Keeping it Real

Hot date last night for Lovely Bride and I - we went to see IronMan3  - $3 cash per person, and a humble single theater with decent seats and a passable sound system. The real culture shock was coming out to a quiet street with no traffic and other viewers walking away with a low hum of conversations as folks went their way. What was missing was a cacophony of cars, shouts, screams, music, traffic and mind-numbing noise. It was so startling that walking across the street, I was scanning for threats in this unfamiliar environment. Once I adjusted, it was an enjoyable experience that we will have to repeat.

Cancer, relatives, in-laws, out-laws; life happens. That said, we have completed our long anticipated repositioning, and are digging in. New surroundings, new life, new possibilities. Making these changes after the half-century mark is not the norm, but it feels good to us. Heading out this AM. SITREP as events warrant.

Explicated in detail by the fine Deebow of BlackFive I knew of guys at the RAG based at NAS Miramar where they pushed through the first of the females; one was Pink Sheeted twice (DOWN flights) which normally caused review and often washing out of the community. The instructors were told she WOULD PASS, no matter how many flights it took. So, she moved on, and shortly thereafter auggered in a F14 during carrier workups. Loss of a life, an expensive aircraft, but some weasel gets to polish his crack at a star, because he was a good social 'engineering' worker. BS. Most folks know there are important differences between the sexes, but our erstwhile 'betters' insist on silence so that they can once again demonstrate the disasterous results of grrl power. Institutional irrational ineptitude, another symptom of societal decay.

For me, it is the wife, Hammer5 (aka H5). No it is not Jesus - He is my Lord, my Savior, not my buddy. There was a time when I was in that there were a few guys I was close to, but once you get out, have your own families, you just don't see that much of each other. That is just life. H5 was reading some of the comments over @ MMSL, and was cracking about how boyfriends and girlfriends have an opinion. That is kind of like a REMF having an opinion on how close the CAS was landing during a firefight. If you haven't been there, just stay quiet so you don't embarrass yourself. For his part Vox added some specifics of what you can count on a best friend to do. A classic for me that I have discussed with my daughters was - "Do you trust that person to reload for you and cover your 6 in a firefight?" If not, they are not marriage material. That means that you can trust them explicitly because:::> they are trustworthy (love that word), tough, level-headed, a...

I'm going to come back and expound on this at some later date, but we should have a simple rule for the shooters that we task with finding and killing/capturing bad guys. Simply put, if we tell them to spend treasure, and risk blood, the hunting license should never expire. Never. Once someone is on the list, they stay there. Just like every other mission a unit is assigned, they complete the mission, and guys rotate through the unit, but the mission remains. It was BS when I was in, and it has probably been BS since the first guys picked up weapons and identified enemies - something changes politically, and magically we are supposed to forgive and forget. BS. Take that one giant step further, and make the enemy the kind of monster who kills civilians, hinds behind them, and wears no uniform. If they are bad enough for us to name them and put them on the list, they should know that we WILL NEVER STOP. Thus, if they are a dead-ender, let's just help them along to the...

Don't know any of the men on the ground, but I've talked to several veterans over the last few days, and I have had my fill of blatering BS from talking heads. If you are surrounded, heavily outnumbered, and know there probably isn't a QRF or relief force going to reach you before the scum over-run the position, we concur that we would seriously consider calling whatever is the current equivalent of "Broken Arrow", and invite my brothers in arms to drop everything they have on our location and kill as many of the enemy as they can. I'd also rather a funeral pyre than to have my remains drug through the streets by a mob of backwards goat-rapists. Knowing that there was a Predator overhead, we had the tools in place for precise targeting. Would any of us really made the call that would have ended our lives? None of know for sure, but we owe it to folks we send downrange to make that call if the situation gets that grim. The satisfaction with calling to ...

When you train firearms squad tactics, you learn to call reloads, and you learn to keep track of how many rounds you have in the clip. The first time I was shooting a live-fire exercise and burned too much ammo, I came down to my last clip - and called "Last Clip". It left a knot in my stomach. It makes everyone on your team more aware, perhaps on edge. I know the saying;"Make it count!" True enough, but there is a finality to the circumstance. You're done, or you are done. Either way, as Chris Gardner says, "The cavalry is not coming." In that moment, you have to be OK with whatever comes next. Hammer5 and I have called, "Last Clip". It is stressful, I don't like it, but this is where we dig deep, trust our training, and advance. Never give up. I'm going to dig deep and then - I am bringing the Hammer.