Value A Vet

This holiday to honor our veterans of past and present wars often passes with little notice.  It should not be so.  Many don’t even recall the original holiday and its background.  It was Armistice Day.  It was a day to celebrate the end of the Great War.  That was the moniker for WWI before there [...]

The Watch–cont’d 5

The images were like angry wasps flying at them.  Mostly they were merely straight lines against the sky slowing growing larger as they angled down at the convoy.  He could see two of them.  They were the ones flying right at them.  He didn’t even look around for others.  Before he could even adjust to [...]

The Watch–cont’d

He noticed that the other gun crews were about done with cleaning their stations and most of the spent casings had been thrown overboard.  His gun was ready and he reported that to the Lieutenant.   What time was it?  He glanced at his watch–09:15.   It seemed like he had been out there longer than that.   [...]

The Watch–cont’d

It seemed like every big guy was called Moose just like all the radio operators on board were called “Sparks or Sparky”.  He was big, came in about 230 or so and that was much bigger than anyone else on the ship by far.  Moose played the violin and woe to the fellow who referred [...]

The Watch

When he opened the hatch and stepped out the cold wind bit into his face but it was not as bad as he expected.  The spray from the waves was only a fine mist.  The ocean was pretty quiet compared to what it normally was, the swells were only about 3 or 4 feet and [...]

Lessons For Afghanistan From Reconstruction And The Raj

The current administration is making a complete review of our strategy and position and prospects in Afghanistan to great public notice.  It usually is best to consider such matters much more privately than is being done with this.  The great decisions of WWII between Churchill and Roosevelt were made behind closed doors with their most [...]

Ethos and Culture Matter

What is it to be an American?   That is always a good question and one floating about a lot these days with heated political rhetoric from all comers.  Nothing wrong with the heated rhetoric as such, ‘it is a mark of our freedoms and rights and we have always been pugnacious when it comes to [...]

MacArthur Was Right About N. Korea, Then and Now

In June of 1950 the North Koreans launched their suprised attack on the South and overran Seoul in a matter of days and pushed back the fledgling South Korean Army and the few US troops on hand to the extreme southern areas of the Korean Penisula.  We finally got a few more troops on the [...]

Gitmo Issues Are Not New

At first the use of Gitmo as a detention and prison facility for prisoners captured during the was on terror raised only a few eyebrows.  Most people seemed to agree that it made sense to use a special prison for this purpose and having them outside the country made sense also.  No one wanted those [...]

Governor Bonaparte?

Most people are somewhat familar with the history of Napoleon at least with regard to the “sound bite” historical notes.  They will remember vaguely that he was exiled to Elba and then returned.  They will recall that he lost the battle of Waterloo and went off the pages of history about then.  That is about [...]