Category: Korea

  • Valor Friday

    Hudner

    Today’s Valor Friday highlights Thomas J. Hudner Jr. (August 31, 1924 – November 13, 2017). He was an officer in the United States Navy and a Naval Aviator. He rose to the rank of Captain, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions in trying to save the life of his wingman, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.

    Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Hudner attended Phillips Academy and the United States Naval Academy. Initially uninterested in aviation, he eventually took up flying and joined Fighter Squadron 32, flying the F4U Corsair at the outbreak of the Korean War. Arriving near Korea in October 1950, he flew support missions from the aircraft carrier USS Leyte.

    corsair

    On 4 December 1950, Hudner and Brown were among a group of pilots on patrol near the Chosin Reservoir when Brown’s Corsair was struck by ground fire from Chinese troops and crashed. In an attempt to save Brown from his burning aircraft, Hudner intentionally crash-landed his own aircraft on a snowy mountain in freezing temperatures to help Brown. In spite of these efforts, Brown died of his injuries and Hudner was forced to evacuate, having also been injured in the landing.

    Citation.
    For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a pilot in Fighter Squadron 32, while attempting to rescue a squadron mate whose plane struck by antiaircraft fire and trailing smoke, was forced down behind enemy lines. Quickly maneuvering to circle the downed pilot and protect him from enemy troops infesting the area, Lt. (J.G.) Hudner risked his life to save the injured flier who was trapped alive in the burning wreckage. Fully aware of the extreme danger in landing on the rough mountainous terrain and the scant hope of escape or survival in subzero temperature, he put his plane down skillfully in a deliberate wheels-up landing in the presence of enemy troops. With his bare hands, he packed the fuselage with snow to keep the flames away from the pilot and struggled to pull him free. Unsuccessful in this, he returned to his crashed aircraft and radioed other airborne planes, requesting that a helicopter be dispatched with an ax and fire extinguisher. He then remained on the spot despite the continuing danger from enemy action and, with the assistance of the rescue pilot, renewed a desperate but unavailing battle against time, cold, and flames. Lt. (J.G.) Hudner’s exceptionally valiant action and selfless devotion to a shipmate sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

    Fair winds and following seas, Captain Hudner.

    Refs.
    Wiki
    CMOH

  • There Are No Coincidences

    For a long time after the end of the war in Vietnam, the Communist Vietnamese government had a law in place that any US citizen who entered Vietnam would immediately be arrested.

    In 1999, things changed when the British government returned ownership of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese government. There was speculation that the city would become another Communist wasteland. Instead, the Chinese government had been watching how things worked in Hong Kong and in the business world outside of China and took the track of business. Instead of interfering with a successful economic model, they embraced it and began a new way of doing things. Construction of new buildings in Beijing and the irruption of the capitalist business model made many, many people prosperous. And China wanted money coming in. China’s plentiful coal resources spurred the construction of new coal-fired power generating stations, and began to provide power to provinces that had not had a reliable source before. China is now contracting to build coal-fired power plants in other countries.

    With Vietnam being heavily influenced by the Chinese government, the capitalist business model was adopted and tourism grew. Americans can visit there, but do not speak out against the government unless you want to spend time in a re-education camp.

    Ho Chi Minh started the French-Indochina war over the French presence in Indochina before World War II. He wanted money and the French colonials out of Indochina, period. His war with France began in 1946 just as Kim Il-Sung, the godlike grandfather of ND:tBF, started his own war in Korea in his attempt to unite the north and south of that peninsula. Grandpa Kim wanted power more than money.

    Both Uncle Ho and Grandpa Kim got help from the Chinese in their quest. There were Chinese weapons and troops in both Korea and Indochina. When the French capitulated, Ho demanded a ransom for the 10,000 French POWs, but returned only 3,900 to the French. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel, and Laos and Cambodia became independent states.. MacArthur, in Korea, stubbornly refused to end his trek into the north, demanded a nuclear weapon drop on the north, and was refused and recalled to the US by Pres. Truman. Saigon became the capital of South Vietnam, and Hanoi the capital of North Vietnam, and the Korean peninsula was permanently divided.

    In the 1960s, the US sent advisers to South Vietnam. South Korea was still recovering from its own war, with a US base at the DMZ that marked the boundary between the north and south. Occasionally, people would slip through the cracks, into the South or across the Nork-Chinese border into China. Pres. Johnson decided that the US should get more heavily involved in Vietnam and sent in more troops to start a shooting war in 1965.

    In 1987, two years before the USSR was dissolved and the war in the Balkans got underway, Donald Trump began to make trips to the Soviet Union for the purpose of making real estate deals. In 2013, the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow while Trump was there, negotiating a real estate deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. That deal fell through and he returned to the USA. Robert Mueller was Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013.

    In 1989, after 10 years of futile warfare in Afghanistan, Gorbachev declared the Soviet Union bankrupt, dismissed the Politburo and sent everybody home. Shortly afterwards, the Berlin Wall was pulled down and the Balkan Wars began.

    During this time, with Trump engaging in his business deals and going wherever he felt like going, the CIA paid the Chinese through a third party to make it appear that the Russians were interfering in the US elections. The third party go-between for this was a woman whose presence was so lowkey as to be almost nonexistent. She went by several names, including the Dragon Lady and Mah Jongg. She appears in a few photos, but very, very few. Her appearance is not completely Chinese, but seems to be something else. There has been speculation that she is part Chinese and part “other” such as Yakut or Vietnamese.

    She was known for her ability to pick up languages quickly with the correct accent, especially important when speaking various Chinese dialects such as Mandarin or Yue or Hakka. If your accent is incorrect, no one will understand what you say. This made her a valuable asset for mischief.

    She also seems to have been an expert code hacker. In 2016, hackers stole $100 million from the central bank of Bangladesh after obtaining payment-transfer codes and moving the money overseas in what information security experts say appears to be one of the largest bank heists in history. Anyone who can use these codes can also make transitions quickly and instantly once they are confirmed. But the bank reportedly managed to block a further transfer of $870 million initiated by the hacker group.

    The destination for this large sum of stolen  money was never identified. The speculation was that the Dragon Lady sent it to North Korea, but attempts to trace it failed. Any account that received that money in the beginning was gone, period, with funds immediately transferred to other accounts to hide them. However, Mah Jongg did leave a mark behind, almost as a tease: $1.00 was left in the Bangladesh account.

    Only part of the blackmail money that Obama sent to Iran was delivered there. Some of it was diverted to North Korea, and from there to China for the purpose of enhancing the deceit that Russia was involved in meddling in the affairs of other countries, especially the US elections. Remember that recent whine from the Ayatollahs that they were running out of money?

    The discovery of Maria Butina’s inept and silly efforts to meddle in things, after she came to the USA in 2016, was also a distraction meant to enhance the notion that Russia was interfering in US politics. She was what Stalin used to call a “useful idiot” – the perfect plant to distract attention from what was really going on.

    In addition, the Chinese persuaded Fatty Kim da T’ird and his Nork bombmakers to create a distraction with his 25 kiloton test in September 2016, near the time of US election debates. He’s had plenty of assistance from China in return for distracting outsiders like the US government from their activities. The second test, the half-megaton underground test in September 2017, was a secondary distraction meant to draw attention away from the Chinese and put it on the Russians even though Trump was long since sworn in.

    All those missile tests going on in Norkiland, and the posturing and threats by Fatty Kim da T’ird, were distractions right up until the ballots were counted and recounted with more Trump votes being found, and the electoral college had cast its votes. The activities from North Korea abruptly ceased when Trump, in November 2017, got the two Koreas to work together, made business deals with Xi JinPing in China, visited Vietnam, and has watched while every ridiculous effort possible has been dragged into existence to try to unseat him, including the Circus of Trolls called Supreme Court justice hearings.

    The effort is still going on. And China is now negotiating for contracts to build coal-fired power plants in countries outside their borders, while now openly demanding that the USA give them more cash.

    Coincidence? I don’t think so.

  • Ghosts for the Gullible.  The Joseph Wayne Dunagan  skinny.

    Ghosts for the Gullible.  The Joseph Wayne Dunagan skinny.

    Beginning in 1962, secret U.S. military units, referred to as “Ghost Walkers,” operated clandestinely in North Korea. Their missions were so secret, in fact, the U.S. government refuses…

    While tensions flare in the Korean Peninsula, American Free Press has learned of a clandestine joint military and intelligence unit that has been conducting brazen cross-border raids into North Korean territory since at least the early 1960s. The outfit, known as the “Ghost Walkers,” performed top-secret missions on North Korean soil, including infiltrating a nuclear power plant in 1963 and kidnapping a North Korean general straight from his camp, who was later interrogated and executed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

    Information on this unit is so classified that the men who served in it have been unable to prove so, as it is not listed on their service records, and they have been denied veteran benefits for over 50 years, including but not limited to treatment for toxic chemical exposure, i.e., herbicides like the defoliant Agent Orange. The main reason the Pentagon refuses to recognize the service and sacrifice of these vets is the fact that, in carrying out their top-secret missions, treaty and other laws were violated, which would create a diplomatic firestorm if revealed.

    The joint CIA-Army-Navy-Marines-Air Force unit operated out of South Korea from ASCOM City, near Inchon, and may still be functioning, although its top-secret nature precludes those without a need to know from confirming its existence. ASCOM, or Army Support Command, is a U.S. Army Materiel Support Center that “had its beginnings in the mid-1930s when the Japanese built a large supply depot and arsenal at Bupyong-Dong, Inchon City, to support their troops in Manchuria.” After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, Army Support Command Korea was established and acquired the acronym ASCOM.

    I think most of you know where this is going.  Top Secret missions, Agent Orange and the shadowy super secret JCIAANMAFU (joint CIA-Army-Navy-Marines-Air Force unit) always deny veteran benefits to those who served.  I know dozens of MARMOOSEAL’s that completed BUD’s at Camp Klusterphuk and deployed to kill OBL and not one of them is being paid for their disabilities.

    When a gullible Spousal Unit swallows one of these lunatics lures hook line and sinker it’s really sad to watch.   I usually try to give them additional leeway but wonder if maybe an intervention of some kind might help.  The “Skinny” on her husband can be found in the archives of our Governments storage facilities.

    The wife of Oregon native Joseph Wayne Dunagan, one of the Ghost Walkers, who served in Korea from May 1962 to March 1964, reached out to this reporter with information she feels proves the unit’s existence. She explained how she began her quest over 15 years ago to force the U.S. government to honor its commitment to not just her husband but to all those who served in the unit. Dunagan was trained as a military policeman at Fort Gordon, Ga.

    “I know that my husband’s eligible for benefits, and I know that what they asked him to do in Korea was exceptionally dangerous,” Mrs. Dunagan said. “It would scare the pants right off of you if you knew some of the stuff that they had those guys do.”

    You can read the rest of this nonsense at the link below or suffer through the choppy video.  I would not recommend you try both.  Shame on the people that encourage these folks to make an ass of themselves.

     

     

    Source: U.S. Ghost Walkers in North Korea – American Free Press

  • Some People’s Kids….

    This one is a little unusual. Well, really, it’s quite unusual, but it’s true.

    Our friends at Military Phony checked this story thoroughly, because the late Jonn Lilyea did not believe it was true.

    But it is true.

    The young man in the photo below was 14 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Army to go fight in World War II.  According to his story, he dropped out of grammar school, and told the recruiters he was 16. He was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds at the time he enlisted, which gave him an appearance older than he really was.

    Just looks like an affable soul, doesn’t he?

    He enlisted at the age of 14, spent a year in training including going to paratrooper training, and made the jump into Sicily in the dark of night when he was 15. He is now retired from the military.

    He did get slightly hurt on landing, but found his cricket clicker, which all the airborne soldiers were given to find each other in the dark, and quickly found his unit. Below, you will see his assignments and his training for WWII.

    He was literally following in his father’s footsteps. After the CCC was ended, Ove Schmidt enlisted in the Army ahead of his son, on the eve of World War II.

    When the Army discovered through a letter from his mother that Jim Schmidt was ‘just a kid’, he was sent home.  They wouldn’t take him back, so he joined the Navy, because the war was still underway and he was assigned to a munitions ship. Then the Navy found out his real age and sent him home (again). When he reached his 18th birthday, he re-upped with the Army and went to Germany, stayed there until 1946, and after that to Japan, to fight in Korea. In 1962, he was sent to Laos as an American advisor. The war in Viet Nam was yet to be an undeclared war.

    He was the sergeant major of all 7th Special Forces A Teams in Vietnam until he was reassigned to 5th Special Forces Group in 1964. He retired in 1965.

    Among his awards and decorations, Schmidt received the Silver Star with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Purple Heart Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster, World War II Victory Medal, European-Africa Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and Army of Occupation Medal with Germany and Japan Clasp. – Article.

    The peeps at Military Phony sent mostly the WWII stuff, so some things are just not included here.  I did not see a full list of his awards in what they sent.

    After three wars and 22 years of military service and going into retirement, he decided a desk job was not what he wanted, and he went to work for the CIA’s Air America in Vietnam. In 1969, he left SE Asia for home.

    He is now in his 90s. His 14 year old grandson, in awe of his granddad being part of a war at the same age, started a letter writing campaign for his grandpa’s birthday.

    Schmidt 2018 article

    If Mr. Schmidt  seems to exaggerate something, I’d let it go. He has done more in a single week of his life than most people do in a decade.

    The least he deserves is our thanks for stepping up and serving in three different conflicts because he wanted to do it, not because he had to.

  • South Korea unearths nine sets of war dead remains during DMZ mine-clearing operation

    s koreaU.S. Army General Vincent K. Brooks, Commander of United Nations Command, visited Arrowhead Hill in the Demilitarized Zone, where Republic of Korea forces are currently conducting de-mining operations, Oct. 8, 2018. The ongoing landmine removal will enable safe access for joint recovery of remains operations and is part of a broader effort to reduce military tensions, prevent accidental clashes and build trust between North and South Korea. Coordinated for release with MND. (SGT Benjamin Parsons/U.S. Army)

    South Korea has unearthed nine sets of remains of war dead, including a rare, relatively intact skeleton, during a mine-clearance operation inside the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula, the military said Monday.

    The return of remains from the 1950-53 Korean War, including 55 cases containing the remains of American troops who were lost in North Korea, has been a bright spot in otherwise slow diplomatic efforts to persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons.

    The defense ministry announced it had recovered five sets of remains, including one that “appears to be complete,” last week during work in the Cheorwon area northeast of Seoul. It released a photo of the skeleton, which still had a shoe on one foot.

    “All the five sets have been determined during the on-site investigation to be the remains of war dead,” the ministry said in a press release. They will be sent to the ministry’s agency for the recovery and identification of troops killed in action, known as MAKRI, for DNA analysis and further identification.

    The total number of remains found since the operation began Oct. 1 at Arrowhead Hill is now nine. The site saw fierce fighting during the war, which ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

    The total number of remains found since the operation began Oct. 1 at Arrowhead Hill is now nine. The site saw fierce fighting during the war, which ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

    Major fighting at Arrowhead, also known as Hill 281, involved American, French, South Korean and Chinese forces, according to retired Lt. Col. Steve Tharp, a military history expert who is researching the battles. The North Koreans were farther east and would not have been involved, he said.

    Read the entire article at The Conservative Angle

    Tip ‘o the chapeau to ChipNASA for providing the link.