DickHardman

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DickHardman

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DickHardman

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DickHardman

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Mike Brewer

Nice vids Dick!

By the way, Hope you had a great Holiday!

DickHardman

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Mike Brewer

You know what I really wish, though? I know it's a difficult thing, being embedded with a unit. I know that in such a situation, you'd probably naturally focus on the people you're with 24/7, and by virtue of that alone, even their smallest actions and incidents might seem like a big deal. However, it still blows me away that some journalists (not the ones you posted) seem to feel like any and every little incident of force used by US or Allied soldiers borders on torture or atrocity. All too often, these journalists remain numb or indifferent to the true atrocities being committed every day by the people we're fighting. Suicide bombings are called "attacks" instead of homicidal acts of terror that waste the lives of civilians indiscriminately. When an American soldier shoots a bad guy who only moments before was trying to launch an RPG up his ass, it's murder. But when the bad guys swipe a young girl from her family, rape and sodomize her before throwing her off a building, it doesn't even get reported. The atrocities that took place in Abu Ghraib under Iraqi rule were monstrous - far and away more vile than anything that went on there in the famous and often reported American scandal.

I like seeing the stuff you posted becasue it's that all too rare look at some of the good things that are happening. It doesn't exactly balance out all the lop-sided reporting out there, and it doesn't make it right that our guys so often get painted as murderers while the real bad guys never feel the sting of the press, but it's still nice.

DickHardman

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Mike Brewer

Join the service. Serve something great, like your patriotic ideals, and do it fighting next to people you know have been through hell and would go through it again if it meant sending you home to your wife and kids in one piece. Decide that some things are more important than comfort, luxury, and fun. Work your ass off to become a deserving member of a team that was built on the very ideals and courage you're talking about, and carry the weight of living up to that every day, with every action and every decision you make.

That's the most effective recipe I know of, anyway.

Dick, it may sound cheesy or whatever, but one of the most transforming moments of my entire life was a day that I had just gotten back from a deployment and had been tasked with coming up with a training program to get my team ready for a trip to Bosnia (this was before 9/11). I was sitting at a Perkins restaurant all by myself, going insane over the budget I'd been given, hunched over a pile of material I'd need to whittle into an effective plan to get my guys home safe after accomplishing our mission. The project itself was well above my pay-grade, but it just so happened I was a designated team leader until we could get an NCO qualified for the job. Mid-meal, an older guy walked up to me and said something to the effect of, "Excuse me, Specialist?" He called me by my rank, so I knew he was prior service himself, and judging by his age, that meant he'd probably seen action in both Korea and Vietnam, if not the tail end of World War II. "I want to thank you, and my family would like to thank you, for all you are doing in service to our country." I was floored. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, and this was in the days before it was fashionable to see little yellow ribbon stickers on every other car in town. All I could think to answer the man was, "You're welcome, sir."

I spent close to another hour finishing my meal as I poured over the research and memos regarding the training I was coming up with. When I finally got up to go, the waitress at the front of the store told me that my meal had already been paid for by the gentleman who came up to speak with me. She also gave me a few pies to take back to the other guys in the unit - on him.

I can't tell you the humility I felt at having a card carrying hero stand in front of me and thank me for my service. I hadn't been anywhere serious, and I hadn't done anything yet. Yet, this veteran of a couple of the toughest and most soul-wrenching wars our country has ever been involved with humbled himself in front of his family to thank me, just because I was wearing the uniform.

It made me sincerely want to live up to the honor, and I have thought about that guy and his gesture often since then. Say what you will about me being nostalgic or whatever, but it has had an impact on me every time I found myself overseas or in uniform.

DickHardman

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Mike Brewer

Nothing exciting. Bosnia was in the year 2000 timeframe, and not much was going on in terms of warfighting. Our job was to build rapport with the locals and make sure the channels of information flowed openly. As far as that goes, I'd rather not get into specifics, but it's a lot less exciting than anything you're hearing about in Iraq and Afghanistan.