Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years
Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer: 2007 Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report. The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest number since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War. The suicide rate for the Army has fluctuated over the past 26 years, from last year's high of 17.3 per 100,000 to a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001. Last year, "Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts," the report said. The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren't. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said. 
Preliminary numbers for the first half of this year indicate the number of suicides could decline across the service in 2007 but increase among troops serving in the wars, officials said. The increases for 2006 came as Army officials worked to set up a number of new and stronger programs for providing mental health care to a force strained by the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the global counterterrorism war entering its sixth year. Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report. "In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves. There also "was limited evidence to support the view that multiple ... deployments are a risk factor for suicide behaviors," it said. About a quarter of those who killed themselves had a history of at least one psychiatric disorder. Of those, about 20 percent had been diagnosed with a mood disorder such as bipolar disorder and/or depression; and 8 percent had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, including post traumatic stress disorder — one of the signature injuries of the conflict in Iraq. Firearms were the most common method of suicide. Those who attempted suicide but didn't succeed tended more often to take overdoses and cut themselves. In a service of more than a half million troop, the 99 suicides amounted to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 — the highest in the past 26 years, the report said. The average rate over those years has been 12.3 per 100,000. The rate for those serving in the wars stayed about the same, 19.4 per 100,000 in 2006, compared with 19.9 in 2005. The Army said the information was compiled from reports collected as part of its suicide prevention program — reports required for all "suicide-related behaviors that result in death, hospitalization or evacuation" of the soldier. It can take considerable time to investigate a suicide and, in fact, the Army said that in addition to the 99 confirmed suicides last year, there are two other deaths suspected as suicides in which investigations were pending. Associated Press reporter Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report from Washington. 
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 8:39 PM EDT
The American Labor Movement
Mood:
celebratory
The American Labor Movement 
Labor history of the United States The Labor history of the U.S. involves the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people. Pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law. As a response, organized unions and labor federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing social philosophies and periodic federal intervention. The history of organized labor has been a specialty of scholars since the 1890s, and has produced a large scholarly literature. In the 1960s, as social history gained popularity, a new emphasis emerged on the history of all workers, with special regard to gender and race. This is called "the new labor history." Much scholarship has attempted to bring the social history perspectives into the study of organized labor. Organized Labor to 1900 
Early Unions Order of the Knights of St. Crispin The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was founded in 1867 and claimed 50,000 members by 1870, by far the largest union in the country. But it was poorly organized and soon declined. They fought encroachments of machinery and unskilled labor on autonomy of skilled shoeworkers. One provision in the Crispin constitution explicitly sought to limit the entry of "green hands" into the trade. But that failed because the new machines could be operated by semi-skilled workers and produces more shoes than hand sewing. The first local unions in the United States formed in the late 18th century, but the movement came into its own after the Civil War, when the short-lived National Labor Union (NLU) became the first federation of American unions. Knights of Labor The first effective labor organization that was more than regional in membership and influence was the Knights of Labor, organized in 1869. The Knights believed in the unity of the interests of all producing groups and sought to enlist in their ranks not only all laborers but everyone who could be truly classified as a producer. The acceptance of all producers led to explosive growth after 1880. Under the leadership of Terence Powderly they championed a variety of causes, sometimes through political or cooperative ventures. Powderly hoped to gain their ends through politics and education rather than through economic coercion. Their big strikes failed and they collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket Riot) of 1886, when their message was confused with that of bomb-making anarchists. Rise of AFL The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions began in 1881 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. Its members were different unions. Its original goals were to encourage the formation of trade unions and to obtain legislation, such as prohibition of child labor, a national eight hour day, and exclusion of foreign contract workers. Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers Union was chosen as the chairman of its Committee on Organization and as a member of its Legislative Committee. The Federation made some efforts to obtain favorable legislation, but had little success in organizing or chartering new unions. It came out in support of the proposal, traditionally attributed to Peter J. McGuire of the Carpenters Union, for a national Labor Day holiday on the first Monday in September, and threw itself behind the eight hour movement, which sought to limit the workday by either legislation or union organizing. In 1886, as the relations between the trade union movement and the Knights of Labor worsened, McGuire and other union leaders called for a convention to be held at Columbus, Ohio on December 8th. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions merged with the new organization, known as the American Federation of Labor or AFL, formed at that convention. The AFL was formed in large part because of the dissatisfaction of many trade union leaders with the Knights of Labor, an organization that contained many trade unions and which had played a leading role in some of the largest strikes of the era. The new AFL distinguished itself from the Knights by emphasizing the autonomy of each trade union affiliated with it and limiting membership to workers and organizations made up of workers, unlike the Knights. The AFL grew steadily in the late nineteenth century while the Knights disappeared. Although Gompers at first advocated something like industrial unionism, he retreated from that in the face of opposition from the craft unions that made up most of the AFL. The emphasis made for much stronger locals with whom the workers could identify, and derived benefits in terms of insurance, fellowship, and bargaining power. Labor History 1900-1932 Coal Strikes 1900-1902 Coal Strike of 1902 The United Mine Workers was successful in its strike against soft coal (bituminous) mines in the Midwest in 1900, but its strike against the hard coal (anthracite) mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national political crisis in 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise solution that kept the flow of coal going, and higher wages and shorter hours, but did not include recognition of the union as a bargaining agent. Debs, Socialists, IWW and Dual Unionism The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members became known as "Wobblies", was founded in 1905 by a group of about 30 labor radicals. Among their most prominent leaders was William “Big Bill” Haywood. The IWW organized along the lines of industrial unionism rather than craft unionism; in fact, they went even further, pursuing the goal of "One Big Union" and the abolition of the wage system. Many, though probably not all, Wobblies favored anarcho-syndicalism. Much of the IWW’s organizing took place in the West, and most of its early members were miners, lumbermen, cannery, and dock workers. In 1912 the IWW organized a strike of more than twenty thousand textile workers, and by 1917 the Agricultural Worker's Organization (AWO) of the IWW claimed a hundred thousand itinerant farm workers in the heartland of North America. Eventually the concept of One Big Union spread from dock workers to maritime workers, and thus was communicated to many different parts of the world. Dedicated to workplace and economic democracy, the IWW allowed men and women as members, and organized workers of all races and nationalities. At its peak it had 150,000 members, but it was fiercely repressed during, and especially after, World War I with many of its members killed, about 10,000 organizers imprisoned, and thousands more deported as foreign agitators. The IWW proved that unskilled workers could be organized and gave unskilled workers a sense of dignity and self-worth. The IWW exists today with about 2,000 members, but its most significant impact was during its first two decades of existence. Socialist Party The Socialist Party of America was a coalition of local parties based in industrial cities, and usually was rooted in ethnic communities, especially German and Finnish. By 1912 they claimed more than a thousand locally elected officials in 33 states and 160 cities, especially the Midwest. Eugene Debs ran for president in 1900, 1904 and 1908 primarily to encourage the local effort, and he did so again in 1912. The party was factionalized. The conservatives, led by Victor Berger of Milwaukee who promoted progressive causes of efficiency and an end to corruption. The radicals wanted to overthrow capitalism, tried to infiltrate labor unions, and sought to cooperate with the IWW. With few exceptions the party had weak or nonexistent links to local labor unions. Immigration was an issue--the radicals saw immigrants as fodder for the war with capitalism, while conservatives complained the immigrants lowered wage rates and absorbed too many city resources. Many of these issues were heatedly debated at the First National Congress of the Socialist Party in 1910, and the national convention in Indianapolis in 1912. At the latter the radicals won an early test by seating Bill Haywood on the Executive Committee, by sending encouragement to western "Wobblies," and by a resolution seeming to favor industrial unionism. The conservatives counterattacked by amending the party constitution to expel any socialists who favored industrial sabotage or syndicalism (that is, the IWW), and who refused to participate in American elections. They adopted a conservative platform calling for cooperative organization of prisons, a national bureau of health, abolition of the Senate and the presidential veto, and a long list of progressive reforms that the Democratic party was known for. Debs did not attend--he saw his mission as keeping the disparate units together in the hope that someday a common goal would be found. There was little money--his campaign cost only $66,000, mostly for 3.5 million leaflets and travel to rallies organized by local groups. Debs criss-crossed the country, His biggest event was a speech to 15,000 in New York City. The crowd sang the "Marseillaise," and "International" as Emil Seidel, the vice-presidential candidate, boasted, "Only a year ago workingmen were throwing decayed vegetables and rotten eggs at us but now all is changed....Eggs are too high. There is a great giant growing up in this country that will someday take over the affairs of this nation. He is a little giant now but he is growing fast. The name of this little giant is socialism." Debs said that only the socialists represented labor; he condemned "Injunction Bill Taft"; ridiculed Roosevelt as "a charlatan, mountebank, and fraud, and his Progressive promises and pledges as the mouthings of a low and utterly unprincipled self seeker and demagogue." Debs insisted that the Democrats, Progressives and Republicans alike were financed by the trusts. Party newspapers spread the word--there were five English-language and eight foreign language dailies along with 262 English and 36 foreign language weeklies. Debs won 900,000 votes, about 6% of the total cast. The great majority of labor union members voted, as always, for one of the major parties. Government and Labor In 1908 the U.S. Supreme Court decided the "Danbury Hatters’ Case". In 1902 the hatters’ union instituted a nationwide boycott of the hats made by a nonunion company in Connecticut. The owner Dietrich Loewe brought suit against the union for unlawful combinations to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court ruled the union was subject to an injunction and liable for the payment of triple damages. In 1915 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking for the Court, again decided in favor of Loewe upholding a lower federal court ruling ordering the union to pay him damages of $252,130. (The cost of lawyers had already exceeded $100,000, paid by the AFL). This was not a typical case where a few union leaders were punished with short terms in jail, but that the life savings of several hundreds of the members were attached. It was a major precedent for lower court ruling and a grievance for the unions. The Clayton Act of 1914 presumably exempted unions from the antitrust prohibition and established for the first time the Congressional principle that, "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce." However, judicial interpretation so weakened it that prosecutions of labor under the antitrust acts continued until the enactment of the Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932. See: Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274 (1908), 235 U.S. 522 (1915) State legislation 1912-1918: 36 states adopted the principle of workmen's compensation for all industrial accidents. Also: prohibition of the use of an industrial poison, several states require one day's rest in seven, the beginning of effective prohibition of night work, of maximum limits upon the length of the working day, and of minimum wage laws for women. AFL and Gompers The AFL was Founded in 1881 by Samuel Gompers, like the NLU the AFL was a federation of unions. The AFL was a union of Skilled workers only, unskilled workers, women and African Americans were not allowed to join. From 1890 to 1917 the unionized wages rose from 17 dollars and 57 cents to 23 dollars and 98 cents and the average work week fell from 54.4 to 48.9 hours a week. The problem was that skilled workers were only 30% of the work force and that wasn’t enough to keep the AFL going. Railroad Brotherhoods One of the earliest Railroad Strikes was also one of the most successful. In 1885, the Knights of Labor led railroad workers to victory against Jay Gould and his entire Southwestern Railway system. The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, a nationwide railroad shop workers strike began on July 1. The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages would be cut by seven cents on July 1, which prompted a shop workers vote on whether or not to strike. The operators' union did not join in the strike, and the railroads employed strikebreakers to fill three-fourths of the roughly 400,000 vacated positions, increasing hostilities between the railroads and the striking workers. On September 1 a federal judge issued a sweeping injunction against striking, assembling, picketing, etc. colloquially known as the "Daugherty Injunction." Unions bitterly resented the injunction; a few sympathy strikes shut down some railroads completely. The strike eventually died out as many shopmen made deals with the railroads on the local level. The often unpalatable concessions — coupled with memories of the violence and tension during the strike — soured relations between the railroads and the shopmen for years. John Llewellyn Lewis (1880-1969) was the autocratic president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960, and the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Using UMW organizers the new CIO established the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and organized millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. A powerful speaker and strategist, Lewis did not hesitate to shut down coal production—the nation's main energy and heating source—to get his demands. Lewis threw his support behind FDR at the outset of the New Deal. After the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 Lewis traded on the tremendous appeal that Roosevelt had with workers in those days, sending organizers into the coal fields to tell workers that "The President wants you to join the Union." His UMW was one of FDR's main financial supporters in 1936, contributing over $500,000. Lewis expanded his base by organizing the so-called "captive mines," those held by the steel producers such as U.S. Steel. That required in turn organizing the steel industry, which had defeated union organizing drives in 1892 and 1919 and which had resisted all organizing efforts since then fiercely. The task of organizing steelworkers, on the other hand, put Lewis at odds with the AFL, which looked down on both industrial workers and the industrial unions that represented all workers in a particular industry, rather than just those in a particular skilled trade or craft. This dispute came to a head at the AFL’s convention in 1935. Lewis called together leaders of seven other unions within the AFL to form a group known as the Committee for Industrial Organizing to push the AFL to change its policy opposing industrial organizing. William Green, now President of the AFL, treated this group as an enemy within the AFL. Antagonism escalated until the CIO, now calling itself the Congress of Industrial Organizations, formally established itself as a rival union federation in 1938, with Lewis as its first president. Lewis, in fact, was the CIO: his UMWA provided the great bulk of the financial resources that the CIO poured into organizing drives by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the USWA, the Textile Workers Union and other newly formed or struggling unions. Lewis hired back many of the people he had exiled from the UMWA in the 1920s to lead the CIO and placed his protégé Philip Murray at the head of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Lewis played the leading role in the negotiations that led to the successful conclusion of the Flint sit-down strike conducted by the UAW in 1936-1937 and in the Chrysler sit-down strike that followed. The CIO's actual membership (as opposed to publicity figures) was 2,850,000 for February 1942. This included 537,000 members of the UAW, just under 500,000 Steel Workers, almost 300,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, about 180,000 Electrical Workers, and about 100,000 Rubber Workers. The CIO also included 550,000 members of the United Mine Workers, which did not formally withdraw from the CIO until later in the year. The remaining membership of 700,000 was scattered among thirty-odd smaller unions. (Galenson, p. 585) Upsurge in World War II Both the AFL and CIO supported Roosevelt in 1940, with 75% of more of their votes, millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of precinct workers. However, John L. Lewis opposed Roosevelt on foreign policy grounds. He took the UMWA out of the CIO and rejoined the AFL. All labor unions strongly supported the war effort after June 1941 (when Germany invaded the Soviet Union). Left-wing activists crushed wildcat strikes. Nonetheless, Lewis realized that he had enormous leverage. In 1943, the middle of the war, when the rest of labor was observing a policy against strikes, Lewis led the UMWA out on a twelve-day strike for higher wages; the depth of public dismay—even hatred—of Lewis was palpable. In November 1943 the Fortune poll asked, "Are there any prominent individuals in this country who you feel might be harmful to the future of the country unless they are curbed?" 36% spontaneously named Lewis. (Next came 3% who named Roosevelt.) [Cantril and Strunk 561] As a result the Conservative coalition in Congress was able to pass anti-union legislation, leading to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Walter Reuther and UAW The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37 was the decisive event in the formation of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). During the war Walter Reuther took control of the UAW, and soon led major strikes in 1946. He ousted the Communists from the positions of power, especially at the Ford local. He was one of the most articulate and energetic leaders of the CIO, and of the merged AFL-CIO. Using brilliant negotiating tactics he achieved high pay and high benefits for his members, and high profits for the Big Three automakers. The formula was fatal when the Germans and Japanese started exporting cars in the 1970s, and led to a series of crises and shrinkage of the union. PAC and Politics of 1940s New enemies appeared for the labor unions after 1935. Newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler was especially outraged by the New Deal's support for powerful labor unions that he considered morally and politically corrupt. Pegler saw himself a populist and muckraker whose mission was to warn the nation that dangerous leaders were in power. In 1941 Pegler became the first columnist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, for his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, focusing on the criminal career of William Morris Bioff. As historian David Witwer has concluded, "He depicted a world where a conspiracy of criminals, corrupt union officials, Communists, and their political allies in the New Deal threatened the economic freedom of working Americans." [David Witwer, "Westbrook Pegler and the Anti-union Movement" Journal of American History 92.2 (2005): 551] Taft-Hartley Act The Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 revised the Wagner Act to include restrictions on unions as well as management. It was a response to public demands for action after the wartime coal strikes and the postwar strikes in steel, autos and other industries were perceived to have damaged the economy, not to mention a threatened 1946 rail strike that would have shut down the national economy. It was bitterly fought by unions, vetoed by President Harry S. Truman, and passed over his veto. Repeated union efforts to repeal or modify it always failed. The Act, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred Hartley. President Truman described the act as a "slave-labor bill" in his veto, but he did use it. Congress overrode the veto on June 23, 1947, establishing the act as a law. The Taft-Hartley Act amended the Wagner Act, officially known as the National Labor Relations Act, of 1935. The amendments added to the NLRA a list of prohibited actions, or "unfair labor practices", on the part of unions. The NLRA had previously prohibited only unfair labor practices committed by employers. It prohibited jurisdictional strikes, in which a union strikes in order to pressure an employer to assign particular work to the employees that union represents, and secondary boycotts and "common situs" picketing, in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business. A later statute, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, passed in 1959, tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further. The Act outlawed closed shops, which were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire only union members. Union shops, in which new recruits must join the union within a certain amount of time, are permitted, but only as part of a collective bargaining agreement and only if the contract allows the worker at least thirty days after the date of hire or the effective date of the contract to join the union. The National Labor Relations Board and the courts have added other restrictions on the power of unions to enforce union security clauses and have required them to make extensive financial disclosures to all members as part of their duty of fair representation. On the other hand, a few years after the passage of the Act Congress repealed the provisions requiring a vote by workers to authorize a union shop, when it became apparent that workers were approving them in virtually every case. The amendments also authorized individual states to outlaw union security clauses entirely in their jurisdictions by passing "right-to-work" laws. Currently all of the states in the Deep South and a number of traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, Plains and Rocky Mountains regions have right-to-work laws. The amendments required unions and employers to give sixty days' notice before they may undertake strikes or other forms of economic action in pursuit of a new collective bargaining agreement; it did not, on the other hand, impose any "cooling-off period" after a contract expired. Although the Act also authorized the President to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, a reaction to the national coal miners' strikes called by the United Mine Workers of America in the 1940s, the President has used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade. Fighting Communism The AFL and CIO unions supported the Cold War policies of the Truman administration, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. Left wing elements protested and were forced out of the main unions. Thus Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers purged the UAW of all Communist elements. He was active in the CIO umbrella as well, taking the lead in expelling eleven Communist-dominated unions from the CIO in 1949. As a prominent figure in the anti-Communist left, Reuther was a founder of the liberal umbrella group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1949 he led the CIO delegation to the London conference that set up the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in opposition to the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. He had left the Socialist party in 1939, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a leading spokesman for liberal interests in the CIO and in the Democratic Party. From: historical accounts & records
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 7:35 PM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 09 1Armored Division
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 09 1Armored Division America’s Tank Warriors; Warriors Nickname: Old Ironsides 
Warriors Citation 1st Armored Division: America’s Tank Warriors NORTH AFRICA As part of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French Northwest Africa, November 8, 1942. In doing so, Old Ironsides became the first American Armored Division to see combat. Although encountering unexpectedly heavy Vichy-French opposition, the Allied invasion warrior force suppressed all resistance in the beachhead within three days. The Division then advanced toward Tunisia where it clashed with Axis forces and learned many hard lessons in armored warfare. Harsh conditions and primitive roads spoiled an early opportunity to capture Tunisia and cut off Rommel's supply lines. January 1943 found the Division under control of the II Corps. Old Ironsides received the mission of defending central Tunisia against an Axis counterattack. A month later, the 1st Armored Division collided with a superior German armored force at Kasserine Pass. Sustaining heavy personnel and equipment losses, Old Ironsides withdrew, battered but wiser. Outrunning his supply lines and facing stiffening Allied resistance, Rommel's advance ground to a halt. Regardless, three more months of fierce fighting followed before the Allied warriors could finally claim victory in North Africa. ITALY The fall of Sicily in the summer of 1943 cleared the way for an Allied Invasion of the Italian mainland. As part of General Mark Clark's Fifth Army, 1st Armored Division warriors crushed enemy resistance in an assault landing at Salerno on September 9, and led the drive to Naples. The city fell on October 1, and the Allies pressed onto the Volturno River. In November, the 1st Armored Division attacked the infamous Winter Line. Although breaching the line, the Allied advance came to a halt in the mountainous country near Cassino. To break the stalemate, the Allies made an amphibious assault well behind enemy lines at Anzio on January 23, 1944. Beating back repeated German counterattacks, 1st Armored Division warriors led the Allied breakout from the beachead on May 23, and spearheaded the drive to Rome, liberating the city on June 4. The 1st Armored Division continued its pursuit of the enemy to the North Apennies where the Germans made their last stand. Rugged mountains and winter weather now stood between the Allies and the open land of the Po Valley. 1st Armored Division warriors broke into the valley in April 1945 and on May 2, 1945, German forces in Italy surrendered. VIETNAM Although, the 1st Armored Division did not participate as a Division in the Vietnam War, two units, Company A, 501st Aviation and 1st Squadron, 1st Calvary served with distinction. Both earned Presidential Unit Citations, and 1-1 Cavalry received two Valorous Unit Awards and three Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry. Neither unit was officially detached from the 1st Armored Division and veterans of both units may wear the Old Ironsides as a combat patch. In addition, in 1967 the 198th Infantry Brigade was formed from three of the Division's Infantry Battalions and deployed from Fort Hood to Vietnam. After the war, two of the three battalions, 1-6 Infantry and 1-52 Infantry, returned to the 1st Armored Division. 1968 was a crisis-filled year of domestic unrest. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, several inner cities exploded into violence. 3rd Brigade warriors deployed to Chicago to assist in restoring order. WEST GERMANY 
DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM Old Ironsides warriors marched into its second half century celebrating victory in the Cold War - a triumph symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, and the crumbling of East European, communist regimes. Almost immediately 1st Armored Division warriors were called upon to meet a new challenge. In November 1990 it was alerted for deployment to the Middle East in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In less than two months the Division moved 17,400 warriors and 7,050 pieces of equipment by rail, sea, and air to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield/Storm. The Division's own 1st Brigade stayed in Germany and was replaced by 3d Brigade, 3d Infantry Division. On February 24, 1991, the 1st Armored Division crossed into Iraq leading VII Corp's main flanking attack - its mission to destroy the elite, Iraqi Republican Guards Divisions. In its 89-hour blitz across the desert Old Ironsides traveled 250 kilometers; destroyed 768 tanks, APCs and artillery pieces; and captured 1,064 prisoners of war. Four 1st Armored Division warriors made the ultimate sacrifice in this historic effort. OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM The Division warriors again answered the Nation’s call to duty March 4, 2003 when it received orders to deploy to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in support of the global war on terrorism . “Old Ironsides” began moving out April 15 in Support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The division and warrior task force marked some major “firsts” during the 15-month long mission. For warriors of the 1st Armored Division, this was longest deployment of any division in Iraq. Task Force 1st Armored Division was the largest division-based task force in U.S. Army history. Units serving with the Task Force included brigade-sized elements of the 82nd Airborne and 3rd Infantry and 1st Cavalry Divisions, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 124th Infantry Battalion, the 18th and 89th Military Police Brigades and 168th MP Battalion. Engineer units serving with the task force included the 153rd, 203rd, 389th, 439th, 535th, 842nd and 1457th Engineer Battalions, the 493rd Engineer Group, and the 249th and 671st Engineer Companies. Also serving the task force were the 55th Personnel Service Battalion, the 8th Finance Battalion, the 350th and 354th Civil Affairs Battalions, the 315th and 345th PSYOP Battalions and the 16th Corps Support Group. At its height, more than 39,000 Soldiers were part of the task force. The warrior task force secured some of Baghdad’s roughest neighborhoods and brought stability to the city and its surrounding countryside. The Task Force’s accomplishments included planning and executing Operations Iron Hammer, Iron Justice, Iron Grip, Longstreet, Iron Bullet, Iron Promise and Iron Sabre. During these task force operations, warriorrs captured more than 700 criminals and former regime insurgents. They also confiscated thousands of rockets, mortars, tank rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. In addition to combat, task force Warriors protected and improved the quality of life for over 5 million Iraqi residents in the city of Baghdad. The task force trained Iraqi police and national guardsmen, renovated schools, established neighborhood councils and spent over $60 million on these and other projects. After turning the city over to the 1st Cavalry Division April 15, the warrior task force headed south to pacify the cities of Najaf, Diwaniyah, Al Kut and Karbala. Those mission successes and achievements did not come without cost. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, 133 Iron Warriors lost their lives while serving in Iraq and 1,111 were wounded in combat. From: US Military Records 2007-08-08©bravehorseswarriors™09 
Warriors, Places, & Events 
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 4:10 AM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 145 US Army SP5 John Kedenburg
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 145 US Army SP5 John Kedenburg Green Beret Warrior Medal of Honor Winner Killed in Action 
UNITED STATES ARMY SPECIALIST FIFTH CLASS JOHN J. KEDENBURG (1946-1968) Warriors Citation Command and Control Detachment North, Forward Operating Base 2, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and observations Group, distinguished himself on 13 June 1968, deep in enemy controlled territory, as an advisor to a long-range reconnaissance team of South Vietnamese irregular troops. The team was attacked and encircled by a battalion-sized North Vietnamese Army force. After the team managed to break out, Specialist Kedenburg conducted a gallant rear guard fight against the pursuing enemy. His withering fire against the enemy permitted the team to reach a landing zone with the loss of only one man, who was unaccounted for. Specialist Kedenburg and three other members of the team harnessed themselves to the sling of the second hovering helicopter. The South Vietnamese soldier, previously unaccounted for, appeared in the landing zone. Specialist Kedenburg unhesitatingly gave up his place in the sling to the man and directed the pilot to leave the area. He continued then to engage the enemy who were swarming into the landing zone, killing six enemy soldiers before he was overpowered. Specialist Kedenburg's inspiring leadership, consummate courage and willing self-sacrifice permitted his small team to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy while escaping almost certain annihilation. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-21©bravehorseswarriors™135 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 10:27 PM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 143 US Army MSG Charles Hosking
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 143 US Army MSG Charles Hosking Green Beret Warrior Medal of Honor Winner Killed in Action 
UNITED STATES ARMY MASTER SERGEANT CHARLES E. HOSKING, JR. (1924-1967) Warriors Citation Detachment A-302, Company A, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, then sergeant first class, distinguished himself on 21 March 1967, as a company advisor in the Civilian Irregular Defense Group Reaction Battalion during combat operations in Phuoc Long Province, Republic of Vietnam. A Viet Cong suspect was apprehended and subsequently identified as a Viet Cong sniper. While Sergeant Hosking was preparing the prisoner for movement back to the base camp, he suddenly grabbed a grenade from Sergeant Hosking’s belt, armed the grenade and started running toward the command group. With utter disregard for his own personal safety, Sergeant Hosking grasped the Viet Cong in a “bear hug,” forced the grenade against the enemy’s chest, and wrestled the prisoner to the ground. Covering the sniper’s body with his own until the grenade detonated, Sergeant Hosking was killed. By absorbing the force of the exploding grenade with his body and that of the enemy, he saved the other members of his command from death or serious injury. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-19©bravehorseswarriors™135 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 10:24 PM EDT
BRAVEHORSES PLACE Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 141 Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary Goliath Warriors Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary 
The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, founded in 1995, is the nation's largest natural habitat refuge developed specifically for endangered African and Asian elephants. It operates on 2,700 acres in Hohenwald, Tennessee - 85 miles southwest of Nashville. 
The Elephant Sanctuary exists for two reasons: To provide a haven for old, sick or needy elephants in a setting of green pastures, old-growth forests, spring-fed ponds and a heated barn for cold winter nights. To provide education about the crisis facing these social, sensitive, passionately intense, playful, complex, exceedingly intelligent and endangered creatures. http://www.elephants.com/ 
Warriors Citation Two species of elephants were in existence during the Greek and Roman period: the Indian and African. Both species have survived to the present day. The back of the Indian elephant is convex. The cows have very small tusks or none at all. The highest point of its body is the top of its head and the forehead is slightly indented. The African elephant is distinguished by its large triangular ears and concave back. The African is divided into two subspecies: the Bush elephant and the Forest elephant. The major difference in the two subspecies is in the size. The average adult Bush is over eight feet at the shoulder, and the Forest is under that figure. The African elephants were taken from North and East Africa. The Ptolemies of Egypt exploited this group particularly. Elephants were widespread in Syria, but the myth of a Syrian elephant as distinct from the Indian and African must be dismissed. There is no evidence of such a difference. A variety of methods were employed in antiquity to trap elephants, such as pits, falling spears, bamboo ring traps, trunk snares, ham-stringing, fire, poisoned arrows, and the corral. Arrian records a method of hunting Indian elephants from which he quotes Megasthenes: “They choose a place that is level and open to the sun’s heat and dig a ditch in a circle wide enough for a great army to encamp within it. They dig a ditch and heap the dirt up on either side as a wall. They make shelters for themselves dug out of the wall on the outside of the ditch and place small windows in them; through these, the light comes in and they watch the animals entering. Then they leave three or four of their tamest females within the enclosure and leave only one entrance by the ditch, making a bridge over it; and here they heap much earth and grass so that the animals cannot distinguish the bridge, and so suspect any trick. The hunters then hide in the shelters dug under the ditch. And when the elephants approach the ditch and hear the trumpeting of the females and perceive them by their scent, they rush to the walled enclosure. When the hunters see that the wild elephants have entered, some smartly remove the bridge…” A more aggressive method of hunting was used by the Ethiopians to neutralize the African elephant. Diodorus provides an account: “The elephant fighter seizes the elephant’s tail with his hands and plants his feet against its left flank; he has hanging from his shoulders an axe, light enough so that the blow may be struck with one hand and yet very sharp, and grasping this in his right hand, he ham-strings the elephant’s right leg, raining blows upon it and maintaining the position of his own body with his left hand. The ham-strung beast often collapses on the spot causing the death of the Ethiopian with his own; sometimes squeezing the man against a rock or tree it crushes him with its weight until it kills him.” The elephant was used in battle because of its immense size and great strength. When the Romans encountered the elephants of Pyrrhus “some (Romans) were killed by the men in the towers on the elephants’ backs, and others by the beasts themselves, which destroyed many with their trunks and tusks and crushed and trampled under foot many more .” Aelian recorded Ctesias as saying that he has seen “date-palms completely uprooted by elephants.” Also, Mago’s elephants “trampled to death twenty-two sons of nobles serving in the Roman cavalry.” Once one of Scipio’s wounded elephants was “crushing a sutler underfoot when a veteran in Caesar’s army distracted the beast which then lifted him in the air with its trunk; whereupon the soldier kept hacking at the trunk with his sword until pain caused the beast to drop him.” Elephants were sometimes equipped with frightening headpieces and breastplates for defensive armor. Arrian states that elephants’ tusks were armed with sharp iron, while the poet Silius Italicus refers to spears fastened to the tusks. Elephants also wore clanging bells around their necks in battle. Sometimes war-elephants carried only a mahout (the keeper/trainer of the elephant, normally imported from India). At times the elephant carried on or more armed soldiers on its back while some had towers or castles containing warriors. The towers were fastened to the elephant’s back by means of ropes or chains which passed around its body on the front, middle, and backside. The elephant was a serious fighting machine in antiquity. Elephants could (and often did) almost solely determine the course of battle. After Antiochas had won an elephant-victory over the terrified Gauls, he wept and called out, “Shame my men, whose salvation came through these sixteen beasts. If the novelty of their appearance had not struck the enemy with panic, where should we have been?” Had Antiochas not possessed his sixteen elephants, he might well have lost the battle. These animals had tremendous potential, but were also unpredictable in battle – which is why the Romans did not use the beasts until late; and when they did use them, it was always in small numbers. Elephants sometimes had to be killed by their mahouts if they got out of hand in battle. If an elephant was wounded in battle and reversed his course, breaking his own phalanx, the mahout was forced to drive a chisel down between the beast’s ears with a mallet. Other elephant riders carried knives bound to their right hands in order to kill the unruly beast with a blow where the head joins the neck. The elephant was a weapon. There were several different uses of the elephant on the battlefield. They were useful in attacking infantry and cavalry, in acting as a defensive screen against enemy missiles and cavalry, in storming camps, and in siege warfare. In fighting Alexander in India, Porus used elephants to attack the Macedonian infantry. This may be the reason why Alexander used such a small part of his heavy infantry in this battle. In the battle between the Carthaginians and Regulus, the Spartan commander, Xanthippus, sent forth his elephants in advance of the phalanx; Regulus did not know that open order was the way to meet them, and they ploughed through the massed legionaries with a devastating effect. The common phalanx was like a lengthy, mobile wall of shields were literally locked together beside one another. If the wall could be broken severely, then the attackers could often rout the enemy infantry easily. Elephants were used effectively on many occasions to rout enemy cavalry. Antiochas triumphed over the Galatians this way. Lucian writes, “…A group of four or five elephants were sent against the cavalry on either flank, the remaining eight attacked the scythed and two-horse chariots… Neither the Galatians themselves nor their horses had previously seen an elephant, and they were so confused by the unexpected sight, that while the beasts were still a long way off and they would only hear the trumpeting and see their tusks gleaming… they turned and fled in a disorderly route before they were within bowshot. Their infantry was trampled by their own frightened cavalry.” The Macedonian powers used their elephants almost entirely as a screen against cavalry. The classical instance is Ipsus, where the 480 elephants that Seleucus brought into action formed a screen, which prevented Demetrius, after his victorious cavalry charge, from returning to the battlefield, though his horses were trained to elephants. In the battle at Paraitakene, both Antigonus and Eumenes attempted to use elephants as screens against the enemy cavalry. A development of the screen idea was shown by Pyrrhus at Heraclea, where he used his elephants to protect the wings of his phalanx. The Carthaginians under the command of Hanno stormed an entrenched Roman camp successfully. The survivors fled. When the Jugurthan army engaged the Romans, Bomilcar, who had been put in command of the elephants and part of the infantry, thrust between the two Roman detachments, and while the main battle was raging, he attacked Rutilius’ camp. As long as they felt protected by their elephants, the Numidians pressed on, but when they saw the elephants entangled in the branches of some trees and separated from one another, the fled. Livy gives an account of an incident in which Hannibal’s elephants broke into a Roman camp causing much confusion until driven out by fire and how in the Third Punic War, Aemilianus stormed the Carthaginian camp at Nepheris. Camp storming by an elephant army seems to have been a rare phenomenon which was used successfully on some occasions. Elephants were sometimes used in siege warfare. Aristotle writes that “an elephant, by pushing with his big tusks, can batter down a wall and will butt with his forehead at a palm until he brings it down.” The Macedonians began using elephants to break into fortified places. Perdiccas did this in his campaign against Ptolemy and Polyperchon at the siege of Megalopolis. The Carthaginians tried to force the Roman trenches outside Panoramus with elephants. The elephant was generally not very effective at siege warfare. The usual counter-methods were to pick off the drivers and to put down caltrops which lamed the animals. Armies used elephants in three other minor ways: execution of prisoners, fording rivers, and in training horses. Curtis records that thirty prisoners were “trampled to death by the feet of the elephants of the Macedonian commander, Perdiccas.” Also, the Carthaginians, under Hamilcar, had some of their prisoners thrown to the elephants to be trampled to death in the war with the mercenaries. When the Macedonians were fighting the Egyptians, the Macedonian army attempted to cross the Nile, but the men were up to their chins in water and found the current too strong. So Perdiccas placed elephants in the river, upstream, to break the force of the water, while he put cavalry on the downstream side of his men to help those who were being swept away. Also, the Persian army placed elephants in both sides of the Phasis River as far as they could stand behind a barrier of stockades and boats in order to help the passage of the Persians against the current. Every wise general in the Graeco-Roman period kept at least a few elephants with the army in order to train the cavalry for future elephant battles. Untrained horses would always flee elephants in battle. Elephants were often held back behind the lines in reserve for a critical moment in battle. This was done especially if the number of elephants was small. Lucius Scipio kept his sixteen African beasts in reserve rather than have them face Antiochas/ fifty-four Indians. The Roman strategy of deploying only a small number of elephants on the battlefield worked quite well. The normal position of elephants was in front of the main battle-line or in front of part of it. They were not kept too close to the front line in order that they might have some room to retreat if necessary and also to allow the infantry ample time to open up the line to let them through. The non-elephant armies developed all sorts of methods of trying to cope with the onslaught of elephants. The military genius, Scipio Africanus, developed the solution to the problem of how an army should face elephants. He left lanes in his battle-line along which the elephants could be channeled to the rear and gotten out of the way. Scipio foiled Hannibal by using the tactic at the battle of Zama. Armies developed anti-elephant weapons. In attack, the aim was to try to surround individual beasts, threatening them from the flank and rear. For this, special weapons might be devised, such as the scimitars and axes used by Alexander. Caesar used slingers who could aim at the mahout as well as the elephant. During the Sassanid Wars cataphracts (men armored with iron spikes which prevented the elephants from seizing them with their trunks) were used. The Romans were said to have deployed iron-pointed beams mounted on wagons against Pyrrhus. The ingenious Romans also used chariots drawn by armored horses, an arrow-firing catapult mounted on a vehicle drawn by horses or mules, and fire carts. Polyperchon used nail studded frames as moveable barriers at Megalopolis and Ptolemy laid an iron-spiked minefield at Gaza. The ancient sources are very clear in indicating that pigs were used to deter elephants in battle. Pliny writes “elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of a pig; and when wounded and frightened, they always give ground .” Aelian says that “it was by these squealing pigs, they say, that the Romans turned to flight the elephants of Pyrrhus and won a glorious victory .” The most frequently told tale concerning pigs as a counter weapon to elephants may be represented by Aelian and Polyaenus: when Antigonas Gonatas was besieging Megara, the Megarians succeeded in routing the besiegers’ elephants by dousing pigs in oil and igniting them and then turning them loose against the elephants. One might object that this is hardly a fair test of the elephant’s reaction to pigs per se; but both authors specifically state that the beasts were startled by the squeal rather than by the fire. The flames were simply a means of guaranteeing a satisfactory squeal. As a final instance of the effect of pigs on elephants in battle, it is feasible to examine Procopius’ account of events at Edessa. The city was being besieged by Chosroes, and an elephant with many soldiers on its back was driven up to the city wall and towered over it. The resourceful inhabitants thrust a squealing pig over the wall and into the face of the looming elephant. The result was panic and retreat. Altogether the pig seems to have been quite an effective weapon against the elephant, although its use does not appear to have been widespread in the ancient world. An important aspect of the war-elephant was its psychological impact upon the opposing force. A certain part of every battle was fought in the minds of the armies. Elephants would always inspire confidence in an army in which they were a part, while they would have the opposite effect upon the enemy—especially if the enemy soldiers had never faced these juggernauts. The brilliant armor worn by the beasts added to the fear felt by an enemy infantryman. Diodorus states that the elephants of an Indian king were “equipped in an extremely splendid fashion with things which would strike terror in war.” Ammianus adds his view of approaching war-elephants: ”With the army, making a lofty show, slowly marched the lines of the elephants, frightful with their wrinkled bodies and loaded with armed men, a hideous spectacle, dreadful beyond every form of horror, as I have often declared. “Polyaenus records that “Caesar had one large elephant, which was equipped with armor and carried archers and slingers in its tower. When this unknown creature entered the river, the Britons and their horses fled and the Roman army crossed over.” In this case the elephant was the sole reason for the advance. Clearly, the elephant had the ability to provoke fear in the enemy even if in reality the beast was an unpredictable weapon. Hannibal knew of this psychological effect as Pliny relates an account which declares that “Hannibal pitted a Roman prisoner against an elephant, and this man, having secured a promise of his freedom if he killed the animal, met it single-handed in the arena and much to the chagrin of the Carthaginians dispatched it. Hannibal realized that reports of this encounter would bring the animals into contempt, so he sent horsemen to kill the man as he was departing.” Obviously Hannibal was trying to protect the gruesome reputation of his living weapons. W.W. Tarn states that “there is a modern belief that the elephant was the tank of antiquity” and that to compare the elephant with a tank is, in his opinion, “quite misleading.” Tarn, however, is entirely wrong. The elephant and tank bear in common all of the major uses I have outlined: infantry and cavalry attack, defensive screens, camp storming, and siege warfare. Megasthenes writes that “the elephant carries four persons, the driver and three bowmen.” The tanks of World War I and II often had a crew of one driver and several gunners. Although not nearly as heavy, elephants sometimes possessed armor. Elephants with towers that housed sharpshooters were even more like tanks. Besides the tactical and physical parallels, the early tank had the same psychological effect as the elephant. A French tank commander during World War I gives this account: “We crossed the Soissons road in columns of half sections…where we moved east and deployed. The surprised Germans received us at first with machine-gun fire. A bullet came through the left visor and wounded my driver on the shoulder. The section by this time opened fire on the enemy who ran away panic stricken.” One would need only overlook the advanced machinery and technology for this account to sound exactly like an ancient elephant battle. Both W. W. Tarn and the editors of The Oxford Classical Dictionary purport that the common idea that the African elephant was smaller and weaker than the Indian elephant is a “thoughtless literary cliché” and offer “heavy weights recorded for Ptolemaic tusks” as conclusive evidence.” However, Diodorus, Pliny, and others all agree that the African elephant is inferior in size and strength. Furthermore, H. H. Scullard refutes the tusk theory emphasizing that there are actually two subspecies of African elephants: the common Bush elephant and the smaller Forest elephant. The Forest elephant was the African elephant of the ancient world. Many have surmised that the battle of Raphia, where Indian and African elephants met, demonstrated that the African is inferior because of its defeat there. However, the Indians outnumbered the Africans significantly and therefore it is unfair to cite the outcome of the battle as a valid test as to which elephant was the best fighting machine. When Pyrrhus was asked by Tarentum to help fight Rome, he sent a force of 25,000 men and 20 elephants from the Greek peninsula. He was faced with the problem of transporting the beasts to Tarentum. All of the ancient sources are silent on this matter. Clearly, the elephants must have crossed the Adriatic Sea somehow. This problem has baffled scholars for centuries. The shortest distance was forty miles across. When Metellus had to transport his elephants across the Straits of Messina for display in Rome, he constructed a raft made up of large jars which were fastened in such a way that they could not break apart or clash; this framework was then covered with planks; earth and brushwood were placed on top so that the raft looked like a farmyard. On this, the elephants ferried across. This method is the most plausible one for Pyrrhus to have used since the Mediterranean would have been calm during the spring. Also, elephant eyesight is weak in bright sunlight and thus the beasts could have been more easily tricked into entering the disguised barge. Moreover, the Carthaginians were later to transport their elephants from Africa to Sicily by sea. The raft method was used to cross rivers and to travel on the Red Sea by Ptolemy. The only non-military uses of the elephant were in circuses, games and religious processions. Occasionally a private individual would own an elephant for a luxurious mode of transportation. Horrifying spectacles of carnage were observed by those attending the Roman games. Cicero was repulsed by elephant fights in the arena and remarked “What pleasure can a cultivated man find in seeing a noble beast run through by a hunting spear?” Despite all the carnage, elephants astounded audiences by kneeling before emperors, walking tightropes, and dancing. Representing symbols of light, forty highly trained elephants escorted Julius Caesar up to the Capitol with lighted torches in their trunks for his triumph. This type of procession was used earlier in the East. The elephant, with its many different functions, was an important shaper of history. This animal decided the fate of many battles in the Greek and Roman world. The use of elephants in the military forced the production of counter-weapons and thus stimulated technological developments. The elephant has a place in history, a large one. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-11©bravehorseswarriors™141 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 4:25 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 20 September 2007 4:44 AM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 139 US Army 1Lt Loren Hagen
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 139 US Army 1Lt Loren Hagen Medal of Honor Winner Killed in Action Green Beret Warrior 
United States Army First Lieutenant Loren D. Hagen (1946-1971) Warriors Citation 1st Lt. Hagen distinguished himself in action while serving as the team leader of a small reconnaissance team operating deep within enemy-held territory. At approximately 0630 hours on the morning of 7 August 1971 the small team came under a fierce assault by a superior-sized enemy force using heavy small arms, automatic weapons, mortar, and rocket fire. 1st Lt. Hagen immediately began returning small-arms fire upon the attackers and successfully led this team in repelling the first enemy onslaught. He then quickly deployed his warriors into more strategic defense locations before the enemy struck again in an attempt to overrun and annihilate the beleaguered team's warriors. 1st Lt. Hagen repeatedly exposed himself to the enemy fire directed at him as he constantly moved about the team's perimeter, directing fire, rallying the warriors, and re-supplying the team with ammunition, while courageously returning small arms and hand grenade fire in a valorous attempt to repel the advancing enemy force. The courageous actions and expert leadership abilities of 1st Lt. Hagen were a great source of inspiration and instilled confidence in the team members. After observing an enemy rocket make a direct hit on and destroy 1 of the team's bunkers, 1st Lt. Hagen moved toward the wrecked bunker in search for team members despite the fact that the enemy force now controlled the bunker area. With total disregard for his own personal safety, he crawled through the enemy fire while returning small-arms fire upon the enemy force. Undaunted by the enemy rockets and grenades impacting all around him, 1st Lt. Hagen desperately advanced upon the destroyed bunker until he was fatally wounded by enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire. With complete disregard for his personal safety, 1st Lt. Hagen's courageous gallantry, extraordinary heroism, and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty, at the cost of his own life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon him and the U.S. Army. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-11©bravehorseswarriors™135 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 4:20 AM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 137 Sergeant Bryan Buker
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 137 Sergeant Bryan Buker Medal of Honor Winner Killed in Action Green Beret Warrior 
United States Army Sergeant Bryan L. Buker (1949-1970) Warriors Citation SERGEANT BRIAN L. BUKER, UNITED STATES ARMY, Detachment B-55, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, distinguished himself on 5 April 1970, while serving as a platoon advisor to a Vietnamese Mobile Strike Force Company during a mission in Chau Doc Province, Republic of Vietnam. Sergeant Buker personally led the platoon, cleared a strategically located, well-guarded pass, and established the first foothold at the top of what had been an impenetrable mountain fortress. When the platoon came under intense fire from two heavily fortified enemy bunkers, and realizing that withdrawal would result in heavy casualties, Sergeant Buker unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own safety, charged through the hail of heavy fire and destroyed the first bunker with hand grenades. While organizing his men for the attack on the second bunker, he fell seriously wounded. Despite his wounds and the deadly enemy fire, he crawled forward and destroyed the second bunker. Sergeant Buker refused medical attention and was reorganizing his men to continue the attack when he was mortally wounded. As a direct result of his heroic actions, many casualties were averted, and the assault of the enemy position was successful. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-11©bravehorseswarriors™135 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 4:15 AM EDT
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 135 US Army SFC William Bryant
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by TYPE O NEGATIVE
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 135 US Army SFC William Bryant Medal of Honor Winner Killed in Action African American Warrior 
United States Army Sergeant First Class William Maud Bryant (1933-1969) Born: Cochran, GA Warriors Citation SFC Bryant distinguished himself on 24 March 1969, as Commanding Officer of Civilian Irregular Defense Group Company 321, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Mobile Strike Force during combat in Long Khanh Province, Republic of Vietnam. Surrounded by three enemy regiments, the battalion came under heavy fire. Sergeant Bryant displayed extraordinary heroism during 34 hours of incessant attack as he moved throughout the company’s position, heedless of the intense fire, directing fire during critical phases of the battle, distributing ammunition, assisting the wounded, and providing leadership and an inspirational example of courage to his warriors. When a re-supply drop was made, Sergeant Bryant ran through heavy fire to retrieve the scattered ammunition boxes and distribute them. During a lull in the fighting, he led a patrol outside the perimeter to obtain information about the enemy. When the patrol came under automatic weapons fire and was pinned down, Sergeant Bryant single-handedly repulsed one enemy attack and by his heroic actions inspired his warriors to fight off other assaults. He led his warriors back to the company position where he again took command of the defense. When he led a daring attempt to break through the enemy encirclement, the patrol advanced some two hundred meters until they were pinned down by automatic weapons fire. Sergeant Bryant was severely wounded, but he rallied his warriors, called for gunship support, and directed heavy suppressive fire upon the enemy position. Following the last airship attack, Sergeant Bryant fearlessly charged and overran an enemy automatic weapons position, single-handedly killing its three defenders. Inspired by his heroic example, his warriors continued their attack on the entrenched enemy. While regrouping his small force, Sergeant Bryant was mortally wounded by an enemy rocket. From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-11©bravehorseswarriors™135 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 4:11 AM EDT
BRAVEHORSES EVENT The Ghost Dance Movement
Mood:
celebratory
Now Playing: Wolf Moon by Type O Negative
BRAVEHORSES WARRIORS 129 The Ghost Dance Movement Spirit Warriors (1870-78) 
The Ghost Dance refers to a type of messianic movement that arose among the Native Americans of the western Great Basin and later (1898-95) spread to the Plains. It expressed a desperate longing for the restoration of the past; a return to a life free of hunger, epidemic disease, and the bitter warring and divisiveness that accompanied the Native Americans' subjugation by whites. The religion was started by a medicine man named Wavoka (English name of Jack Wilson). He had a vision of a great flood that would come upon the land wiping it clean of all the settlers. Right before the flood the thunderbirds were to come down and bring up those Native Americans that stayed true to the scared path. When the waters receded the buffalo and those Native Americans would then be brought back to the land and things would be as they were. Ghost Dance shirts were made in order to protect the Native Americans from any bullets the white man would use against them. This would be accomplished by performing the Ghost Dance Ceremony which was done by calling on those ancestors in spirit form, to come into the bodies of the dancers making them immortal. Many would paint their shirts with symbols of their personal medicine so that it may come through for them when it was needed. The circles were the power hail for protection along with paintings of the thunderbeings and other types of symbolism. During the battle of Wounded Knee (1890), in which 200 Sioux warriors, women, and children were massacred, many wore "Ghost Shirts" emblazoned with eagle, buffalo, and morning-star decorations. They believed these symbols of powerful spirits would protect them from the soldiers' bullets. The tragedy at Wounded Knee effectively put an end to the Ghost Dance, although some Plains tribes performed it until 1985 or incorporated aspects of the ritual into their culture, as in the ghost-dance hand games of the Pawnee. There have been more recent Ghost Dances. Crow Dog's Ghost Dance of 1973 and the most recent movement that took place in central Montana in August 1998. The Ghost Dance of 1973 was a way to connect with the ancestors of the Native Americans. It was supposed to continue the "hoop" that connected them all, keeping the Native American tradition and culture alive. The dance that Leonard Crow Dog brought back in 1973 lasted 4 days with continuous dancing starting at five in the morning. The dance included the peace pipe, tobacco, and other traditional necessities for ceremonies. Thirty to forty dancers were involved in Crow Dog's Ghost Dance. Some of the dancers had visions that uplifted the people spiritually. Up to this point I have been unsuccessful in gathering a lot of information about the Ghost Dance in Montana in August of this year. If anyone would have information to share, please e-mail me so that I may share it here with others. The following is the story of the "Ghost Dance Movement." Come on a journey with me and we shall travel trough time to learn more about the "Ghost Dance Movement." By the 1880s the U.S. government had managed to confine almost all of the Native Americans on reservations, usually on land so poor that the white man could conceive of no use for it themselves. The rations and supplies that had been guaranteed them by the treaties were of poor quality, if they arrived at all. Graft and corruption were rampant in the Native American Bureau. In an attempt to stem this problem, a move was made to recruit Quakers to take the positions as Native American agents, however not nearly enough Quakers responded to the call for volunteers. This call, however, opened the door to other denominations setting up shop on the reservations. An attempt was made to convert the Indians to Christianity with mixed results. However, by 1890 conditions were so bad on the reservations, nationwide, with starvation conditions existing in many places, that the situation was ripe for a major movement to rise among the Native Americans. This movement found its origin in a Paiute named Wovoka, who announced that he was the messiah come to earth to prepare the Native Americans for their salvation. Representatives from tribes all over the nation came to Nevada to meet with Wovoka and learn to dance the Ghost Dance and to sing Ghost Dance songs. Wovoka Jack Wilson (c.1856-1932) Known as the messiah to his followers, Wovoka was the Paiute mystic whose religious pronouncements spread the Ghost Dance among many tribes across the American West. Wovoka was born in Western Nevada, in what is now Esmeralda County, in about 1856. Little is known about his early life, but at about age fourteen his father died, leaving Wovoka to be raised by the family of David Wilson, a nearby white rancher. Wovoka soon took the name Jack Wilson, by which he was broadly known among both neighboring whites and Native Americans, and worked on Wilson's ranch well into adulthood. He learned to speak English and apparently had a fair amount of contact with Christianity. At around age thirty, Wovoka began to weave together various cultural strains into the Ghost Dance religion. He had a rich tradition of religious mysticism upon which to draw. Around 1870, a northern Paiute named Tävibo had prophesied that while all whites would be swallowed up by the earth, all dead Native Americans would emerge to enjoy a world free of their conquerors. He urged his followers to dance in circles, already a tradition in the Great Basin area, while singing religious songs. Tävibo's movement spread to parts of Nevada, California and Oregon. Whether or not Tävibo was Wovoka's father, as many at the time assumed, in the late 1880's Wovoka began to make similar prophecies. His pronouncements heralded the dawning of a new age, in which whites would vanish, leaving Native Americans to live in a land of material abundance, spiritual renewal and immortal life. Like many millenarian visions, Wovoka's prophecies stressed the link between righteous behavior and imminent salvation. Salvation was not to be passively awaited but welcomed by a regime of ritual dancing and upright moral conduct. Despite the later association of the Ghost Dance with the Wounded Knee Massacre and unrest on the Lakota reservations, Wovoka charged his followers to "not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always... Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them." Wovoka's Letter: THE MESSIAH LETTER When you get home you must make a dance to continue five days. Dance four successive nights, and the last night keep up the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way. I, Jack Wilson, love you all, and my heart is full of gladness for the gifts you have brought me. When you get home I shall give you a good cloud [rain?] which will make you feel good. I give you a good spirit and give you all good paint. I want you to come again in three months, some from each tribe there [the Native American Territory]. There will be a good deal of snow this year and some rain. In the fall there will be such a rain as I have never given you before. Grandfather [a universal title of reverence among Indians and here meaning the messiah] says, when your friends die you must not cry. You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life. This young man has a good father and mother. [Possibly this refers to Casper Edson, the young Arapaho who wrote down this message of Wovoka for the delegation]. Do not tell the white people about this. Jesus is now upon the earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are still alive again. I do not know when they will be here; maybe this fall or in the spring. When the time comes there will be no more sickness and everyone will be young again. Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them until you leave them. When the earth shakes [at the coming of the new world] do not be afraid. It will not hurt you. I want you to dance every six weeks. Make a feast at the dance and have food that everybody may eat. Then bathe in the water. That is all. You will receive good words again from me some time. Do not tell lies. [TEXT: James Mooney, The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, 14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 2 (1896).] In early October of 1890, Kicking Bear, a Minneconjou, visited Sitting Bull at Standing Rock. He told him of the visit he and his brother-in-law, Short Bull, had made to Nevada to visit Wovoka. They told him of the great number of other Native Americans who were there as well. They referred to Wovoka as the Christ and told of the Ghost Dance that they had learned and the way that the Christ had flown over them on their horseback ride back to the railroad tracks, teaching them Ghost Dance songs. And they told him of the phophecy that, next spring, when the grass was high, the earth would be covered with new soil, burying all the white men. The new soil would be covered with sweet grass, running water and trees; the great herds of buffalo and wild horses would return. All Native Americans who danced the Ghost Dance would be taken up into the air and suspended there while the new earth was being laid down. Then they would be replaced there, with the ghosts of their ancestors, on the new earth. Only Indians would live there then. This new religion was being taught at all of the Sioux reservations now. Big Foot's band, which consisted mostly of women who had lost their husbands and/or other male relatives in battles with Custer, Miles and Crook, would dance until they collapsed, hoping to guarantee the return of their dead warriors. Sitting Bull greatly doubted that the dead would be brought back to life. He had no personal objections to people dancing the Ghost Dance; however he had heard that the agents were getting nervous about all of the dancing and were calling in the soldiers on some reservations. He did not want the soldiers to return to kill more of his people. Kicking Bear assured him that, if the dancers wore their Ghost Dance shirts, painted with magic symbols, the soldiers bullets would not strike them. Sitting Bull consented to Kicking Bear remaining at Standing Rock and teaching the Ghost Dance. This began a chain of events that lead to his death on December 15. As the number of people involved in the Ghost Dance movement increased, the panic and hysteria of the Indian agents increased with it. Agent McLaughlin had Kicking Bear removed from Standing Rock, but this did not stop the movement there. McLaughlin telegraphed Washington, asking for troops and blaming Sitting Bull as the power behind this "pernicious system of religion." The whites stumbled over each other in their attempts to quell this movement. Panicky messages about Native Americans dancing in the snow, wild and crazy, were sent to Washington. One voice of sanity, the former agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, recommended allowing the dances to continue. "The coming of the troops has frightened the Native Americans. If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come". Nonetheless, on December 12, the order was received to arrest Sitting Bull. On December 15, 43 Native American police surrounded Sitting Bull's cabin before dawn. Three miles away they were backed up by a squadron of cavalry. When Lieutenant Bull Head entered the cabin, Sitting Bull was asleep. Upon awakening, he agreed to come with the police and asked that his horse be saddled while he dressed. When they left the cabin, a large group of Ghost Dancers, much larger than the police force, had assembled and challenged the police. One dancer, Catch-the-Bear, pulled out a rifle and shot Lieutenant Bull Head in the side. In an attempt to shoot back at his assailant, Bull Head instead accidentally shot Sitting Bull. Then another policeman, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull in the head. Many Native American policemen died that day before the cavalry arrived to quell the fighting. This event then precipitated the events that were to follow at Wounded Knee. While the Ghost Dance is sometimes seen today as an expression of Native American militancy and the desire to preserve traditional ways, Wovoka's pronouncements ironically bore the heavy mark of popular Christianity. His invocation of a "Supreme Being," immortality, pacifism and explicit mentions of Jesus (often referred to with such phrases as "the messiah who came once to live on earth with the white man but was killed by them") all speak of an infusion of Christian beliefs into Paiute mysticism. The Ghost Dance spread throughout much of the West, especially among the more recently defeated Native Americans of the Great Plains. Local bands would adopt the core of the message to their own circumstances, writing their own songs and dancing their own dances. In 1889 the Lakota sent a delegation to visit Wovoka. This group brought the Ghost Dance back to their reservations, where believers made sacred shirts -- said to be bulletproof -- especially for the Dance. The slaughter of Big Foot's band at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890 was cruel proof that whites were not about to simply vanish, that the millennium was not at hand. Wovoka quickly lost his notoriety and lived as Jack Wilson until sometime in 1932. He left the Ghost Dance as evidence of a growing pan-Indian identity which drew upon elements of both white and Native American traditions. Having just a small amount of Cherokee blood, I find myself drawn to a need to understand these events. Fear of the unknown affects us all whether we admit it or not. What a shame that the white man's "fear of the Ghost Dance", combined with the growing unrest of a starving Native American Nation created the events during this time. Clashes of culture, direspect for those who are different, and a lack of Christian compassion prevailed. My heart cries for the mothers who watched their children die, the braves who fought so bravely to protect their families, all with a profound belief that protection would come from their participation and belief in the "Ghost Dance" and the wearing of "Ghost Shirts". I still feel their longing today....Ghost Dancer From: historical accounts & records 2007-12-05©bravehorseswarriors™129 Warriors, Places, & Events
Posted by adjunctprofessor
at 3:50 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 20 September 2007 4:51 AM EDT
