{"id":22592,"date":"2011-03-15T12:16:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T16:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=22592"},"modified":"2011-03-15T13:58:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T17:58:24","slug":"22592","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=22592","title":{"rendered":"Promises kept"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it was 1979 or 1980 when a rigger at Fort Bragg went nuts and cut some static lines (the thin strap that pulls your parachute out when you jump) and three paratroopers<\/del> one captain was killed on a training jump on Sicily Drop Zone. The Army quit jumping for a week or two while every chute in the inventory was repacked. The they loaded us all up and jumped us again…something about falling off a horse or something. No one refused to jump.<\/p>\n

I remember a time at the National Training Center in California, a squad leader was shot in the back during a live fire training exercise. The medics hauled him off to the hospital and the exercise continued. <\/p>\n

There was a jump into Fort McClellan, AL when a newbie got tangled up in a 5-tour Vietnam veteran 1st Sergeant. The newbie released his WICI bag (about 150 pounds of squad equipment) so that the 1st sergeant hit the ground at whatever velocity a 200-pound man hits the ground in a hundred-plus foot free fall, the 160 pound private landed on top of him and the WICI bag landed on top of both of them. Both men broke their backs and were hauled off the drop zone into their civilian lives as cripples. Five days later we all jumped back into Taylor Creek DZ on Fort Stewart, GA with no one refusing to jump.<\/p>\n

I’ve watched 26 ton Bradleys sink into Texas lakes and rivers with a 10-man crew aboard and they all surfaced, ready to go test the next POS equipment the Army handed them. I watched a Bradley roll over a thirty-foot cliff and the crew emerge a little dizzy but thoroughly entertained.<\/p>\n

The Army wanted to see what jumping with an M60 machine gun fully assembled would do to a man. So they had my buddy jump with one – he went into the civilian world a cripple.<\/p>\n

And, oh, eight Marines and two sailors were injured in an explosion at Fort Bragg<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n

That was just training – it was just us doing what we did everyday because the Army told us to do it.<\/p>\n

And now the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is bending over backwards to raise our Tricare premiums<\/a> – ya know, the premiums that we pay for our free<\/strong> health care.<\/p>\n

Yeah, well, fuck you very much.<\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> DaveO asked about casualties during relative peace and I found this at history,navy.mil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it was 1979 or 1980 when a rigger at Fort Bragg went nuts and … Promises kept<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}