Stop loss

There are two posts regarding being stop lossed. Both are by soldiers who are facing an additional 19 months in active duty with another deployment overseas. Nineteen months. This policy needs to be changed.

The posts are here and here.

Sunday news and notes

Gayle and I went on a field trip of sorts yesterday to celebrate some Spring like weather. We had hoped to end the trip at Big Talbot Island State Park but the traffic was soooo bad in St. Augustine that we didn't make it. But we did make it down to Washington Oaks Garden State Park, which was truly worth the trip. I will be posting pics at La Florida soon.

Bike week: Today is the last day of Bike Week in Daytona Beach. If there is a recession, there are no signs of it in the biker world. St. Augustine was chocked to the brim with Harleys and Hondas yesterday. For those of us who live here, bike week often seems like bike month. Gayle and I were looking for a beach side restaurant for lunch and couldn't find any with parking. We ended up at a Marineland snack shop.

Best signs: Virtually every business had a "Bikers Welcome" sign on display yesterday. But the ones that attracted the most bikers had "Ice Cold Beer - Bikers Welcome" signs.

Back on topic: CNN aired a piece Friday that featured two Army generals talking about their experiences with PTSD. A written version can be found here. As more ranking officers talk about their experiences, maybe the officers and non-coms down the line will understand that everyone, including themselves, are affected by their wartime experiences.

Spring is springing

I'm heading out for a daylong photo shoot: St. Augustine, Washington Oaks State Park and Big Talbot Island. I'm looking for some more photos for La Florida. The weather here is drop dead gorgeous.

SGT Mark is on rear "D" so he has formation both today and tomorrow. Should be a quiet weekend. There are rumors that the First Lady may visit Ft. Bragg in the near future. No confirmations yet.

Mike is in town and I need him to sign a photograph for Lolaberly that he took in Deerfield Beach a while back. She won one of the caption contests at La Florida.

I am hoping to visit him in Port St. Lucie in a few weeks. I can't wait to see the preserves which he helps to manage (although my snake boots have not arrived yet). The slither factor is one of the downsides to working outdoors in Florida. However, in 10 years in working on environmentally sensitive lands, I have seen few snakes...most have been garter or black snakes.

Photo Friday

New deployment tool



Not that we are anticipating a deployment because we are not. But we recently stumbled across this video camera called a Flip, which would have been great for the last deployment. It weighs 3 ounces, shoots in HD and a has a direct USB connection (no cables). It uploads quickly for easy e-mails and its software makes it very easy to use YouTube and other networking sites. Here's a link to the Flip website.

On Mark's last deployment, we used a DVD camera to send weekly home videos.

Of course, Gayle was giving me a hard time about taking a picture of a camera and said I should posting photos of Spring springing in Florida. So here goes:

Thursday: News and Notes

Pops fly by:Abnpoppa blew through Jacksonville Monday. He pointed out a photo op via email on which I will have to follow up. Not sure of his final destination but I am happy to say the Florida weather is cooperating nicely.

No news is good news, maybe: Mark was on battalion CQ last night so I haven't heard from him. I am hopeful it was a quiet night. 2nd Brigade is pretty busy with training right now.

Today: started off so nicely. Had a good trip to Tallahassee yesterday. Today's meeting was in St. Augustine, which meant a nice trip down A1A past 3.5 miles of undeveloped beach front (a rarity in Florida). The weather is spectacular. The finches and robins are migrating through. All-in-all, it started out as a great day.

Then the phone started ringing: A lawsuit may stall a license plate project on which I'm working; negotiations to protect 300+ acres of marsh in Atlantic Beach are in peril; and on and on and on. Must be an Ides of March thing.

One of these days I am going to hit I-10 west, miss that Tallahassee exit and end at the California coast. :)

82nd heads back to Afghanistan

Staff photo by Marcus Castro
Maj. Gen. Mike Scaparrotti, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division, announces that his headquarters company will deploy to Afghanistan later in the spring.

From the Fayetteville Observer

By Henry Cuningham
Military editor

The 82nd Airborne Division headquarters has received orders to deploy to Afghanistan this spring, the Pentagon announced Monday.

“We’ve anticipated the announcement of this deployment, obviously,” said Maj. Gen. Mike Scaparrotti, commander of the division at Fort Bragg. “It was in the planning, and so we’ve been doing some very specific training.”

About 800 soldiers will deploy for about a year, division officials said.

The division headquarters will replace the 101st Airborne Division headquarters in Regional Command East in Bagram as part of a normal rotation of forces, 82nd officials said. The 101st is from Fort Campbell, Ky.

Scaparrotti will oversee a 23,000-person task force that includes U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, foreign troops, Department of Defense civilians, defense contractors, and federal employees from the Department of State and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies. The Pentagon also announced Monday that the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson, Colo., will deploy to Afghanistan.

“We’ve maintained a close relationship with the 101st throughout their rotation,” Scaparrotti said.

The 82nd turned over command of the headquarters to the 101st in April.

“This is a year later, and we are going back to replace them,” Scaparrotti said.

The entire story can be found here:

Stop loss

It's one of many military terms that strikes terror into the hearts of parents and loved ones of soldiers. While there hasn't been a lot of talk around Ft. Bragg about soldiers being stop lossed (new verb), it's a hot topic at Ft. Lewis. I haven't seen much in the media about it but there has been some Joe talk.

Stop loss works like this: You sign up for eight but you really think you are doing four years plus basic and AIT. But in the end, if someone up the chain decides that your departure will threaten a unit's integrity and ability to achieve its mission, they might tack on some additional time.

When units are deployed, stop loss is often unavoidable. But when they are home and families have set their countdown clocks, stop loss keeps everyone up at nights.

I actually thought that with the recruiting numbers up that stop loss out of theater would stop.

Apparently not.

Sunday news and notes

I was going to post another comment regarding the new military policy about allowing the media access to Dover homecomings - with the family's permission - but I am going to let it go. We will see how the policy works and the media behaves in the future.

It's March 1, so the winds are in like a lion. We have what I hope to be the last of the cold snaps this season just to the west of us. It's 67 now but in the next two hours we should lose about 15 degrees. We will be under a tornado watch through the morning. A freeze is predicted for the inland sections of the city but we should be OK at the beach. Gayle and I are both a little antsy about starting up the spring garden.

Bike Week at Daytona started last week and we have been hearing the rattle and thunder of the Harleys as they roll by. We live about four houses off of A1A (once a quiet road, now a four-lane highway). I was told by a curator at the Alligator Farm yesterday that the bull gators there think the Harleys sound like the bellowing male gators in mating season. Keeps them all a bit riled up...but they looked pretty quiet to me. (see La Florida)

Mark has CQ today through Monday so we won't hear from him. It's 34 with a light rain in Fayetteville. They are predicting one to three inches of snow as temperatures drop. I am hopeful for a quiet day while he is on duty.

Infantry Dad's son, who was due to ETS in April, has been given a stop-loss notice. I thought we were done will all of that in light of the positive news in the recruitment numbers. Apparently not. We will keep the family in our prayers.

Cheers to the 31 percenters

In a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted last week, 67 percent of respondents said coverage of the return of remains should be allowed and 31 percent said it should not.

Yet another decision families will have to make

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon will lift its ban on media coverage of the flag-draped coffins of war victims arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
Military vehicles carry coffins containing U.S. troops in this photo the Pentagon released in 2005.

But the families of the victims will have the final say on whether to allow the coverage, he said.

President Obama asked Gates to review the policy, and Gates said he decided after consulting with the armed services and groups representing military families to apply the same policy that is used at Arlington National Cemetery.

"I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected -- the families," he said at a news conference.

U.S. to End Ban on Media Coverage of Returning Military Coffins

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2009; 2:12 PM

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced today that he is lifting a 1991 ban on news coverage of the return of the remains of fallen service members to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, although he will leave the decision about press coverage up to the family of the dead.

The controversial ban on photography and other media coverage of the solemn return of flag-draped coffins -- upheld by both Republican and Democratic administrations -- has generated lawsuits as well as conflicting emotions on the part of military familiies.

Gates said he is asking a group of advisers to come up with a plan on how to implement the new policy.

President George H.W. Bush's administration imposed the ban on media coverage of the arrival of fallen troops' remains at Dover Air Force Base during the Gulf War in February 1991. It came about after a controversy arose when Bush held a news conference at the same moment the first U.S. casualties were returning to Dover the day after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, and three television networks carried the events live on split screen, with Bush appearing at one point to joke while on the opposite screen the solemn ceremony unfolded at the Delaware base.

The rest of the story can be read here.

Open letter

Dear Secretary Gates,

I understand the Pentagon is reviewing its policy barring the media from covering the arrival of the military men and women killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I recommend the policy remain the same for several reasons:

When the policy was first adopted, it was politicized. Opponents said that the military was hiding the true costs of the war. Those days are long behind us now. To the extent that someone wants to know, the true cost of the war is readily apparent albeit somewhat hard to find on a daily basis.

Should the policy change and the media be allowed to cover the arrivals, there will be a gush of images on the national news . . . for about three weeks. Producers and editors, after the initial surge in coverage, will decide that it is no longer news - just as the media has decided that there is not much worth covering in Iraq these days.

For those three weeks, the pressure on families to attend the arrival of their loved ones will be unbearable. Some family member will face the inevitable question: Why didn't you attend the arrival of your son or daughter? It's a question that no family member should have to face.

I say this having spent most of my life as a journalist promoting transparency and open access in government. I also say this as a parent whose son has done two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne.

The policy is fine as is. Let's keep it that way.

Taking Chance, pt. 2

The original memo that is the basis of the HBO movie "Taking Chance" is posted here. It's long but worth the effort.

Taking Chance

Gayle caught this on HBO last night. She cried through the entire movie.



'Taking Chance' follows a fallen Marine's journey home

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
There is a power and beauty to restraint that seldom finds its way onto TV.

A small, almost perfectly realized gem of a movie, Taking Chance is also precisely the kind of movie that TV should be making. Its story — a real-life example of the military's little-publicized policy of providing a uniformed escort for every fallen soldier — is too small for a wide-release feature film, even with star Kevin Bacon attached. And yet it's a story that should be seen in every American home, and one that, if you don't know it, will leave you wondering why you don't know it.

The man taking Chance home is Michael Strobl (Bacon), the Marine lieutenant colonel who co-wrote the film and wrote the journal on which it's based. A Desert Storm veteran turned stateside analyst, Strobl spends each night scrolling through the Iraq War casualty lists. He spots the name of Chance Phelps, 19, and even though he's considered too senior an officer to escort Chance's remains, he volunteers.

And so, as the body makes its way from Iraq to the Dover, Del., mortuary to Chance's tiny Wyoming hometown, we follow two journeys. One is that of a young man who died before his time; the other is of a middle-aged man seeking to honor the sacrifice of those he supervises while reconciling himself to his own service.

The rest of the story can be found here.

Saturday news and notes

 

Even the threat of a hard freeze last night did deter these azaleas from bursting into bloom this morning. Hard to believe it's February 21.

It's been pretty quiet in Ft. Bragg with the exception of the constant training that 2nd Brigade is undergoing. Everyone has been busy, which makes the countdown calendar go by a bit quicker.

The brigade surgeon says SGT Mark's leg issues may be lifelong and not to look for a civilian job that requires a lot of standing. I have read that as many as 250,000 soldiers and Marines are not deployable because of foot, leg, knee and hip issues.

There won't be much of an All-American week this year at Bragg since Division will be deployed to Afghanistan. The Division run with about 15,000 soldiers is the highlight and 82nd Airborne vets from around the country come for the activities. This happened in 2007 when the entire division was gone. 2nd Brigade will have its own version, I'm sure.

Who is war weary?

There have been a couple of interesting pieces floating around the Internet. You can see/read them over at Lolaberly

Or you can read Rebekah Sanderlin's post from Operation Marriage over at Anderson Cooper 360. It's called: "War weary - what are you complaining about."

There is an I-report over at CNN called "War Fatigue - Do youth care about Afghanistan?" While the story is revealing, the comments are reminiscent of something I grew up with in the late 60s and early 70s. There is some discussion of an anti-war protest in DC during Spring Break. In case you have forgotten, this is what it looked like then:



I don't really want to see this happen again.

Room with a view

 

For a city known for it's sweeping vistas, this was the hotel view I drew on my recent trip to Washington D.C. While I was sequestered to the room for long periods of time, needless to say the view was not a distraction.