Broadside Blog - Military Times

America the Beautiful

American Independence.

Those two words belong together. Indeed, they have walked hand-in-hand for 233 years and the phrase has become so ingrained in our consciousness that we rarely ponder its meaning.

In 1776 it was a blood oath. Those who signed the Declaration knew that if their attempt at Independence failed they would most likely face the gallows. If their dreams were shattered, so would be their homes, their families, and their reputations.

But they signed.

They signed because they believed in the concept that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are God-given rights, and that no one - no army, no king, and no nation - had the ability to hold those rights from them.

We still believe that.

We bicker among ourselves like brothers and sisters. But the true American spirit always surfaces in time of crisis, and we come together as a nation. That is when our character is revealed to the world. That is the real America.

Our national identity is manifested in many ways, but to me the most poignant and accurate portrayal resides with the American Soldier, Marine, Airman, Sailor and Coastguardsman in time of turmoil. They are fierce in battle, yet compassionate when lending a hand to the victims of tragedy.

(Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)

Perhaps it is fitting that on the eve of our Independence Day, we witness the standing up of a new republic in Iraq. If that country makes it - if it can nurture the seeds of democracy planted by the American forces - it will be because its citizens were able to see through the cloud of tyranny that obscured their lives for so long, and catch a glimpse of a better life.

The life of the American.

Sometimes heroes don’t wear uniforms

(Andrea Melendez/The Register)

Sometimes heroes appear from out of nowhere.

On Tuesday a man and his wife were boating on the Des Moines river when their craft began to act erratically. They threw out an anchor, but it didn’t hold. Just before they plunged over the Center Street Dam, Alan Neely told his wife to put on her life jacket. It was the last thing he ever said.

Their boat plunged over the dam and sank, throwing the pair into the boiling river. The turbulent current ripped off Alan’s life jacket and pulled him under. His body was recovered downstream.

His wife Patricia, buoyed by her own life preserver, stayed afloat but was trapped by the undertow and repeatedly pulled back toward the dam and into the boil. Rescue crews couldn’t get to her. Ropes dangled from the bridge over the dam wouldn’t reach.

That’s when the construction crew from Cramer & Associates jumped into action. One of the men, Jason Oglesbee, was wearing a harness. The crew hooked him onto a large crane they were using to construct a pedestrian bridge, and he was swung out over the water - directly over Patricia. The crane operator, Joe Lowe, told KCCI (a local TV station), “Well, I didn’t want to get Jason under the water, but I knew I had to get his feet in it.”

(WHOTV.com)

She had been in the water for about half an hour when Oglesbee appeared from up above. “I just told her to hang on tight. I won’t let go,” Oglesbee recalled. (DesMoines Register)

He dragged her to the small rescue boat (it was too small to approach the dangerous area where Patricia was trapped), and she was sped to shore. She is expected to fully recover.

And what did Jason Oglesbee do? After being hoisted back to the levy, he went back to work.

“The whole crew did it. Wasn’t me. The whole crew,” Oglesbee told KCCI news.

He doesn’t wear a uniform, but he could. Jason Oglesbee and the whole crew of Cramer and Associates are our heroes of the week.

For complete coverage including videos of the dramatic rescue, click on the websites of KCCI TV or the Des Moines Register.

Greenside of the Week - July 1, 2009

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Draw this cartoon or I’ll kill you

Twenty-three years. That’s how long I have been drawing Broadside cartoons. Navy Times and Marine Corps Times have given me a lot of rope all along, and the military has taken my body shots with without a whimper. In all that time, no one has ever told me what to draw.

Except one.

He was a SEAL, and we were stationed together. He caught me in the passageway one day and pulled me into his stateroom.

Now I may be paranoid, but it seems to me it is never good to be pulled into any confined space by a member of the special forces. To make matters worse, he was mad. I had never been to BUDS, so I wasn’t sure how they train these guys to vent. This added to my discomfort.

Over his shoulder I saw a picture of a severed head on a stake.

He looked me in the eyes - the same look that many soon-to-be dead people have seen just before having their vocal chords removed by hand - and told me, “You have to draw a cartoon.”

Quite frankly, this threw me off.

I had to switch from full flight mode into cartoonist mode, which isn’t an easy transition. Going from “trying to stay alive” to “trying to be funny” takes a few gear shifts, as you might imagine.

Generally, SEALs like to be in the field doing something operational. Staff work tends to frustrate them, like a harness frustrates a wild stallion. In the field, they can ease their disgruntlement by - how shall I say - putting their training to practical use. On a staff the bad guys often wear the same uniform and consequently it is more difficult to take them out. Thus, annoyance eventually turns into anger.

This gentleman had run into an O-6 who refused to make a decision. He told me, “You have to draw a cartoon saying that when a guy makes Captain he has his guts removed.” He then described the cartoon: A Lieutenant Commander gets a lobotomy. A Commander has his spine removed. And the O-6 has his guts removed.

This presented me with a dilemma, because for one thing, the joke wouldn’t work. Spine and gut removal are pretty similar metaphors, so the humor would be lost. Plus, since he had been pretty vocal about the gutless O-6, everyone would know who the cartoon was about, which meant the Captain would come after me.

So if I did the cartoon, the senior officer would have a vendetta against me. Then again, I was in a confined space with an angry special forces operative, with a severed head staring at me over his shoulder. And the Captain wasn’t there.

So I compromised. I ripped out the Captain’s heart.

And lived to tell the tale.

Broadside of the Week - June 29, 2009

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Wounded Warriors go back to Iraq

(US Army photo)

I love this story. Six soldiers who had lost limbs in Iraq went back to visit, “…to withness the changes that have taken place due to their sacrifices.” (army.mil) The reason it struck me was twofold.

First, it shows the indominable spirit of the American soldier. These warriors had faced combat and lived to tell the story; and now were going back - in essence telling the world that they can be knocked down, but they won’t stay down.

And second, I met the soldier in the picture during a couple of our visits to Walter Reed. His name is Sgt. Marco Robledo and he’s a great guy. I remember shaking his prosthetic hand - he could manipulate it so well that it was hard to distinguish between it and a human hand. He’s also a heck of a gamer. He designed a game controller that he can manipulate with one hand, and he claims he can beat anyone. He hopes to take on a professional athlete in a USO program that pits the pros against the troops in online gaming.

I know which player I’d have my money on.

Click here or on the photo to read the whole story.

“If it wasn’t for Zach, I wouldn’t be here.”

(USAF photo)

Combat Air Controllers get two years of training before being assigned to operational commands. They know how to parachute, how to infiltrate behind enemy lines, and how to fight. They usually deploy with special forces in hostile country. (Fayetteville Observer).

ZACHARY J. RHYNER is one of them. On a spring morning in 2008 in the mountains of Afghanistan, he needed just about every one of his special skills to save his 100-man team from being decimated.

He was part of a special forces unit on the trail of a high-value target. To get there they would have to scale the 60 foot cliffs surrounding the Shok Valley. But as they climbed they were attacked by a large force of insurgents. They had expected to find around 70 bad guys; instead they were ambushed by hundreds. “…we were 100 to 200 feet beneath the enemy, like fish in a barrel,” said Sergeant Gutierrez, one of Rhyner’s teammates. (Air Force Public Affairs)

Rhyner was injured minutes after the attack began, but he neglected his wounds to call in air strikes and to protect other injured soldiers. The team had been split by the terrain, and Rhyner’s group was trapped and surrounded. At times the enemy approached to within 40 feet, and twice the entire force was in danger of being overrun.

Ignoring his wounds, Rhyner continued to fight. He kept the enemy at bay by firing his M-4, all the while calling in air strikes and trying to evacuate his wounded teammates.

The entire battle raged for over six hours. “Sergeant Rhyner called in a total of 4,570 rounds of cannon fire, nine Hellfire missiles, 162 rockets, 12 500-pound bombs and one 2,000-pound bomb, constantly engaging the enemy with his M-4 rifle to deter their advance.” (USAF)

In the end, forty insurgents were killed, and over a hundred wounded. No Americans died, and all the wounded were evacuated. The Air Force official release stated, “Sergeant Rhyner was directly credited with the entire team’s survival due to his skill and poise under intense fire.”

“If it wasn’t for Zach, I wouldn’t be here,” said Sergeant Gutierrez.

Staff Sergeant Zachary Rhyner - an Air Force Cross recipient - is our hero of the week.

A complete description of the battle can be found in the Northshore Journal and Defenselink.

Greenside of the Week - June 24, 2009

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Testosterone

I am not a macho man, and I am not a metrosexual. Like most males in this country, I am somewhere in between and I am comfortable with that.

For many years I owned a pickup truck, and it satisfied a deeply-rooted instinct to be tough. It linked me to my caveman ancestors who needed a method to drag the wooly mammoths back to the cave - for them it was a couple of branches that they dragged the carcasses on. For me it was a pickup. I was happiest when the bed was full of dirt, or rocks, or a cooler. The soot that collects on vehicles on Navy bases just made it look better. I would have put dead animals in there, but I wasn’t doing a lot of killing in those days.

The big crisis came when the old pickup began to run down, and I was faced with a dilemma: get another truck, or be “practical.” Despite their utility, trucks have some downsides. You can’t lock up stuff in a pickup unless it is really small. Anything in the bed is open to the elements, so luggage is vulnerable. And it’s tough to sleep in a bucket seat. Inevitably, we began to look at SUVs.

An SUV is big and gives you what pickups can’t. You can lock stuff up. You can sleep in it on camping trips. Everything you put in an SUV stays dry.

But you can’t haul dirt or throw empty soda cans in the back, at least not without staining the wall-to-wall carpet.

Nevertheless, we gave the truck a tearful send off, and got a nice SUV. Cushy interior, nice stereo, and good ratings by Consumer Reports. It seemed to be a good decision.

Until I got to work. Truck loyalists accused me of selling out. One coworker told me an SUV is nothing more than, “a minivan on steroids.” I think he spit after saying that, but I’m not sure.

I found that I began wearing chinos more, and jeans less. I started to wear boat shoes (without socks) as my boots collected dust in the closet. I cut out coupons for hands-free car washes. I found myself interested in the appearance of my fingernails and browsing the romantic comedy section of the video store.

I was losing my mojo.

My wife saved me. For Fathers’ Day she bought me the perfect solution for a man in testosterone crisis: a utility trailer that can be towed behind the SUV! I can haul dirt in it, and rocks, and probably put a cooler in there too. In a flash the minivan on steroids has become a work truck. I have already changed the presets from “easy listening” to country. My fingernails are dirty again, and I feel like spitting.

An SUV hauling a utility trailer - a concept brilliant in its simplicity. It’s not a truck, but it put me back to somewhere between macho and metrosexual.

And I’m comfortable with that.

Broadside of the Week - June 22, 2009

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