Category: Blue Skies

This is republished from 2008, but Operation Gothic Serpent was 18 years ago today. It’s lessons live on and we’re still waging a war that has it’s roots in that battle;

15 years ago today I lost a dear friend. Tim Martin and I showed up at the Reception Station in Fort Polk Louisiana – I won’t mention the year, the fact that they were still doing Basic and Infantry AIT at Ft Polk should be enough to narrow it down for you. He was a huge, quiet and friendly guy and I felt lucky that we were attached alphabetically through those 16 weeks. I can’t count the times that I’d stumbled and looked up to see his outstretched hand to help me up.

After those 16 weeks, then four weeks together at the Basic Airborne Course in Georgia then he went to the 2d Ranger Battalion at Lewis and I went to Fort Stewart (yes, the 1st Battalion was actually on Fort Stewart in those days). We went off in our separate directions for four years and then ended up in the same SFQC class at Fort Bragg – alphabetically attached once again. After that six months, we rarely saw each other, but each time we met, the conversation picked up right where it had left off the last time.

I’ve never met anyone who ever met him that had a bad word for him. He loved the Army, and later I learned he loved his family more.

I discovered his final fate on October 18th, 1993 while I was leaving my last duty station as a retired soldier when I read the casualty list from what is now known as the “Blackhawk Down” fiasco and found his name.

I spent the next seven years trying to find out what happened to him. I became a member of the fine Paratrooper.net forum, run by my good friend Mark (back when Mark and I were the only participating members). As the forum grew, I put together bits and pieces of the story and some wonderful soul sent his wife, Linda, my way. She sent me pictures of him which I’ve put on my accompanying website as a memorial to Master Sergeant Tim “Griz” Martin.

The movie Blackhawk Down did a great job capturing his personality and immortalizing his love for his daughters.

Another friend at paratrooper.net, 509thTrooper, helped me get Tim a brick at the Ranger Memorial in Fort Benning. Then Trooper went and took a picture of the brick for me.

I stop and visit with Tim at Arlington at least twice every year on Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day and every Christmas when I make my rounds there. And every day I give thanks for men like Tim Martin who are willing to put everything on the line for the rest of us. But today, especially, I save for Tim. And for Linda and their girls who sacrificed everything for us as well.

And thanks to COB6 for reminding me to share it with you.

Stingerwooten send this link from the Washington Post announcing the death of Claude Choules, the last surviving combatant of the Great War;

The former seaman, who was underage when he signed up for duty, witnessed the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918. He also watched as German sailors scuttled their own fleet at Scapa Flow, near Scotland, to avoid having the ships fall into British hands after the war.

Mr. Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war’s last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans.

Mr. Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, served as a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Force.

The last combat veteran of the First World War, Claude Choules, died in his sleep in a nursing home in Perth, Australia a few weeks after his 110th birthday according to an article sent to us by ROS;

Mr Choules, was born in Wyre Piddle, Worcestershire in 1901. During a 41-year career in the Royal Navy that spanned both wars, he served on HMS Revenge, witnessing the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918 and the scuttling of the fleet in Scapa Flow.

From the Washington Post;

World War I was raging when Choules began training with the British Royal Navy, just one month after he turned 14. In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, the main battle fleet of the German Navy during the war.

Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war’s last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans.

Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, served as a waitress in the Women’s Royal Air Force.

You can see his last interview at this link.

Blue skies are ahead, Mr. Choules.

According to a posting on Facebook, Robert “Bobby” Orr, one of my team leaders in C 1/41st passed away yesterday, I don’t have any details beyond that right now.

For once, I speechless.

ADDED 4-11-2011;

I’m bumping this to the top from last week as an update for posterity.

Bobby Orr pulled into his driveway after a workout at the gym early in morning on April 2, 2011. He had just made the Sergeant Major list and he was sitting on top of the world. He shut the engine of his car off, leaned his head back and died of a heart attack at the tender age of 44. He leaves behind his wife of more than twenty year and his two teenage sons as well as his parents and siblings.

His final assignment with the Army was as an active duty recruiter for the California National Guard in Pittsburg, CA. His funeral was attended by literally hundreds of people he had recruited – a testament to his honesty and candor as a recruiter.

For a nasty-ass leg, he was one hoo-ah soldier and the platoon leader’s gunner (Miot Crews, where are you?) in my platoon during Desert Storm. I know I’ll miss him, and a few hundred CANGians will miss him, too. They promoted Bobby posthumously to Sergeant Major and awarded him a Meritorious Service Medal and presented it to his wife, Iris. I am honored that I was allowed to be present at Sergeant Major Bobby Orr’s last promotion ceremony.

The last living World War I vet died yesterday at the age of 110 at his home in Charles Town, WV according to the Associated Press;

When asked in February 2008 how it felt to be the last of his kind, he said simply, “I realized that somebody had to be, and it was me.” And he told The Associated Press he would have done it all over again, “without a doubt.”

On Nov. 11, 2008, the 90th anniversary of the end of the war, Buckles attended a ceremony at the grave of World War I Gen. John Pershing in Arlington National Cemetery.

He was back in Washington a year later to endorse a proposal to rededicate the existing World War I memorial on the National Mall as the official National World War I Memorial. He told a Senate panel it was “an excellent idea.” The memorial was originally built to honor District of Columbia’s war dead.

We had just wished Mr. Buckles a Happy Birthday back on the first of the month.

Thanks to Ponsdorf and VTWoody for the link.

Added: VT Woody sends this photo;

You’ve probably heard that jack Lalanne died at the age of 96 yesterday, he succumbed to pneumonia. He was probably one of the first TV personalities I remember from my pre-school days, not that he had much affect on me.

I still remember him doing countless “Jumping Jacks” (side straddle hops to those in the military), and although he popularized the exercise, he really had no part in developing the exercise, but we’ll always remember him doing them in his tight gym clothes.

Fox News writes;

In 1936 in his native Oakland, LaLanne opened a health studio that included weight-training for women and athletes. Those were revolutionary notions at the time, because of the theory that weight training made an athlete slow and “muscle bound” and made a woman look masculine.

“You have to understand that it was absolutely forbidden in those days for athletes to use weights,” he once said. “It just wasn’t done. We had athletes who used to sneak into the studio to work out.

“It was the same with women. Back then, women weren’t supposed to use weights. I guess I was a pioneer,” LaLanne said.

Thanks to Tman for the link