Quick Joke...

I can't actually take credit for this joke... My good friend Bill Burke told this joke a few times, but I can't help laugh everytime I hear it!

An Air Force Colonel dies and when he gets to the Pearly Gates, St Peter is there waiting to meet him. He says, "Welcome, Colonel. You've led and exemplary life, almost exclusively free from sin, you've been a faithful husband, a good father, attended Church almost every single week of your adult life, and served your country proudly for 30 years. The path of enlightenment is before you, if you would just follow me..."

"Hang on a sec there, St Peter. I've got an important question... You got any Naval Aviators in there? Cuz if you do, I'll be damned if I follow you in there."

"Are you telling me that you would really be willing to face eternal damnation just because of a few Naval Aviators?"

"You better believe it... I just can't stand ‘em. Can't stand to be around those cocky son's a bitches... uhh s'cuse my French, Saint Peter. To me, being in their presence, and knowing that they'd made it to heaven, would be worse than the eternal flames of hell."

"Well, I think that's a bit extreme, but I guess I can see your point... " St Peter chuckled. I do understand, somewhat. Alas, my boy, rest assured, there are no Naval Aviators here."


So St Peter leads this man along beautiful lanes of large comfortable homes and boasts that the COL, because he'd lived such a clean, pure life, would be granted one of the homes along the golf course, with its own pool. He would be joined eventually by his soul mate, and would have joy and bliss all the rest of his days.


So several weeks later, the Colonel is at the 19th hole, just having played a perfect round (72) of golf, with his gorgeous soul mate caddying quietly (it's heaven, okay - we know this doesn't really happen...) when the doors to the bar blast open and in marches this Naval Aviator.

He's loud and obnoxious and has both arms wrapped adoringly around what appears to be Maureen O'Hare and Betty Grable, a large glass of Single Malt Scotch in one hand and a long smelly Cuban in the other. He's so obnoxious that he's actually wearing a flight suit and his leather flight jacket adorned with a fur lined collar and patches galore, Aviator shades hung just low enough he could peer over the top. The foursome takes their seats in the corner as he loudly describes HIS 18 under round of golf, as the crowd gathers. Then he begins telling tall tales and rauchy jokes...

The Colonel rushes from the bar and hunts down St Peter, dragging him handily back to the clubhouse fuming and stammering along the way. As they push thru the bar doors he stammers and gasps, "Y-y-y-y-OU SWORE tt-t-t-to me that there w-w-w-w-would be NO N-N-N-n-n-naval.... Naval...." unable to finish the sentence and red with fury.

St. Peter put his hand on the Colonel's shoulder and sighed, "That's not a Naval Aviator, my son.... That's GOD.... He just WISHES HE WAS ONE!!!"

Honoring a fallen hero

(Taken from the LA Times)


Navy SEAL to receive Medal of Honor;



Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy died in June 2005. He is the first SEAL to receive the honor since the Vietnam War.





Lt. Michael P. Murphy, the first to be awarded the highest military award for combat in Afghanistan, was killed during a 2005 mission.

CORONADO — A Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan will be awarded the Medal of Honor, the first such award for troops serving in Afghanistan and the first for a SEAL since the Vietnam War, the White House announced Thursday. Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, who had SEAL training here and was assigned to a SEAL team in Hawaii, was killed in June 2005 during a mission in the Hindu Kush mountains to find a key Taliban leader.



FOR THE RECORD:


Medal of Honor: An article in Friday's Section A about the posthumous awarding of the Medal of Honor to a Navy SEAL who served in Afghanistan said Lt. Michael P. Murphy was commissioned a Navy ensign in 1999. That commission to the Officer Candidate School came in 2000.



Ambushed by insurgents, Murphy's four-man SEAL team engaged in a fierce firefight and was in danger of being overrun. Although he was wounded, Murphy risked his life to save fellow SEALs and then maneuvered into an open position to send out an emergency call and to continue firing at the enemy. While making the call, he was hit again. Only one of the SEALs on the team survived. Eight other SEALs and eight soldiers aboard a MH-47 Chinook helicopter sent to rescue Murphy's team also were killed when the craft was brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade. The incident was the worst single-day loss of life for Navy Special Warfare personnel since World War II.





"Mike Murphy was a true warrior, a true leader. No one cared more about his men than he did," said a SEAL officer who asked to be identified only as Sean. Because their missions are secret, SEALs prefer to remain anonymous. President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Murphy's parents on Oct. 22 at the White House.





Only two other military personnel -- Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham and Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith -- have been awarded the nation's highest honor for bravery for actions undertaken since Bush sent troops into Afghanistan in 2001. Both of those awards were for bravery in Iraq and were posthumous. The three other members of Murphy's team -- Matthew Axelson, 25, and Danny Dietz, 31, who were both killed, and Marcus Luttrell, 32 -- have each been awarded the Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. Luttrell is the author of "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10."





Murphy grew up on Long Island and graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1998 with degrees in political science and psychology. He was commissioned a Navy ensign in 1999 and graduated from SEAL training in Coronado in 2001. His father, Daniel, an attorney and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, said the assignment to Afghanistan was particularly important to his son. Murphy had friends in the New York police and fire departments and wore an NYFD patch on his uniform. "He told me, 'We're going where the people who planned, plotted and recruited for 9/11 are,' " Daniel Murphy said.





Murphy's mother, Maureen, said the Medal of Honor meant that "now the world will know what his family has always known: how special he was." At the SEAL base in Coronado, Murphy and his teammates were the subject of numerous conversations as word of the White House announcement circulated. Though SEALs' grief lingers, they preferred to praise Murphy's steely determination and leadership.





"I'll remember him and those other guys every day of my life," said Cory, a SEAL petty officer first class.

I apologize...

Well, it's been almost a month since I've written, and for that I am sincerely apologetic to each and every single one of my faithful readers. The truth, as sad as it may be, is that there JUST HASN'T BEEN ANYTHING worth writing about...

So, I decided to take a different approach. I am going to write about family and friends from this point forward, and will be sure to fill you in should there be anything fun, funny, interesting, entertaining, should the common-man rear his ugly (and/or grotesquely stupid) head I will be sure to let you know. Oh, speaking of that, there was one story that I never mentioned...

THE COMMON-MAN CLEARS HIS WEAPON:
I'll try to explain w/o getting into too much detail, but such that those unfamiliar with weapons will hopefully be able to follow... Since training began, we have been required to "clear" our weapons at specific points/locations/etc. For example, we constantly had to clear our weapons back in Kansas, even though we had not even laid our eyes on ammunition, let alone fed rounds through our barrels... We did this every single time we entered the DFAC (Dining Facility), as we left the FOB (Forward Operating Base), prior to entering class rooms, Burger King, Exchange (kinda like K-Mart - a little bit of everything, most of it crap...), and so on and so forth.

Needless to say, the effect works, and although this becomes an exceedingly teadious task, the importance exists for COMMON reasons. Here, we really only have to clear our weapons when returning to the FOB after a mission/convoy. On the FOB our weapons are kept in a GREEN status, which means we carry them everywhere, but the magazines are OUT, no rounds are in the weapon, and the weapon is kept on SAFE - this means that one cannot squeeze the trigger; it has been mechanically BLOCKED. For obvious reasons, this is the safest MODE our weapons can be in. AMBER indicates that the magazine is loaded, but NO round in chambered, and again, the weapon is kept on SAFE. This is a MEDIUM state of weapon status, as it only requires a round to be chambered, the gun to be let off safe and a trigger pull can be performed in less than five seconds. One or two seconds if you're good. Yes, I'm pretty good in case you're worried or just wondering...

RED is a condition that we often travel in as soon as we depart the base. This means that the magazine is in, a round IS chambered and the weapon is on safe. To fire all it requires is a quick flip of a switch and a trigger pull. For many, this does not require any additional time, as the safety is moved to the off position as the weapon is brought up and into the firing position. We typically will only be in a RED status in dangerous areas, and have recently downgraded to Amber for personnel in a convoy except for the gunners which stand up in the turret and man our large caliber weapons. I think this is primarily because they would be the first to engage, this lessens the possibility for an accidental discharge of a weapon - this happened recently down South where a guy shot himself in the thigh while trying to get out of a vehicle.

Mind you, getting in and out of these HUMVEEs is not an easy task, especially when wearing all the gear that we are required to wear. Oh, I'll post that again, cuz the picture I had on my profile doesn't show up anymore now that I've gone to the Guinness background. I think the background is worthy, so I'll have to figure out some other way to show off my cool "air-strip security pose" photograph.

Back to my story: Okay, so one day as a Convoy arrives at the airport, about an hour away from here, everyone dismounts their vehicles and walks to the clearing barrels. Now a clearing barrel is a large metal barrel about two feet in diameter, usually filled halfway with sand, sand-bags, dirt, what have you. it is tilted at an angle to allow us to walk up to the barrel, point our weapon INTO the barrel, while we conduct our "clearing." This process is really quite simple: 1) check weapon on safe. 2) remove magazine. 3) clear chamber - because a live round was in the chamber, it will be ejected and fall on the ground during this stage. 4) take weapon off safe. 5) while pointing weapon into clearing barrel, squeeze trigger. Now because we have emptied the weapon, we know that the weapon will not fire. It is just a step to ensure that the weapon is in fact empty... Step 6) return weapon to SAFE. We perform this drill for both of our weapons, the M-9, 9mm Baretta Pistol, and the M-4 Carbine Rifle.

Well, on this particular afternoon a Common-Man stepped up to the clearing barrel with his pistol, checked to make sure his weapon was on safe, pulled the slide backward and watched the round eject onto the ground, took the weapon off safe, pointed into the clearing barrel and pulled the trigger.... BANG!!! Holy $H*T his gun went off and was even louder because of the echoing effect of having been pointed into a barrel that acted as a megaphone... He looked quizzically at the weapon thinking, "I know I cleared the weapon, I saw the round eject... That's odd, but it must be empty now, so..." and pointed into the clearing barrel a second time and pulled the - BANG!!! "SonofaB*T(H! What the hell!?!? How in the Fu" - "HEY!!!" his train of common-thought is broken by Sauce, a friend of mine who is just uncommon (and witty enough) to saunter over to idiot boy and say, "YOU might wanna remove that magazine, or we're in for a long afternoon..."

Needless to say, this particular individual was relieved of his weapons for awhile. There have been other instances of ND/AD (negligent discharge/accidental discharge - I find it strange that the Army distinguishes a difference between these, an accidental discharge somehow being less severe than a negligent discharge), but FAR FAR FAR FAR fewer here in the North than in other theaters of operation. I am really and truly baffled and amazed at how someone could be so stupid to pull the trigger on their weapon with a round in the chamber. That is the whole purpose of pulling back the handle/slide and checking the chamber. I'll be completely honest, I - in my LIMITED exposure to carbine rifles - did something similar where I forgot to pull the magazine on my M-4, pulled the charging handle and watched the round eject, but as the slide came forward I saw it strip another round from the magazine and push it forward into the chamber... "Hmmm," I thought, "that's not supposed to be in there... Oh yeah, I'm supposed to pull the mag, damnit!" and I felt pretty dumb for doing that.... This guy not only fired one round, but TWO into a clearing barrel.

I'm surrounded by Common Men, in a Common War, in a Common Country...