Prove us wrong...
Now, I'm sure you're wondering what the f#@k is more intense than commandeering a wet suit, face-punching a tsunami and dragging your wife of two decades out of the flooded wreckage of your home, but, no s*&t, it gets even better. You see, Hideaki's mother also lived in Ishinomaki, and she was still unaccounted for. I think you all know where this is going.
Pictured is Kassidy Johnson, 9, leaning on her dad, Jerry Johnson, near the rifle memorrial to her big brother Cpl. Jeffrey W. Johnson, who was killed May 11 in Afghanistan.
There was a memorial on Friday at Camp Pendleton for the 14 Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment who did not make it back from the 3/1's seventh month deployment to Afghanistan.
One of those Marines was a young man from Speedway, Indiana:
Sgt. John K. Rankel, a two-time Iraq combat veteran, had charged through machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades to reach his men pinned down at a haystack. When he got there, he flopped next to them and said, “Hey, I heard you need some help out here.”
That was classic John — always calm, recalled Matthew Howard, a former Marine who served with him: “Even under duress, he was always confident and easygoing.”
Rankel waited until his Marines ran to cover. He was shot on the way out and died in their arms.
When Lima Company later moved into the Safar area, they built a huge combat outpost and named it after Rankel. A few weeks later in late August, after another long day in the field, their company commander explained why.
His words were tinged with fury: “I made it five times the size it needs to be because Rankel was a big man,” said Capt. John Kenneley, now a major. “We pushed it right up against the Taliban because John Rankel feared no one. He was a damn good squad leader and he gave his life looking out for his Marines.”
Kevin Rankel flew in from Indiana to attend his son’s memorial with a large group of relatives. He had tried to talk John out of joining the Marine Corps straight out of high school. The boy had good grades and was a decent athlete, said his father, a finance executive.
No one in their family had served in the military, but it was soon clear that John Rankel found his calling as a Marine infantryman. “He was doing exactly what he wanted to do in life,” Kevin Rankel said.
About 30 Marines joined the Rankels for dinner the night before the memorial.
“It meant so much what we learned last night, talking with the kids,” the father said. “I shouldn’t say kids; they are men at the same time. They have gone through so much ...”
Yesterday, we blogged about 1st Lt. Will Donnelly (Kings Point '08) who was killed in action on Thanksgiving Day.
Regular reader and frequent commenter, Steve (a former Navy Corpsman who served alongside Marines) suggested that to honor the life and sacrifice of Will, a donation be made to the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund.
The site is here where you can find out more about this worthy program.
Though they did not have children, we feel that would be an excellent way to honor William J. Donnelly IV and support his wife, Linsey.
Actually, for these guys, quite common.
Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in southwestern Afghanistan, said Wednesday that Camp Pendleton’s 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment drew one of the toughest assignments in Marine Corps history when it was sent in October to Sangin, a strategic crossroads town in Helmand province.
As security improves in other districts, insurgents are putting up a fierce fight with the Marines for control of Sangin, their last major population center in the province, Mills said via videoconference from Afghanistan.
“The bravery and the courage of the Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines stands with any unit in Marine Corps history, any unit,” Mills said.
“I don’t have to tell you that 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines have had a tough month. They have inherited a very difficult mission up there, and they have done it very, very well,” Mills said. “I know that body counts are not a measure we want to use these days, but I can tell you that with the heavy casualties that they have suffered, they have inflicted 10 times that amount on the enemy.”
Despite the intense fighting near Sangin, other areas of the province have become calmer, Mills said. In Marjah, the scene of a major Marine offensive in February, hundreds of children now are able to go to school.
At a recent school opening there, Mills said he was surprised to see several teenage boys standing in the back of a third-grade class. It turned out the teenagers had not been able to attend school under the Taliban, but they wanted to read and write so much that they were willing to attend class with 7- and 8-year-olds, Mills said.
“That is probably the thing I am proudest of. I know there is a book back home that says each school in Afghanistan cost three cups of tea. Well, those schools didn’t cost three cups of tea; those schools cost dead and wounded,” Mills said.
“But we got them built. They’re up and running, they are servicing the people and they are going to change the future of Afghanistan,” he said. “Once you have an educated population, the game changes.”
(please scroll down for the update)
If you are anything like us, you are familiar with your parents' past perhaps not in a chronological sense but rather in a narrative form... stories and remembrances of friends, co-workers, neighbors and loved ones from their past that help develop the story arc of their lives.
"Pops", while doing a Christmas play for the church, based upon the events at Pearl Harbor, penned the following for his fellow cast members:When I was about six weeks old, my Daddy was killed in an industrial accident. Fortunately, we had a great uncle who was an attorney and a high mucky-muck in Toledo civic affairs who was able to secure a generous (for those days) settlement for Mom, money to purchase a home and $19 a week for ten years to raise my brother and me.
When I was about five, Mom saw that she needed to be prepared for when the ten years were over - she had graduated at the top of her 8th grade class but her father saw no reason to send a girl to high school. Mom decided to go to beautician's school in Toledo, which meant finding a place for me to stay. I went to my father's parents on their farm a few miles away where I lived for the next three years. There was cornmeal mush when there was nothing else to eat, no plumbing, no electricity, but lots of love.
Before supper, it was my job to walk back to the woods to call the cows for milking. On one evening, I ran a thorn into my thigh. I tried to pull it out but couldn't. As I limped back to the house, the thorn worked its way further into the flesh. Grandma tried to remove the thorn but had no success. We had no car so Grandma walked across the road to the Zalesak's for a possible ride to the doctor in town. Their youngest son, Tommy, about 17, was delighted for an excuse to drive the family car. I don't remember the drive into town or Dr. Scheidemann removing the thorn but remember that Grandma and Tommy laughed and joked all the way home.
A few years later on a summer evening, we were sitting on the front porch, probably doing something exciting like counting fireflies. A figure came out of the darkness from across the road. We quickly recognized Mrs. Zalesak coming to see us. She was a native of Prague who loved her adopted home. She studied the Constitution at night by kerosene lamp for her naturalization test. I have always remembered her saying proudly in her badly broken English, "when I go up to that judge, I tell him the Constitution in American."
But this particular summer night she had two small boxes in her hands, one contained a Purple Heart and the other a Silver Star for bravery in action. Tommy's lieutenant had been wounded and was trapped between the lines, pinned down by enemy fire in the Philippines. Tommy volunteered to try to bring him back. He crawled out into enemy machine gun fire and died from his wounds in a field hospital.
Grandma said what she could to comfort Mrs. Zalesak and she walked, sobbing, back into the night.
Doing the play brought back these memories as clear as yesterday and gave me a chance to reflect upon them. I have heard so much of bravery and heroism during the war. But as I thought of Tommy, I don't think he had any thoughts of bravery or heroism when he volunteered to try to save his lieutenant. I think it was love that motivated Tommy, the love for his fellow man. Tommy performed the ultimate act of love by laying down his life for his fellow man, a powerful reminder of what was done for us nearly 2000 years ago. I pray that this message of sacrifice will be clear to everyone who is here for our presentation the next few nights.
As wonderful as a natural coincidence is San Diego Beer Week, the Marine Corps' birthday and Veterans' Day all falling on the same week, remembering and honoring those who have given that full measure should be a year-round exercise.
Update #1: We didn't plan it this way but there was a Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony today at the White House.
Yesterday, President Obama spoke with Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta to inform him that he will be awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry at the risk of his life that went above and beyond the call of duty. Sergeant Giunta will be the first living service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. The President thanked Sergeant Giunta for his service and extraordinary bravery in battle.
Further information about the date and time of the ceremony will be released at a later date.
ACTION FROM WHICH THE MEDAL OF HONOR WAS EARNED:
Then-Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifle team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan on October 25, 2007.
When an insurgent force ambush split Specialist Giunta's squad into two groups, he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover. Later, while engaging the enemy and attempting to link up with the rest of his squad, Specialist Giunta noticed two insurgents carrying away a fellow soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other, and provided medical aid to his wounded comrade while the rest of his squad caught up and provided security. His courage and leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon's ability defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American paratrooper from enemy hands.
A winter-like storm had blown through the region just a few days before leaving cool, brisk and breezy conditions in its wake… perfect for getting out for a drive or a hike. Since hiking was like so last week, we hopped in the truck and headed up to the Mt. Soledad War Memorial to hang out, take some pictures and just relax… should be pretty quiet up there… nothing going on – its Memorial Day weekend – everybody’s out of town. Nothing happening except the Memorial Day ceremony. Please enjoy the pictures of the monument and people that were taken before the ceremony started. (Click on the photos to enlarge).
The entrance to the Memorial which was closed to thru-traffic.
....Because any event worth going to is worth tail-gating at. These are our people!
A look at the Memorial from the lower parking lot.
It remains unfathomable to us that there are people out there whose existence has been consumed with destroying this Memorial.
Jerry Coleman (on left): Marine Aviator in both WW II and Korea, former Yankee player and current San Diego Padre radio broadcaster and all around great guy and gentleman. Now that's a life lived. 
Members of the Buffalo Soldiers
I looked for an 82nd Airborne banner but couldn't find one, 'Dawg. Sorry.
Gentlemen here are from the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association. There are 3200 plaque locations at the monument, 2500 of which have been filled.
And what better way to end the day than with some vino, a few ice cold Sierra Nevadas and a real-life American hero. Worried that the war would be over before he and his buddies from western PA got over there to take care of business, Bob Callahan enlisted in 1943 at the age of 18 and saw action in both Italy and France as part of the 3rd Infantry Division. Bob is a two-time Purple Heart recipient and this post is dedicated to him. God Bless you, Bob and thank you for your service and devotion to this country.
We're gonna let Ray bring it home this evening. Any objections...? Didn't think so.
California…. Garden Grove to be exact.
Coronado-based Navy SEAL, Michael Anthony Monsoor was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor today. He is the first Navy recipient of the award in the Iraq war. Story from U-T, here.
Monsoor fell on a grenade and saved the lives of 3 American snipers and several Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi on Sept. 29, 2006. He died within a half-hour.
Monsoor’s remains lay at the Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetary out on Pt. Loma here in San Diego. His headstone will be replaced with one that will reflect his award.
Were not psychologists and we don’t have any supporting data in front of us but the description of Monsoor’s personality by family, friends and colleagues appears to fit a pattern we observed in this nation’s bravest: quiet, unassuming guys who were never the BMOC or the best athlete on the high school football or wrestling team but were always the hardest workers who led more by deed than word. They’re all business at work but good-naturedly rambunctious away from it and never turn down an opportunity to play a practical joke on a mate. And perhaps ironically, they never seem to wear their patriotism on their sleave but all of them, of course, are held in the highest esteem by everyone with which they come into contact.
Two posts in the past two days regarding losing two of the good guys. Not an encouraging trend.
Update: Video of presentation ceremony here. H/T: Hot Air
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