Mississippi - word which
means "Gentleman or Lady of Cajun descent and background" and, if one doesn't
know better, sounds /seriously/ racist.]
I'd add Nagin and Blanco to the list of good guys, btw.
Yeah Nagin hung until the bodies started to stack up around him.
Blanco did alright considering everything too.
Sen. Mary L. (i'd have to look up the proper spelling)
went up a notch or two in my book also.
GW is going to have to duck when she's around for a while.
When she said she'd punch him if she met him face to face,
i got the image of GW getiing stomped pretty hard,
she was angry.
Here's is another Wonkette that is going to ***** you off,
but it needs to be spread around:
<http://www.wonkette.com/politics//chertoffs-reading-habits-123841.php>
that one is a lame excuse of Chertoff's
blown out of the water with one shot.
As for Honore being a racist, I didn't get that from his demenor,
but that isn't always a real tell.
It would be hard in today's Army to become 3 Star if
it was blatant, and it would be hard for him to be
straight into the soldier's face
without being threatening officer too.
Let me give a bit of bio here for reference.
I grew up in Las Vegas, but outer valley on a twenty acre horse
property.
We grew our own hay for the most part, alfalfa.
It grows well in the desert, if you have the water for it,
and back then everyone had more water than they could use.
Wells were generally less than one hundred feet down for irrigation,
and sometimes good drinking at that depth too.
We mostly stabled other peoples horses,
but always had a few of our own too.
My parents were lifer Republicans, my dad is still alive,
and I doubt that he likes one current well known Republican,
but he still votes them. In '64 my parents were up in the
black part of town registering voters, and couldn't understand
why they wouldn't register in the party of Lincoln.
I saw a bit of political arguing you were doing recently
is why I wanted to tell you this. '64 was the first
election I really paid attention too, and out west,
the J.Birchers weren't racist, at least the ones around us.
'68 was a big change though. I think many of the Birchers
I'd met became early libertarians when Nixon came around.
the rest all ended up looking and acting like Bolton.
'69 I won the lottery, and because of religious upbringing
went in as medic. Did one tour, more than fucking enough.
that's bout it for now. I just wanted to show you
some of the differences in what I read in your thread
about '60s Mississippi Politics. It struck me as
both dissonant and correct.
With exceptions, I agree with him. Groceries and hardware for lifesaving and
drug store for lifesaving are fine.
People were breaking into stores, stealing guns and then shooting at
helicopters that were air ambulances and there was firing on people trying to
build those levies back.
I shocked a friend - who I thought knew me better - when I suggested that the
air ambulances be escorted by helicopter gunships and that - at any sign of a
weapon being fired - that the gunship(s) open up with the minigun and rockets
and try to kill the attackers.
Those who fired upon the Corps contractors yesterday (?) were killed. And
they got exactly what they deserved.
If I saw a bunch of looters going out of a store with teevees and rifles and
such, I would summarily execute them.
I don't know, but remember, i was nocombatant,
stupid enough to come out of choppers under fire, unarmed,
grew up believing thou shall not kill is a literal absolute,
and saw too many dead people, so I have hard-wired blocks.
Something people need to remember is that
when it all falls apart and the darkness descends,
there are many who find their humanity is a thin veil,
there are many who break further on in.
It takes friends and authorities to keep it in check.
And besides, if the going was ugly enough, I'm sure
you'd be in picking up a rifle and several boxes of shells too,
if you didn't have one, and believed you or yours lives depended on it.
Most of the other stuff, I blame on poverty,
a consumer society, and really low level logic processes.
You have no use for a TV when the darkness has come
A woman, in New Orleans, was in labor - contractions still minutes apart -
when her 5-year-old started have really serious problems breathing (can you
imagine what asthma is like in New Orleans right now? - some of the corpses
will have stopped breathing with no external causes) and she took him,
jumpred from the window and swam for thirty minutes to get help.
I was asked what my criterion was for kicking a bad soldier out. My response
was - no matter how much I wanted to "save" someone - when my service to "the
good ones" was starting to suffer, the "bad ones" were going and going right
now.
And it's the same thing in any combat zone except - in these zones - it's
right now.
Those people looting an electronics shop are going to be quickly executed so
we can get that 5-year-old's breathing problems cured.
I'd probably take the view,
just stay the ***** out of my way, and you can walk away.
Why add to the darkness if it isn't absolutely necessary?
And I would pull that trigger and execute those looters at least as quickly
as I would a rabid animal. A little faster, perhaps, because the rabies isn't
the fault of the four-legged animal.
There's - every once in a while - a choice whether to be human or not. It's
always "interesting" to help someone realize that s/he has made that choice.
I would help that woman at the risk of my life without even thinking about it
- it would be reflex.
I would execute that looter - in a heartbeat - without even thinking about
it. It would be reflex.
Stop the poison before it kills the innocents.
I would be unable to. I have tried to save enemies,
after my own were stable, and I have seen the same
bewildered look as they bleed out.
War to me was only people who didn't deserve it dying,
while the people who deserved it, sat in their legislatures
having pissing contests. Nothing that would Further.
I have put my hand on the shoulder of a friend and
said don't shoot at the ox, the sky, the bush
for no reason other than anger, it only increases the madness.
That same friend would pour 50cal over my head
in a well aimed pattern when i was humping back casualties,
and i found it comforting at those times.
I have wanted to die, to trade places with friends,
or just to get it over with, but still i am.
Am I killing people that weren't shooting, that were just there with the
shooter? I could care less. If one can stop a killing and doesn't, one is a
killer and if that person dies with the actual killer who pulled the trigger,
sorry 'bout that.
One often hears, "You've made your decision, now live with it." It's rarer to
hear, "You've made your decision, now die for it" but it is equally true. A
thousand times a day, each and every person affirms life or affirms death. It
is everyone's choice as long as we live.
Oh, if you want a bellylaugh or giggle, I'm against capital punishment.
Gray Shockley
Were you lifer military?
It 's not an insult, btw.
maybe i'll tell you a story about
an Army Doc and a Marine Lt.Col. someday.
I believe that I owe him my life.
not now though, effin memories
can start up the wildfires,
and this last week has been intense.
Different paths, friend,
still I glad yours didn't end this last week.
will peace,
but keep your cartridges dry.
.
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| User: "Gray Shockley" |
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| Title: Re: good on you, friend [oops! No, No, No.] |
07 Sep 2005 01:32:21 PM |
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On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 16:50:26 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126043426.416350.85200@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
As for Honore being a racist, I didn't get that from his demenor,
I was being unclear - totally - unclear.
General Honore is a "coonass" and that sounds racist if one is not from
around Louisiana or southwest Mississippi.
If there are any racists in the military at Colonel or above, they hide it
awfully well.
Racism is simply not tolerated.
General Honore is - to put it simply - one of the best of the best. Notice
that this was the person that Mayor Nagin immediately starting to listen to.
but that isn't always a real tell.
It would be hard in today's Army to become 3 Star if
it was blatant, and it would be hard for him to be
straight into the soldier's face
without being threatening officer too.
My own, immediate re-action to Gen Honore was that someone, finally, did
something right - he was the first person I saw on teevee that is part of the
Katrina effort even looked competent. He /is/ competent.
I'll tell ya about the two-star a block from me sometime.
Gray Shockley
-------------------------------------------------
One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.
- Jubal Harshaw (Channeled through RAH)
.
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| User: "sue_doe_cy_ants" |
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| Title: officers, and some gentlemen |
08 Sep 2005 02:47:13 AM |
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Gray Shockley wrote:
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 16:50:26 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126043426.416350.85200@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
As for Honore being a racist, I didn't get that from his demenor,
I was being unclear - totally - unclear.
General Honore is a "coonass" and that sounds racist if one is not from
around Louisiana or southwest Mississippi.
If there are any racists in the military at Colonel or above, they hide it
awfully well.
Racism is simply not tolerated.
General Honore is - to put it simply - one of the best of the best. Notice
that this was the person that Mayor Nagin immediately starting to listen to.
I always seemed to have words for 2nd LTs, after humping their men,
i never recall any of them positively.
Funny what a doc can get away with at certain moments.
Captains could go either way in my mind,
but interactions with Colonels have usually been agreeable.
I've only met a general once, recently, USAF-Ret deuce;
cross country flight in spring '04, and we had
a fairly civil discussion about our different
polictical world views, before he told me his background.
(I decided the Admin lied
about the case for Iraq War, in Oct '03,
and consider that to be reprehensible)
He was a lifer Republican, and from what i gathered,
probably sat on military/industrial corporate boards,
but he wasn't specific. He was also very agreeable
about my analysis that our turning away from Pakistan
at Bora Bora was a great blunder in strategy. Sometimes
I wonder if lifer republicans can even think rationally
when making political choices. He knew bush was a
*****-up, yet was going to vote for him anyway.
When our conversation got around to my mil history,
he was actually apologetic about Vietnam.
He laughed when i started tearing into
Senator Saxby "my aching knees" Chambliss.
Damn amazing random experiences in life sometimes.
(in case your are unaware of it, Chambliss
evaded using the 4-F: knees excuse, but has often
bragged about his long term jogging habit.
He questioned Cleland's patriotism in an
election campaign, and still won; in Georgia.
Yet no one believes me when i claim that it
has always been the right that disrespects vets.
I could actually get angry enough to cause Chambliss
grievious harm for slamming an amputee.
that's a personal affront to my honour, and memories.)
.
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| User: "sue_doe_cy_ants" |
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| Title: hope your newsreader tags and bags |
09 Sep 2005 04:58:05 PM |
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Gray Shockley wrote:
On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 16:50:26 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126043426.416350.85200@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
As for Honore being a racist, I didn't get that from his demenor,
I was being unclear - totally - unclear.
General Honore is a "coonass" and that sounds racist if one is not from
around Louisiana or southwest Mississippi.
If there are any racists in the military at Colonel or above, they hide it
awfully well.
Racism is simply not tolerated.
If you're still keeping a list
of the good, bad and sluttish of Katrina,
I'd like to nominate the NO Chief of Police,
Eddie Compass as one of the good.
I picked up a Larry King interview of him
the other night. Honest, and didn't dwell on the bad.
When asked about the deserters, he mentioned
that some were most likely dead in their homes,
others had family matters they considered more important,
and the rest were cowards that we wasn't going to waste
time thinking about. then he went on to talk up
the officers who hung in the face of the darkness.
===========================
Then there the matter of pointing out
a bit of data on a Miss. Senator,
you might not be aware of:
you ought to be aware after the last couple of days
that i'm inclined to rave loudly at times
tossing in dispersions intemperately.
What use is usenet,
if one cannot wax hyperbolic upon it,
when the time for it has arisen?
And this bit of pure BS PR is an act of depravity:
<http://tinyurl.com/85wh8>
Riley, and possibly Barbour are the only ones
who looks as if they might have
actually lost any sleep in this whole group.
WTF is the FEMA guy weariing anyway?
Formal wear?
The look of satisfaction on their faces
is suggestive of a recent circle jerk,
and i admit that times of rampant death
bring forth a primal need to engage in savagery,
but presently, I've settled down, a bit...
and don't feel the passion of the howling.
No promises though, Lott has an ability to *****
me off, but his thrashing by Frist seems to have
humbled him, or made him carefully vengeful.
You have a need to know about this though.
If in the next election cycle, American only elected
crack heads to Federal Office, the uptick in morality
would be perceptible even to an uninformed tourist.
=================
["
We've got a lot of rebuilding to do.
First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation.
And then we're going to help these communities rebuild.
The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now --
that out of this chaos is going to come
a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before.
Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house
-- he's lost his entire house --
there's going to be a fantastic house.
And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)
"]
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
White House - September 2, 2005
President Arrives in Alabama, Briefed on Hurricane Katrina
Mobile Regional Airport, Mobile, Alabama
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050902-2.html>
=================
Bush had before he went to meet the truly homeless
had already promised Trent that he get a "fantastic"
house out of the deal.
The parenthetical laughter at the end is brutal.
Also, what is the import of the period within the parentheses?
And "the rubbles" is classic bushistic linguistics.
Weren't they the Flintstones' neighbors?
Media file url pointer - Real Player
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050902-2.v.html>
========================================
Then tie the PR BS from above
with this excerpted Salt Lake Tribune story:
Salt Lake Tribune - September 6, 2005
Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA
By Lisa Rosetta
<http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197>
Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight
hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing
here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national
television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after
working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly
trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton
Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout
the United States by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency
workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be
community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout
the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone
number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at
the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed
them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the
federal agency.
[. . .]
"They've got people here who are search-and- rescue
certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas
firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-
harassment class while there are still [victims] in
Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."
The firefighter, who has encouraged his superiors back home
not to send any more volunteers for now, declined to give
his name because FEMA has warned them not to talk to
reporters.
[. . .]
Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost
borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence.
Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters'
vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal
government.
[. . .]
Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the
debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and
fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many
people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in
Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered
onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first
assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours
devastated areas.
=====================================
And we are not supposed to criticise
this Son of a Bush?
=======================================
and if you get a chance,
peruse this bit of ugliness from early this year.
This one is personally offensive, it is no joke.
I've networked it as far as I can, and I like
to disperse it into the wind whenever possible.
Like I said, it's personal.
I offends most who have done a tour in a war zone.
It is an act of evil to steal a moment such as this
with the intent of distoring it into pro-war propaganda.
<http://www.prwatch.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5319>
Marines perceive insults to corpsmen to be
worse that insulting the Corps itself.
Soldiers almost worship their docs.
Please Pass it along.
.
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| User: "Gray Shockley" |
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| Title: Re: hope your newsreader tags and bags |
10 Sep 2005 12:23:55 AM |
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On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 16:58:05 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126303085.387660.300340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
Marines perceive insults to corpsmen to be
worse that insulting the Corps itself.
Soldiers almost worship their docs.
Please Pass it along.
One of my good mornin', mate and please pass the paper and top of the morning
to you and I've got three classes and five tests today coffee drinking
buddies had been a corpman with the Marines.
He also hitched a ride with an APC one bright day and his left arm was about
six inches long and he was missing part of his hip.
I don't remember his actual name, he was the only one of us who didn't have a
first name. He's still probably "Doc" to this day.
Did you know that the Marine Corps doesn't have Corpsmen? I got an eye test
at Quantico one time and I've never seen so many Navy folks - everybody in
the hospital - more or less - that far from the water.
++ gray
.
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| User: "sue_doe_cy_ants" |
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| Title: Re: hope your newsreader tags and bags |
11 Sep 2005 12:21:07 AM |
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Gray Shockley wrote:
On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 16:58:05 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126303085.387660.300340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
Marines perceive insults to corpsmen to be
worse that insulting the Corps itself.
Soldiers almost worship their docs.
Please Pass it along.
One of my good mornin', mate and please pass the paper
and top of the morning
to you and I've got three classes and five tests today coffee drinking
buddies had been a corpman with the Marines.
He also hitched a ride with an APC one bright day
and his left arm was about
six inches long and he was missing part of his hip.
I don't remember his actual name, he was the only one of us
who didn't have a first name.
He's still probably "Doc" to this day.
Did you know that the Marine Corps doesn't have Corpsmen? I got an eye test
at Quantico one time and I've never seen so many Navy folks - everybody in
the hospital - more or less - that far from the water.
It's always been one of the duties of the Navy
to bandage the butts of Marines, and the corpsmen
are about the only sailors all Marines always respect,
although sentient Marines respect SEALS, or may end up
learning respect the hard way in a barroom brawl.
SEALS may be as crazy as Aussie SAS.
APCs...when I was still a N00b in country,
i asked why GIs sat on their helmets,
or on the sandbags that masqueraded as body armor,
when riding on APCs. The answer was enough
to convince me to never hitch a ride on one,
and seeing casualties from inside APCs
reinforced this thought. They had a very bad
habit of allowing random rounds inside of their armor,
which then bounced around off of the walls murderously.
GI's sat on their protection riding APCs, literally,
to keep their asses from getting blown off.
.
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| User: "Gray Shockley" |
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| Title: Re: hope your newsreader tags and bags |
11 Sep 2005 04:51:11 PM |
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On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 00:21:07 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126416067.883903.71140@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>):
Gray Shockley wrote:
On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 16:58:05 -0500, sue_doe_cy_ants wrote
(in article <1126303085.387660.300340@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
Marines perceive insults to corpsmen to be
worse that insulting the Corps itself.
Soldiers almost worship their docs.
Please Pass it along.
One of my good mornin', mate and please pass the paper
and top of the morning
to you and I've got three classes and five tests today coffee drinking
buddies had been a corpman with the Marines.
He also hitched a ride with an APC one bright day
and his left arm was about
six inches long and he was missing part of his hip.
I don't remember his actual name, he was the only one of us
who didn't have a first name.
He's still probably "Doc" to this day.
Did you know that the Marine Corps doesn't have Corpsmen? I got an eye test
at Quantico one time and I've never seen so many Navy folks - everybody in
the hospital - more or less - that far from the water.
It's always been one of the duties of the Navy
to bandage the butts of Marines, and the corpsmen
are about the only sailors all Marines always respect,
although sentient Marines
Huh? I'm having a translation problem.
respect SEALS, or may end up
learning respect the hard way in a barroom brawl.
SEALS may be as crazy as Aussie SAS.
I used ta do some stuff with SOC and I could never tell who was who just by
listening to them. However, on one of my first trips to Bragg, I did come
across - in a "camo shop" downtown on the bathroom wall - "SOC first law of
self-defense: 'Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.'"
I never worked with the gentlemen from Oz but a buddy had been an announcer
(whatever) with Radio VietNam and Crammer had red hair (and black eyebrows
and - when hairred - a red mustache and a black beard) and told a rather
strange story about some of the Aussies calling him "Blue". I never have
understood what /that/ was about.
The second time over there we had a ROK outfit almost next door to us and I
was watching the ROK 1SG (CSM?) pull an inspection one day and he looked one
of his men up and down and then balled up his fist and cranmmed it into the
guy's stomach - hard! It was certainly one way to get his point across.
Other than that, when we ran the Nha Trang Pass coming down from Darlac
Province, it was the ROKs guarding the pass and we always waved to them very
enthusiastically.
My stories in the Central Highlands have nothing to do with any other place.
In 19 [first twelve in the Highlands] months, fer instance, I never saw a
rice paddy. It got /cold/ at night. From over a 100 in the daytime, it would
get around 40 or so at night (that was the why of the pneumonia). And, in the
communications' shelters, it woulkd be about 130-40 because all our comms
equipment was tubes (except for Ban Me Thuot when it was "jeep radios"
RT-524's in a VRC-49 config. [Hm-m-m, come to think of it, I have no idea
whether those radios were tubed or not - I cor-orded and called in missions,
I wasn't a techie for those four months. Remember those radios? I think they
were the only ones which started with a fairly loud "whir-r-r-r-r" when the
mike was keyed.
At night on guard duty, the lower enlisted would work 2 out of 6 and they
took their sleeping bags. All of us took our field jackets.
Instead of working with soldiers from other places, I had ARVN, Montagnards
and - havfe you ever heard of this?: the Rural Forces/Popular Forces, aka
RF/PF, aka "Ruff-Puff". Think of ARVN with about 5% of the training and not
as bright (scared yet?). My platoon sergeant was still trying to get me
killed so, when I went up to Darlac, he refused to allow me to take my trusty
M-14 (I forget his excuse). So, when I got there, I went in search of a
bang-bang and the only thing I could find was a M3 (not even a M3A1!) that
the RF/PF let me sign for.
Do you know M3's? A grease-gun, a god-forsaken grease-gun. So I took the darn
thing over to the place where folks fired bullet launchers and learned the
idiosyncricies of it. The main one was that there were only two ways to stop
it from firing: run out of bullets or yank the magazine out.
But it was okay because my medic also carried a .45. [This was my daytime job
- the gunship co-ord and relay was always at night (I had a trusty PFC that
covered days. When the MAC-V COL (O-6) called me in to say "Thanks" and your
unit is xferring you, he remarked that I had been referred to as "Sergeant".
I looked at him and replied with something witty, like "And?"
He said that he thought that I was the PFC because I worked nights and I
remarked to him that was when 90% of the missions were to which he replied
with something like, "Oh; that makes sense." [Needless to say, he hadn't
asked us in to say "welcome" when we got there.]
Down 'round back and down, there were a couple of really nice guys and I used
ta, occasionally, go down and have a cup of hot tea with them. Really nice
guys and we'd yack about philsophy and religion. I never had any idea of what
were their jobs so you can imagine my laughing at myself when, years later, I
found out what Operation Phoenix was (I had remembered the name because of
the mythological legend.)
It was like Air America. Second time over (continuation) I was in the little
white building behind the Grand Hotel in Nha Trang (communications
troubleshooter) and I used ta go over to the mess hall at 5am and I almost
always ended up at the same table with the pilots.
I had a vague idea of what they did but, ya know, there was one difference
between the movies and the pilots at least in II Corps: not a single one I
ever met was an United States citizen. British accents, French occasionally
(handy in a place that was once named French Indo-China), German and others I
don't remember but never once did I ever see an American - oops! - North
American, yes - but not US - Canadian.
Truth is, indeed, stranger than fact.
Gray Shockley
--------------------------------------
If someone kows the answer before
knowing the question, this has nothing
to do with rationality and everything
to do with religion.
APCs...when I was still a N00b in country,
i asked why GIs sat on their helmets,
or on the sandbags that masqueraded as body armor,
when riding on APCs. The answer was enough
to convince me to never hitch a ride on one,
and seeing casualties from inside APCs
reinforced this thought. They had a very bad
habit of allowing random rounds inside of their armor,
which then bounced around off of the walls murderously.
GI's sat on their protection riding APCs, literally,
to keep their asses from getting blown off.
Both in the back of trucks and on birds, I - and everyone I knew - wore
helmets and sat on flak jackets. [The second or third time I flew on a
helicopter, I asked the gunner to change seats with me for a couple minutes -
which we did - and I was taking pictures when one of the pilots turned around
for some reason. His verbal repartee was very disappointing - he had no sense
of humor at all. So we went back to our original seats.]
I was a Platoon Sergeant [under extraordinarily strange circumstances] at
Fort Belvoir one summer and I had Army, AirForce, Navy and Marines and it
was, uh, "interesting".
One night when I was on Staff Duty, I went through the Marine barracks and
one of them mentioned the washing machine was broken, so I took a look and
fixed it (it was sumthin' like a v-belt had jumped off the pulleys).
Unfortunately, I mentioned in in my Duty Log and the next day, had my *****
chewed for approximately 3.7 hours (prolly about 3 minutes, in other words)
about being convicted (with no trial), drawn, quartered, castrated, hanged,
my fingernails pulled out, my eyes burned out with heated metal rods and
being called vulgar names. Not by the military - by the plumbers' union.
I wasn't very familiar with unions, having been raised in a "Right to Work
Incompetently" state, so I regarded this as a lesson in power politics.
.
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