Comments

1. On August 17, 2021 at 7:46 am, Fred said:

   That’s funny. It’s like a Monty Python skit. I have no idea what the words and concepts are that he’s talking about. It’s over the top absurdity.

2. On August 17, 2021 at 9:23 am, George 1 said:

   I wonder if he will get another ribbon for the botched evacuation to go with his collection? Since the U.S. hasn’t won any war in about 75 years, I guess some of his ribbons might be for:

   1. Participation in Jimmy Carter’s botched raid on Iran?
   2. Having promoted the most LGBTQ officers?
   3. Having the most transgenders per unit?
   4. Punishing his quota of white male soldiers for imaginary crimes against the woke?
   5. Defending the Capitol against the evil white supremacists on/after January 6, 2021?
   6. Ensuring that ever more females can be Marines, Navy Seals or Green Berets? Some of those do look rather pink.

   Someone called him : Thoroughly Modern Milley.

3. On August 17, 2021 at 9:59 am, Red Man said:

   George 1, How dare you compare the Desert One disaster with your other 5 points. It was a risky, yet bold plan to rescue Americans. The men that were going into Iran, greatly outnumbered knew it well could have been a one way trip, yet they all jocked up. American service men died to rescue other Americans!

4. On August 17, 2021 at 10:05 am, George 1 said:

   Red Man: You are right. That one should not be there.

5. On August 17, 2021 at 5:10 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   There is a quick-and-dirty – yet quite accurate – method of charting the downward spiral of the U.S. military as a serious institution, or conversely, documenting the degree of institutional rot, corruption and incompetence within it.

   Namely, medal inflation

   We can agree that General Milley has had a long career and has seen/done much during that time, and also upon the fact that military men “wear their resume” to a certain extent in their ribbons, qualification badges, patches, and other insignia and regalia. However, having said that, look at the man’s Class A uniform: It is so beribboned and festooned with doodads as to be almost a parody of itself, something out of a Sigmund Romberg operetta or the like and not the uniform of a man of moral and intellectual rectitude.

   It is germane to note that the last soldier promoted to five-star “General of the Army” rank was General Omar Bradley, a soldier so unpretentious he often dressed in the same clothing as a private, pinning his badges of rank to them and his overseas cap. Bradley rarely donned his dress uniform or wore all of the decorations to which he was entitled, believing that he was most-effective out-of-the-spotlight, and the focus of any publicity should not be on him, but on his men…. the ones doing the actual fighting and dying.

   Now, contrast Milley to some officers and men who fought in the Second World War.

   Major Richard Winters, the commanding officer of Easy Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, during much of the unit’s time in combat in the ETO, dropped into Normandy a first lieutenant but finished the war as a major and 2nd battalion executive officer. For his heroism and leadership during the Brecourt Manor operation, he won the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for valor in combat.

   Wounded in action, he received the Purple Heart and like his fellow paratroopers, the combat infantry badge. At war’s end, he had 2-3 rows of ribbons (he would add to those later on due to his non-combat service during the Korean emergency).

   Now, let’s look at some enlisted men…

   Staff Sergeant Darryl C. “Shifty” Powers was known as one of the best soldiers in Easy Company, and as a crack shot and back-woodsman. A “Toccoa man,” he’d been with Easy since the unit’s beginning at Camp Toccoa, Georgia. He was involved in every significant combat action seen by the company, from the D-Day Invasion of Normandy night parachute drop to Operation Market Garden to Belgium and Bastogne and finally Germany itself, yet was not wounded – one of the few Easy men to be able to make that claim.

   Despite all of that action and having been in the thick of it, Powers didn’t have enough points to return home right away at the conclusion of the war. He won a company lottery (drawing) to win the right to go home shortly after the war ended, but was severely injured during a motor vehicle accident on the way home, and ended up being hospitalized in Europe for an extended period.

   Corporal Eugene Sledge, U.S. Marine Corps, now famous as the author of the combat memoir “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa,” took part in combat during the invasion and subsequent fighting on Peleliu and again on Okinawa, as a member of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

   He saw some of the hardest, most-difficult fighting in the entire Pacific Theater – but like his counterpart Darryl Powers in Europe, he did not go home when the fighting was done. Instead, he was sent to China as a part of the Marine contingent sent there to protect Americans during the turmoil in that nation after the war as the revolution resumed between the Nationalists and communists. He did not finally make it home until 1946.

   Enlisted men like Powers in the ETO and Sledge in the PTO were away from home for literally years and did not see their relatives at all during that time. If they were lucky-enough to get leave, it didn’t take them to the ‘States, but in the case of Powers, only as far as Paris or London at best. Sledge wasn’t even that lucky; by the time he got into the war, the front had moved closer to Japan and men on leave were being sent to Guam or maybe as far as Hawaii if they were lucky. Certainly not back to CONUS.

   Like Powers, Sledge – a mortar man – had been in the thick of combat for months at a time, yet he had a comparatively modest 2-3 rows of ribbons to go with his combat action badge.

   Winters, Powers, and Sledge endured hardships ordinary people can’t imagine, and survived some of the most-intense combat ever seen by the American fighting man. Yet none of these men has anything remotely comparable to the scads of decorations, devices, ribbons, badges, and patches wore by General Milley, whose career has been mostly during peacetime. So what gives?

   They must be handing out decorations with the rations these days, or maybe the good general just likes “Cracker Jacks” a lot!

   I freely admit to admiring those men of the WWII generation a great deal, but even I didn’t, it would be hard not to notice the disparity between the men of that time and the men of today, within our armed forces.

   I am thankful that Milley doesn’t represent the whole of the military, and there are many good men trying their best to do a difficult job under trying conditions, but never-the-less, the contrast between then and now remains. The fish does indeed rot from the head….

6. On August 17, 2021 at 8:46 pm, George1 said:

   Georgiaboy61: The WW II stories are truly incredible. The one I remember most is the story of Taffy 3 in the Battle off Samar. Pretty sure you are familiar with the Battle.

   I always remember Gunners Mate Paul Carr of the Destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts. From the navel historical society:. ” Car was found mortally wounded at his gun after an explosion. Carr had already fired over 350 rounds from his gun. When found all he asked was help to load the last round into the breech.” Many acts of courage like that all the way through the battle.

   “Courage without measure” is how it was described. Many of our young people we sent to the Middle East were just as brave. Sad that they no longer have good top leadership.

7. On August 20, 2021 at 1:40 am, Georgiaboy61 said:

   @ George1

   Re: “The WW II stories are truly incredible. The one I remember most is the story of Taffy 3 in the Battle off Samar. Pretty sure you are familiar with the Battle.”

   Yes, I am indeed familiar with that now-famous battle. But not so familiar that I am not awed at the courage and fortitude of those men.

   I’ve been a student of military history for a solid half century. I started reading about WWI and WWII as a kid in grade school. One of the very first things I remember reading was an “American Heritage” hardcover book about the naval war in the Pacific. Including about the pitched battle off Samar and the heroic stand made by the sailors of Taffy 3.

   One of the pleasures of reading history is discovering something new even after all of these years. Perhaps you’ve heard of the author James Hornfischer, whose 2004 book “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors,” tells the story of the men of Taffy 3 and the epic sacrifices made by sailors like Gunners Mate Paul Carr of the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts and so many others. I am not easily-impressed, but without question Hornfischer did a superb job.

   I was saddened to learn recently that Hornfischer died unexpectedly earlier this year. That was a blow to me – and to his many readers, fans and admirers as well, one imagines.

   All of his works about the War in the Pacific are outstanding, but in my view the other one which rises above even his usual lofty standard is “Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal,” which tells the story of the naval battle for the Solomon Islands in 1942-1943.

   I’ve studied that stage of the war for years, but prior to reading his work, did not know – had never compared the numbers – that the U.S. Navy sustained more casualties at Guadalcanal, than the Marine Corps. The popular mythology, I suppose one can call it, is that the Guadalcanal battle was a Marine victory and not a navy one. Hornfischer conclusively shows otherwise and tells an epic tale in the process.

   I regret that my late father isn’t alive to enjoy Hornfischer’s books – he was a USN enlisted man during WWII – because I know he would have been captivated by them.

   “‘Courage without measure’ is how it was described. Many of our young people we sent to the Middle East were just as brave. Sad that they no longer have good top leadership.”

   In the Great War, the British Tommies died in the tens of thousands at places like the Somme, because arrogant senior officers far back from the lines refused to learn from experience what worked and what didn’t – and kept sending those men over-and-over again into “No-Man’s Land” – and into the mouths of German Maxim machine-guns, artillery, barbed wire and the rest of it.

   They died in the mud of Flanders; General Douglas Haig got promoted to Field Marshal and was awarded a peerage. One local London paper summarized it thus: “Lions led by asses”…

   Not much has changed in the ensuing century, has it? I’d say pretty much the same characterization applies to our general/flag officers, guys like Milley and all of the other perfumed princes, wouldn’t you?

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