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We would like to Honor the memory of these men and women who
recently lost their lives, and Remember them each specifically by name.
Please pray for these families as they begin their journey of healing through this unimaginable devastation.



October 2013 Heroes

We remember these nine heroes who gave their lives for freedoms cause and the families they left behind.

Lance Cpl. Christopher O. Grant, 20, of Richwood, La.
Sgt. Lyle D. Turnbull, 31, of Norfolk, Va.
Staff Sgt. Patrick H. Quinn, 26, of Quarryville, Pa
Spc. Angel L. Lopez, 27, of Parma, Ohio
1st Lt. Jennifer M. Moreno, 25, of San Diego, Calif.
Sgt. Patrick C. Hawkins, 25, of Carlisle, Pa.
Sgt. Joseph M. Peters, 24, of Springfield, Mo.
Pfc. Cody J. Patterson, 24, of Philomath, Ore
Lance Cpl. Jeremiah M. Collins, Jr., 19, of Milwaukee, Wis

September 2013 Heroes

Staff Sgt. Thomas A. Baysore, Jr., 31, of Milton, Pa
Lt. Cmdr. Landon L. Jones, 35, of Lompoc, Calif.
Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan S. Gibson, 32, of Aurora, Ore.
Staff Sgt. Liam J. Nevins, 32, of Denver, Colo.
Staff Sgt. Timothy R. McGill, 30, of Ramsey, N.J.
Spc. Joshua J. Strickland, 23, of Woodstock, Ga
Spc. James T. Wickliffchacin, 22, of Edmond, Okla.
Sgt. William D. Brown III, 44, of Franklin, N.C.
Staff Sgt. Randall R. Lane, 43, of Indianapolis, Ind
Staff Sgt. Robert E. Thomas Jr., 24, of Fontana, Calif
Staff Sgt. Todd J. Lobraico Jr., 22, of New Fairfield, Conn
Staff Sgt. Joshua J. Bowden, 28, of Villa Rica, Ga

August 2013 Heroes

Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, 24, of Staten Island, N.Y.
Sgt. 1st Class Ricardo D. Young, 34, of Rosston, Ark.
1st Lt. Jason Togi, 24, of Pago Pago, American Samoa
Spc. Kenneth Clifford Alvarez, 23, of Santa Maria, Calif
Pvt. Jonathon Michael Dean Hostetter, 20, of Humphreys, Mo.
Master Sgt. George A. Bannar Jr., 37, of Orange, Va
1st Lt. Timothy G. Santos Jr., 29, of Helena, Ala
Staff Sgt. Octavio Herrera, 26, of Caldwell, Idaho,
Sgt. Jamar A. Hicks, 22, of Little Rock, Ark.
Spc. Keith E. Grace Jr., 26, of Baytown, Texas
Spc. Nickolas S. Welch, 26, of Mill City, Ore

July 2013 Heroes

Spc. Hilda I. Clayton, 22, of Augusta, Ga.
1st Sgt. Tracy L. Stapley, 44, of Clearfield, Utah
Pvt. Errol D.A. Milliard, 18, of Birmingham, Ala
Lance Cpl. Benjamin W. Tuttle, 19, of Gentry, Ark
Staff Sgt. Sonny C. Zimmerman, 25, of Waynesfield, Ohio
Spc. Anthony R. Maddox, 22, of Port Arthur, Texas
1st Lt. Jonam Russell, 25, of Cornville, Ariz.,
Sgt. Stefan M. Smith, 24 of Glennville, Ga., and
Spc. Rob L. Nichols, 24, of Colorado Springs, Colo.
Sgt. Eric T. Lawson, 30, of Stockbridge, Ga.,
Spc. Caryn E. Nouv, 29, of Newport News, Va



 
Take the time to watch this in silence and with reflection. Show it and explain it to your children, grand children and, if possible, great grand children. Let no generation ever forget or disrespect what is seen here....................a real tribute to our fallen heroes.


Turn up your sound and click on ..... mansions of the lord
 
STAND TALL JASON ...SEMPER FI.....  ACTIVE FDNY FF & MARINE MAJOR ....A DISGRACE WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIM......Maj. Jason Brezler?s warnings about an Afghan police chief and his ?tea boys? went unaddressed, and three Marines were slain. One year later, the Marines are taking action?against him.

More than a year after three Marines were shot to death on their base in an insider attack by an Afghan police chief?s ?tea boy,? there is still no official explanation for why a warning that could well have prevented the tragedy seems to have gone unheeded.

There is also no explanation for why the police chief was allegedly allowed to sexually assault children with apparent impunity on an American military facility.

But authorities have taken action against one person they should be praising, the 32-year-old Marine Reserve officer who issued the warning about the police chief and his crimes.

Marine Reserve Maj. Jason Brezler?now also a firefighter with the elite Rescue 2 of the FDNY?faces a forced exit from the Marine Corps as a result of an inconsequential security infraction he committed in his hurry to respond to an urgent email from Afghanistan that he received two years after he returned home.


The July 25, 2012, email that popped up on Brezler?s Yahoo account was sent to him from Helmand Province by a fellow Marine officer, and its subject line made its urgency unmistakable:


?IMPORTANT: SARWAR JAN IS BACK!!!?

Exclamation points by themselves in a message from Helmand meant it could very well be a matter of life and death. The name Sarwar Jan made it all the more so.

Jan had been district police chief when Brezler served in the same town, Naw Zad, in 2010. Brezler had come to the conclusion that Jan was involved in narcotics and arms trafficking as well as facilitating attacks by the Taliban, even selling Afghan police uniforms to the enemy. Jan also was alleged to be what Brezler?s lawyer would call ?a systematic child rapist? who allegedly ran a child kidnapping ring and acquired ?tea boys? with the help of U.S. taxpayer job development money.

Jan might have imagined himself untouchable as the prot?g? of an accused drug lord who has connections to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Brezler kept pushing and was finally able to pressure the provincial governor into removing Jan from his post, a rare and notable bright spot in the bloodiest province in the bloodiest year of the war.


But now here was this email from a fellow Marine officer in Afghanistan saying Jan was back as police chief and had allegedly been raping as many as nine boys at Forward Operating Base Delhi. The email asked Brezler for any information he might be able to provide.

The Marines had not issued laptops during Brezler?s deployment, and he had used his own to send and receive reports while in the war zone. He was at a graduate school seminar using this same laptop when he received the email from Helmand, and it seemed like a stroke of great luck that the lone report he inadvertently still had on hand summarized the allegations against Jan.

Brezler attached the report to his reply and emailed it with the same urgency that he would demonstrate as a firefighter whenever an alarm came in. He made clear in the accompanying message that he considered Jan a serious threat who allegedly dealt with the enemy while essentially making the Americans party to sex crimes against children.

The fellow officer who had made the inquiry and received the response, identified by one source as Marine Maj. Brian Donlon, noted that in his haste Brezler had sent what was technically a classified document via an insecure mode of communication. Brezler acknowledged the error and duly reported himself, in keeping with a code of honor befitting a graduate of the Naval Academy.




?He said, ?The chief of police is filthy,?? the father says. ?I said, ?How can he be in your base?? And he said, ?He is.??

Whatever Donlon did with Brezler?s warning, little, if anything, seems to have changed. Jan continued to come and go as he pleased at FOB Delhi, free to carry weapons and to consort with his ?tea boys.?

?The Marines continued to provide Jan and his sex-abuse victims armed, unescorted access to their base,? Brezler?s attorney, Kevin Carroll, would later say.

On August 10, 2012, just over two weeks after the warning that should have resulted in the police chief being banned from the base, one of Jan?s teenage ?tea boys? went into the FOB Delhi gym with what was apparently the police chief?s AK-47. The tea boy, Aynoddin, proceeded to kill three unarmed Marines, Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, Cpl. Richard Rivera, and Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley Jr. A fourth, Staff Sgt. Cody Rhode, survived despite being shot five times.

Buckley?s father, Greg Buckley Sr., would later report that his son had expressed misgivings about the police chief three months before.

?He said, ?The chief of police is filthy,?? the father says. ?I said, ?How can he be in your base?? And he said, ?He is.??

The father adds, ?Everybody on the base knew [Jan] was a bad guy.?

The son had made the darkest of predictions.

?He said, ?I?m not going to be coming home. They?re going to kill me here, murder me here,?? the father says.

The son recalled some advice the father had often repeated.

?He said, ?You know what, Dad, you always said go with your gut feeling, and my feeling is something bad is going to happen to me on this base,? the father reports.

The son had been lifting weights in the gym with his buddies just two days from the end of his deployment when the tea boy shot him in the chest and neck.

?They keep telling us it?s under investigation,? the father says.

The Buckley family learned of Brezler?s warning?and the apparent failure of their son?s superiors to act?not from the Marine Corps but from the office of Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who had taken up the major?s cause. King is close to Brezler?s godfather, retired FDNY Capt. John Vigiano, who lost two sons on 9/11, one a firefighter, the other a police officer.

The law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan heard of Brezler?s plight and offered to represent him pro bono, with their man Carroll in the lead. Carroll met with the Buckley family, and they were doubly outraged to learn that Brezler was to be brought before a Board of Inquiry with the possibility he would be forced from the Marine Corps.

Back when Brezler self-reported the security violation resulting from the urgent email response, his immediate commanding officer had found no cause to pursue the matter. The investigating officer from his headquarters recommended the matter be closed with no disciplinary action. An assessment in Afghanistan determined that this intelligence ?spillage? was of no military importance and recommended that the emailed report be declassified. The military analyst who wrote the report is of the same opinion.

But for reasons that are not clear, NCIS went ahead and initiated an inquiry. Brezler allowed agents to examine his computer and search his residence on October 17, 2012. They left without discovering any classified material.

Brezler then remembered an external hard drive he had brought home from Afghanistan. The agents had missed it in the search, but Brezler again proved to be an old school man of honor. He would have called the agents to come get the drive even if he had known that it still contained some 100 classified documents, largely of a tactical nature pertaining to particular combat operations that were long since completed. Their value to an enemy would be essentially nil.

?There is no allegation that Major Brezler was unauthorized to receive these documents in the first instance, or any evidence of additional spillage of these documents,? writes Carroll in a summary of the case. ?NCIS closed their investigation without any criminal referral. Agents even remarked in the case file upon Major Brezler?s remarkable cooperation and transparency.?

Again for reasons that are not clear, Marine Col. Michael LeSavage took it upon himself to lodge a negative evaluation against Brezler for his supposed security infractions. Protocol called for the evaluation to have been issued by another commander, Lt. Col. Daniel Whisnant, who reportedly considered Brezler one of his best officers and had recommended him for promotion.

Even as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano, among others, stepped forward on Brezler?s behalf, the Marine Corps moved ahead with plans to conduct a Board of Inquiry at the Reserve headquarters in New Orleans, perhaps in December.

Some observers believe the matter is being pushed by the present Reserve commander, Lt. Gen. Richard Mills. He was previously deputy commandant for combat development and integration. His predecessor in that post was Lt. Gen George Flynn, whose son-in-law happens to be Maj. Donlon, who sent the email inquiry to Brezler with the subject line ?IMPORTANT: SARWAR JAN IS BACK!!!?

Donlon and Mills?s office both referred requests for comment to the public affairs officer for the Marine Reserve, Col. Francis Piccoli.

?Pursuant to a NCIS investigation that substantiated the mishandling of classified information, Maj. Brezler has been ordered to show cause for retention in the U.S. Marine Corps before a Board of Inquiry,? Piccoli said in an email. ?The Marine Corps will not comment further on this case at this time because we do not want to influence the Board of Inquiry?s decision-making process and/or jeopardize the due process Maj. Brezler should be afforded during this administrative hearing.?

Jan has denied the widely reported sex crimes allegations in the past but is presently unavailable for comment. He was briefly jailed after the tea boy shooting and was placed under house arrest thereafter?officially, anyway. The tea boy is supposedly going on trial in Afghanistan in May, though the Buckleys want to see him tried in America.

As Brezler awaits the Board of Inquiry that will determine whether he can remain a Marine, he continues to serve with the FDNY. To watch Rescue 2?s rig rumble from its Brooklyn firehouse in response to an alarm is to see the spirit of the 343 members of the department who perished on 9/11 come alive anew.

And the six firefighters from the company who were among those 343 would no doubt be particularly pleased that the current members include a Marine Reserve major who served with such distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving a Bronze Star.

The Marines who were killed while serving with Brezler would surely be just as pleased that one of their own was riding with an elite outfit that had served so bravely on the morning when our longest wars began and that now continues to race into harm?s way for the sake of others.

The fallen fighters and fallen Marines would have cheered as one when Brezler and the rest of Rescue 2 joined other companies in fighting a fire on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn on the night of November 9. Brezler was up on the fire floor, where flames were exploding out of the windows.

?A pretty intense job,? a fire officer remarked.

But imagine the disgust of the fallen, a disgust we all should share, at the prospect that this firefighter-Marine who so often has placed himself at risk should be betrayed.

Along with explaining its inaction following the warning and its failure to address the allegations of sex crimes against children in one of its facilities, the Marine Corps needs to explain why it is so insistent in going after one of its best.

What the Marines should do is send him another email, this one with the subject line ?IMPORTANT: BREZLER?S BACK!!!?......YES THEY SHOULD BE WATCHING IT ....BACK THIS MARINE UP !
 
Major Brezler has recd an Honorable Discharge...(SEE REPLY # 128 ABOVE)......while this may sound good to some i think the fact is that he did not want to be separated....he wanted to & should have been allowed to remain in the USMC...there are some others who should be further investigated relative to this case & why they pushed for the Major's discharge....just a real shame..... www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/19/marine-honorably-discharged-after-afghan-threat-warning/

 
68jk09 said:
Major Brezler has recd an Honorable Discharge...(SEE REPLY # 128 ABOVE)......while this may sound good to some i think the fact is that he did not want to be separated....he wanted to & should have been allowed to remain in the USMC...there are some others who should be further investigated relative to this case & why they pushed for the Major's discharge....just a real shame..... www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/19/marine-honorably-discharged-after-afghan-threat-warning/
Click to expand...
Chief, I think it's called "scapegoat".
 
WELCOME HOME SGT....CONTINUED RIP...  Widow Gets Remains of Soldier Lost in Korean War

Associated Press|Dec 21, 2013


LOS ANGELES - Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph E. Gantt went off to war 63 years ago, leaving behind a wife who never gave up on his return.

On Friday, 94-year-old Clara Gantt stood up from her wheelchair and wept in the cold before the flag-draped casket.

Sgt. Gantt was finally home.

"He told me if anything happened to him he wanted me to remarry. I told him no, no. Here I am, still his wife," she told reporters at Los Angeles International Airport, where his remains were carried from a jetliner by military honor guard.

Gant was a field medic who went missing in action on Nov. 30, 1950 during the Korean War while serving with Battery C, 503rd Field Artillery, 2nd Infantry Division, according to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in Washington, D.C.

According to the office, elements of the 2nd Infantry Division were attacked by greater numbers of Chinese forces near the town of Kunu-ri, North Korea. The division disengaged and withdrew, fighting its way through a series of Chinese roadblocks. Numerous U.S. soldiers were reported missing that day in the vicinity of Somindong, North Korea.

After a 1953 exchange of prisoners of war, returning U.S. soldiers reported that Gantt had been injured in battle, captured by Chinese forces and died in a POW camp in early 1951 from malnutrition and lack of medical care. His remains were only recently identified. Information on when they were found was not immediately available from the missing personnel office.

Nearly 7,900 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War. According to the Defense Department, modern technology allows identifications to continue to be made from remains turned over by North Korea or recovered from that nation by American teams.

"Sixty-some odd years and just receiving his remains, coming home, was a blessing and I am so happy that I was living to accept him," Clara Gantt said.

She met her future husband in 1946 while on a train heading to California. Two years later, they were married.

She lives a few miles away from the airport in Inglewood. She bought the home in the 1960s to await her husband's return and even hired a gardener because he hated yardwork, she told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/1dYMORj)

One wall of her bedroom is covered with photos of military certificates and photos but Gantt said she hasn't displayed his posthumously awarded Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor for fear they would be stolen; there have been many break-ins over the years in her neighborhood.

Over the years she worked as a caregiver for the disabled and children. But she never was tempted to marry.

"I am very, very proud of him. He was a wonderful husband, an understanding man," she told reporters. "I always did love my husband, we was two of one kind, we loved each other. And that made our marriage complete."

Joseph Gantt is to be buried with full military honors is scheduled for Dec. 28 in Inglewood, Calif. Gantt said she plans one day to be buried next to him.
 
The wreaths at Arlington are from the Wreaths across America program. It is a great program that originates in Maine. They stopped at a middle school in my town enroute to Arlington. The school is named for a WWII Medal of Honor recipient ( Posthumously)
15 Tractor-Trailers full. We had traffic blocked for for the ceremony. If you google Wreaths across America, it is a great story about patriots who care about our veterans.
 
Gen. Petraeus about our military today



    Thanks to my fellow veterans:



I remember the day I found out I got into West Point.  My mom 
actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited
for me to get out of class.  She was bawling her eyes out and   
apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter.  She   
wasn't crying because it had been her dream for me to go there.
She was crying because she knew how hard I'd worked to get in, 

how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an   
infantry officer. I was going to get that opportunity. 



That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially

told me the following:
"David, you're a smart guy.  You don't have to join the   
military.  You should go to college, instead."

I could easily write a theme defending West Point and the   
military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite   
institution, that separate from that it is actually   
statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is   
to get admitted to college, that serving the nation is a   
challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for   
a host of reasons, but I won't.



What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told   
that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then   
there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too   
many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our military is bearing.

In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four (4) years.

During the Vietnam era, 4.3% served in twelve (12) years.

Since 2001, only 0.45% of our population has served in the 
Global War on Terror.



These are unbelievable statistics.  Over time, fewer and fewer 
people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is 
only getting worse.



Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of
10% veterans with only one person having a child in the   
military. Taxes did not increase to pay for the war.  War bonds   
were not sold.  Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average   
citizen was asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed   
nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their   
hearts. The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their 

families.  The volunteers.  The people who swore an oath to   
defend this nation.  You stand there, deployment after   
deployment and fight on.  You've lost relationships, spent years   
of your lives in extreme conditions, years apart from kids   
you'll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even   
professional athletes don't understand.



Then you come home to a nation that doesn't understand.  They
don't understand suffering.  They don't understand sacrifice. 
They don't understand why we fight for them.  They don't   
understand that bad people exist.  They look at you like you're   
a machine - like something is wrong with you.  You are the   
misguided one - not them.



When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms with   
political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq   
and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can't

understand the macro issues they gathered from books, because of

your bias.



You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the violent
strain at that. Your Congress is debating your benefits, your   
retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to do more. But

the amazing thing about you is that you all know this.  You know 
your country will never pay back what you've given up.  You know 
that the populace at large will never truly understand or   
appreciate what you have done for them.  Hell, you know that in   
some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having 
worn the uniform.  But you do it anyway.



You do what the greatest men and women of this country have
done since 1775.  YOU SERVED.  Just that decision alone

makes you part of an elite group.



"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by 
so many to so few."  -Winston Churchill-  Thank you to the 11.2%

and 4.3% who have served and thanks to the 0.45% who

continue to serve our Nation.



General David Petraeus
West Point Class 1974



"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a 
difference in the world.  But the U.S. ARMED FORCES don't have that problem.?

R. Reagan
 
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