This is outstanding
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Wednesday Hero
This Weeks Post Was Suggested By Pet
23 years old from Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan
178th Military Police Detachment, 89th Military Police Brigade, III Corps
October 29, 2009
He came into to this world a rather large baby, so big the doctor thought that he’d just walk home with his mother. Brandon was well mannered, polite, and tough with a contagious laugh that lit up those around him. In 2005 he graduated from Brimley High School and in 2006 enlisted in the United States Army, following a tradition of family military service.
He served in Iraq as a gunner from May 2007 until July 2008 and was deployed to Afghanistan in June 2009 where he was a canine tracker handler for Forward operating Base Fenty Kennel in the Laghman Province. He and his K-9 dog Maci were inseparable, working on tracking terrorists; Maci specialized in tracking the scents of IED making materials.
Spc. Brandon Steffy was killed when the vehicle he was riding in was attacked. His decorations and awards include the Army Commendation Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal-Campaign Star, Global War on Terrorism Service, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
Spc. Steffy is survived by his wife, daughter, parents and his sister.
Brandon made people laugh and he made them cry. There was not one dry eye at his funeral, from every day townsfolk, to big construction workers to police officers; they all recalled Brandon, this "Gentle Giant." They want everyone to know that if you never knew Brandon, then you really missed out.
All Information Was Found On And Copied From MilitaryCity.com & Freedom Remembered
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
--
Christopher Lee
Wednesday Hero - Google It
http://twitter.com/NativePatriot
http://rightwingrightminded.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/people/Christhopher-Lee/505116977 Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday Hero
This Weeks Post Was Suggested By Toni
2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Stephen Cochran had it all in front of him. Collage, a fiancée and an offer for a professional recording contract. But life had other plans for him. The day was September 11, 2001. "It was just so horrific," Cochran said. "It's like I'd been called. I'd never been pulled so hard to do something."
It may have been the audacity of the attacks, but more likely it was his family's long history of military service that drew him to enlist, he said. Both grandfathers served, as did an uncle and several other relatives.
So he dropped out of college, walked away from the record deal and joined the United States Marine Corps. "I've always been raised very, very patriotic. It's just what I had to do."
After serving in Iraq, he and his entire battalion volunteered to go to Afghanistan with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit where Cochran was injured in an ambush. 20 yards inside Kandahar, the vehicle he was riding in hit an anti-tank mine and he was thrown from the vehicle and broke the five vertebrae in his lower back.
Read The Rest Of The Story
stephencochranmusic.com
@stephen_cochran
facebook.com/stephen.cochran1
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
--
Christopher Lee
Wednesday Hero - Google It
http://twitter.com/NativePatriot
http://rightwingrightminded.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/people/Christhopher-Lee/505116977 Sphere: Related Content
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wednesday Hero
Culinary Specialist 1st Class Tremayne Brown, from Tulsa, Okla., receives stores for the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56). John S. McCain is one of seven ships assigned to Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15 and is permanently forward-deployed to Yokosuka, Japan.
Photo By Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Mike Mulcare Courtesy of Navy.mil
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Col. Bob Howard - American Hero
I saw this over at Airman Mom and wanted to share this story about this real American Hero
Not even war wounds could keep him down
Another fine Texas Hero:
Spc. David Hutchinson promised himself he would walk his sweetheart down the aisle without a cane or so much as a limp — a vow that to him was almost as sacred as the one he would make at the altar.
So, each step the 22-year-old Humble native took at his recent wedding — after months of hospitalization and three surgeries to remove shrapnel from his right leg — was a personal victory. It was another demonstration of his unwavering resolve which had also made him only the fifth U.S. Army Reservist to earn a Silver Star during nearly nine years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hutchinson doesn't think he has done anything that extraordinary and is a little embarrassed that he will be the center of attention today, to be publicly honored at the 2010 U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.
Hutchinson will be flipping the coin as the highest-decorated of 100 soldiers from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom being recognized at the game.
There was never any question that Hutchinson was going to enter the military.
“Most of the male members on my mother's side had served in the military, and I thought it was a good thing to do,” he said. “Plus I could use some money for college, because I was paying my own way.”
His time was in 2005, just after he finished his first semester at Blinn College in Bryan in 2005.
His orders came shortly after he'd completed two years at Blinn and had begun working a retail sales job to earn money before finishing his political science degree at Texas A&M University.
He was assigned a one-year tour with a security detail in Afghanistan. Before departing, he was given a few days to say his goodbyes to family and friends.
On the last day before he left, he took his future bride, Jenny, to a gazebo in Eagle Springs near Humble and proposed.
“She had not been a happy camper when I enlisted,” but he added that she quickly answered “yes.”
Never heard the bullets
His yearlong tour turned into only seven days.
On his first mission after arriving in Afghanistan, he would earn the Silver Star and a Purple Heart for what the military described as “actions contributing to the safety of 17 soldiers and showing extraordinary courage, loyalty and selfless-service under fire beyond expectation.”
He was one of the most inexperienced soldiers on patrol when his convoy was ambushed on May 21, 2008.
He and 17 others were traveling in four Humvees along a dirt road from their base in Sharna, where he had barely unpacked his gear, to another base, Orgun-e. Some of the more experienced in the security detail were trying to familiarize the newcomers with the terrain.
Hutchinson was the gunner inside the turret of the third vehicle. He was manning the group's most powerful weapon, the MK-19 automatic grenade launcher.
“This was supposed to be a non-hostile area where they hadn't seen any trouble for 13 months,” he said.
But as they drove between two ridges, an empty truck blockaded their path. Seconds later, they were surrounded by as many as 50 insurgents firing at them.
Hutchinson never heard the hundreds of bullets striking the armored vehicle but later counted more than 300 strikes to his turret alone, where his head and arms were exposed. But he did hear the loud whiz and saw the smoke trails of three or four rockets fly past him, one coming within 2 feet of his head.
But he didn't freeze.
“I had what they call the big adrenalin dump,” he said. “Then everything seemed to go in slow motion. Most of the gunfire wasn't registering — except for the rockets. I never focused on the 20 dudes trying to kill me. I just wanted to protect my friends.”
Hutchinson said he realized the most lethal threat was machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades coming from the top of a crest. He fired four rockets that destroyed that nest, but they also attracted the fire of most of the other insurgents.
Two rockets then penetrated the back of his Humvee and peppered his right leg with shrapnel.
“It was like someone hit my ‘off' switch. Everything went black for a few seconds,” he recalled.
When he awoke, he had no feeling or movement from his waist down and was lying in a sergeant's lap.
“The sergeant was covered in blood. I couldn't stand back up in the turret,” he said.
Hutchinson applied pressure dressings to stop the bleeding from shrapnel wounds to the sergeant's face and chest.
At that point, his convoy pushed past the blockade to get the injured medical attention. No one was killed.
Six months in hospital
Hutchinson was flown back to the United States, where he was hospitalized for six months and underwent intensive rehabilitation to learn to walk again.
There's still no feeling in the bottom of his right foot and he has some balance issues. After walking with a cane for a year, he was finally able to stride down the aisle with his bride on his arm this past July.
The couple honeymooned at Disney World, which required a lot of walking.
“I would limp a little if we walked for long periods,” he said. “But I'm starting to be able to jog some.”
His doctors say he will never run again. But he believes it's still a possibility.
Operation Texas Barbecue
Ya know if you put a Texan in a war they will find a way to BBQ, it's in their blood.
I was exploring Camp Cropper last week when I smelled something I never expected to smell in Baghdad: Texas barbecue.
I followed my nose and found half a dozen soldiers from the Houston-based 72nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team grilling burgers outside their barracks.
"Everybody likes to barbecue here," explained Sgt. Alberto Salazar, 28, of McAllen, who was manning the grill. "We're Texas boys."
This is Salazar's third tour in Iraq, so he knows his way around a forward operating base. He'd managed to rustle up meat patties somewhere and marinated them using a secret recipe he declined to share with this reporter. "Some things are sacred," he said.
As Chronicle photographer Mayra Beltran and I quickly discovered, the high-calorie food served in chow halls in Iraq is much, much better than expected. The dining facility at Camp Cropper, for example, has a Ceasar salad bar and a short-order grill where you can get cheese burgers or hot dogs and a sandwich line where you can make toasted paninis and wraps. At Camp Prosperity, there's a stir-fry grill for Asian-style noodles and rice. At breakfast there's bacon and omelettes, biscuits and oatmeal ... I could go on and on. The dessert bars are obscene: white chocolate chip cookies, carrot cake, a dozen flavors of ice cream, and my personal favorite: chocolate cheesecake. Mayra and I expect to gain about 50 pounds while we're here.
While infinitely better than a steady diet of MRE rations, all these mass-produced meals tend to taste the same week in, week out.
"It's good, but after a while you go numb with it," Salazar said. "Same old, same old."
Barbecue -- especially for Texas troops -- serves as a sort of bonding ritual, a way of making their Iraq tour pass a little more quickly.
Salazar and his buddies brought some barbecue supplies with them, but they're running low. I'm sure they'd be grateful for any (non-perishable) sauces and seasonings readers of this blog might be willing to send their way.
Texas barbecue care packages can be sent to:
Charlie Company
3-141 Infantry
APO AE 09342
I'm sure they'll share.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Dallas-area officer's killer put to death
HUNTSVILLE — A man convicted of gunning down a Dallas-area police officer during an attempted bank robbery was put to death Thursday evening in the first execution of the year in the nation's busiest death penalty state.
Kenneth Mosley, 51, was condemned for the February 1997 slaying of David Moore, an officer in the Dallas suburb of Garland. His lethal injection was carried out after his legal appeals became exhausted.
The punishment had been stalled twice last year by technical issues and court appeals.
Mosley shook his head once when asked by a warden if he had any final statement. As the lethal drugs began taking effect, he snored a few times, then gasped slightly. Nine minutes later, at 6:16 p.m. CST, he was pronounced dead.
Moore's widow was among the people in the chamber to watch Mosley die. He did not acknowledge her presence.
Earlier this week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his request for clemency.
Texas put 24 convicted killers to death last year, accounting for nearly half of the 52 executions carried out in the U.S. Another convicted killer was scheduled to be executed in Texas next week.
Moore, 32, was killed while responding to a 911 call about a bank robbery. The 10-year police veteran and father of three was shot four times after he approached Mosley, who was standing in line to get to a teller. A bank employee had called 911 after recognizing Mosley as the man who robbed it more than month earlier.
Mosley resisted Moore's request to speak with him and opened fire with a 9 mm pistol. One of four bullets to hit the officer struck over the top edge of his protective vest, killing him. Mosley was shot in the wrist by an officer outside and was arrested in the parking lot. Authorities found he was carrying a holdup note.
His lawyers argued at his capital murder trial that the shooting was accidental, saying the weapon went off five times as he was trying to surrender. Prosecutors had witnesses from inside the bank and a videotape of the attack to show to jurors.
Mosley declined to speak with reporters as his execution neared.
The Flint, Mich., native who grew up in rural Arkansas had an extensive criminal record he blamed on drug addiction. Evidence showed he had a record for sexually assaulting a woman and arrests for possession of marijuana, illegal knives and for stealing items from a Home Depot and then returning them for cash refunds.
At the time of the shooting, he was wanted for robbery at a fast-food restaurant five days earlier in nearby Mesquite. He had been fired from his last known job at a Coca-Cola bottler for testing positive for cocaine.
Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates, a lieutenant in 1997 who was the patrol supervisor and the officer who took Mosley into custody at the scene, said he had “no doubt that Mosley would have seriously injured or killed some other citizens and or police officers during his continued life of violent crime.”
About two dozen officers from the Garland police force stood outside the Huntsville prison where the execution took place.
Next week, the state is set to execute Gary Johnson, 59, for the shooting deaths of two men, Peter Sparagana, 23, and James Hazelton, 28, who interrupted his burglary of a ranch near Huntsville in 1986.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Wednesday Hero
center>
23 years old from San Jose, California
2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force
September 10, 2007
Carlos Gil Orozco wasn’t a great student, but one goal pushed him to hit the books: becoming a Marine.
"He was kind of a troublemaker, you know, he got bad grades and wouldn't do his homework," said his sister, Myriam Johanna Gil Orozco. "But he wanted to be a Marine. So he studied real hard, especially algebra. He'd stay up all night studying.
Cpl. Orozco's parents moved the family from Colombia to the U.S. when he was 8 years old, hoping to give their children a better education. They became frustrated when their son didn't do well in school and thought the Marines would be good for him.
"My dad was actually happy," Myriam said. "He'd rather have him be a Marine than out on the streets being in gangs or doing drugs."
Cpl. Carlos Orozco was killed while conducting combat operations in Ashraf, Iraq when the tank he was riding in encountered an IED. Also killed in the blast was Lance Cpl. Jon T. Hicks Jr. of Atco, New Jersey.
Cpl. Orozco leaves behind his sister, his parents, his wife and two sons.
All Information Was Found On And Copied From MilitaryCity.com
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
--
Christopher Lee
Wednesday Hero - Google It
http://twitter.com/NativePatriot
http://rightwingrightminded.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/people/Christhopher-Lee/505116977
Who are you and who am I
To say we know the reason why
Some are born some men die
Beneath one infinite sky Sphere: Related Content
Monday, January 4, 2010
Americas got talent audition video MicheleAnn Lean on Me Feb 14th audition live in orlando
My friend MicheleAnn is one strong and brave lady and I take my hat off to her. She will be additioning for America's Got Talent next month and this is her song.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
