WWII Veteran is honored by the US Army Marksmanship Unit

My friends at the US Army Marksmanship Unit, Ft. Benning, Georgia recently honored an 86-year-old World War Two veteran who was an Army sniper.

Medals are great, but for his service during WWII, the AMU gave this gentleman an honor that has only been bestowed on a non-AMU member eight times before: An AMU black hat.

Here comes the best part; they took him out to the sniper range and he shot not only a replica of the sniper rifle he carried in WWII at 300 yards but also the latest, hi-tec sniper rifle currently in use by the AMU at 1,000 yards. Click here to watch this great piece of video and see how well he did.

A Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,

Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..

To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times..

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

PLEASE, would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many
people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our
U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these
festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people
stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

This Guy is One Tough Parachutist!

One of the most exhilarating things I've ever done is a parachute jump with the U.S Army Golden Knights parachute display team (click here to read my blog story). These soldiers are true professionals, and excellent ambassadors for the Army.

Today, a former member of the Golden Knights, SFC Dana Bowman made a special parachute jump onto the grounds of Walter Reed Hospital. This is one of the Veterans Administration hospitals for our service people and veterans.

What makes Dana Bowman's jump even more significant than usual is that he lost both legs and his partner in a skydiving accident in 1994, when the two Golden Knights teammates collided in freefall at a combined speed of about 300mph. But within five months of his accident, Bowman went back up and made another jump. After the accident, he created a new career for himself as a motivational speaker, and he jumps regularly to demonstrate that the right mindset and attitude can overcome just about anything.

In case you're wondering about how SFC Bowman lands on two prosthetic legs, it seemed to me, watching the live coverage on Fox News this morning, that he lands on his butt!

A Fallen Hero Receives the Medal of Honor

Our nation's highest military award for conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty, the Congressional Medal of Honor, has been awarded to Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti of Raynham, Massachusets, who was killed in action on June 21st, 2006 during a firefight with Islamist terrorists.

SFC Monti was deployed with the Tenth Mountain Division in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. SFC Monti had already rescued one wounded soldier when he was shot and killed by Taliban forces while rescuing a second soldier.

Since 1861, the President of the United States, on behalf of the Congress has awarded more than 3,400 medals to individuals from the five service branches of our military. At least SFC Monti is in fine company.

The presentation of the Medal of Honor will be made on September 17 at the White House to SFC Monti's parents. A memorial scholarship fund has been set up in SFC Monti's name. Donations can be made by clicking here.

President Bush's Birthday Parachute Jump

Not only have President Bush and I both jumped with the U.S. Army's Golden Knights parachute display team, but we've both jumped with the same guy -- Tandem Team Leader Sergeant First Class Mike Elliot.

This photo is of Mike and me about 8,000 feet above Wyoming. President Bush's first jump was during World war II into the Pacific ocean as a navy pilot when he was shot down. He has jumped with the Golden Knights on his 75th, 80th, and now his 85th birthday.

Here's the article I wrote shortly after my jump in 2005. Thank you, Golden Knights. And Happy Birthday Mr. President!


"You can tell when the jumpers are leaving the aircraft. They make a swoosh sound that I can hear up in the cockpit,” pilot Alan Aber told me, “When the new guys are trying out for the team, they aren’t used to jumping out of something that goes 105 knots. There’s a blast shield that folds over the rear doors when they are locked back in the open position. Sometimes they don’t push off far enough and they really smack into that blast shield. But generally it’s more embarrassing than anything else,” Aber chuckled. I chuckled too, thankful that I had not collided with anything when I made my skydiving debut the previous day out of Aber’s plane, a Fokker F27, used by the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights Parachute Display team to introduce lucky individuals like me to the sport of parachuting, and to promote the Army’s ongoing public relations campaign. My jump took place over Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I was strapped to Sergeant First Class Mike Elliot, an Airborne Infantryman and tandem instructor on the Golden Knights Gold Demonstration Team to literally hitch a ride on his parachute. Like many people, I have an irrational fear of heights; Standing on the observation floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado have all triggered sweaty palms and the feeling that the great void around and below me would somehow reach up and drag me down into it. I had already decided not to dwell on putting my life in the hands of a stranger while jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft. At least by jumping with the Army I knew I was beginning my skydiving career at the top--no pun intended. Mike and I began by examining the tandem parachute: a 370 square foot elliptical nylon canopy and container which together weigh approximately 60lbs. Next, we reviewed the method by which we would leave the aircraft. “You’re going to look like this in freefall,” Mike explained as he slid belly down, arms and legs extended, onto a convenient coffee table in the Regional Airport building in Cheyenne. He played a short video showing Golden Knights jumpers freefalling in complicated geometric shapes with other team members, popping smoke, and generally having fun while on a collision course with planet Earth at 120 mph, all to the sound of some good rockin’ music designed to get your adrenaline level up. By the end of the film I was not only eager to jump, I wanted to invade a foreign country just for the fun of it! And maybe that’s the point of all this. At a time when many of our soldiers are deployed overseas, the Golden Knights don’t hide the fact that their mission is to promote the Army to the public. It’s called advertising, and these soldiers are wonderful ambassadors both for the sport of parachuting and for the Army.


Our third jumper was Staff Sergeant Joe Jones, who would jump with Mike and me and film our descent for the personalized video tape that all guest jumpers receive; capturing the rare privilege of wearing the Knight’s famed yellow and black jump suit. Joe’s parachute is a 120 square foot elliptical nylon canopy and container weighing approximately 20lbs.


In addition to display jumps at events like Cheyenne’s annual Frontier Days festival, the Golden Knights also field Style and Accuracy teams for both inter-service and civilian (inter)national competitions. In the Accuracy event, the team must touch down as close as possible to a target that is only a few centimeters wide. In the Style competition, the team jumps at 7500 feet and is judged by the number of different formations they can make, requiring that they separate and rejoin for each successful maneuver. Based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Golden Knights unit is comprised of only 86 members: jumpers, parachute technicians, aircrew and support personnel. There are two demonstration teams: Black Team and Gold Team. I made my jump with Gold Team. I asked Mike Elliot the age of his oldest jumping partner: “A ninety-two year old lady,” Mike replied, “and President Bush senior has also jumped with us.”


A typical jump is made from one of the two Fokker F27 twin turboprop aircraft that the team purchased in 1985. Built in Holland, these aircraft were customized with an oversize door on each side of the fuselage, just forward of the tail, and were originally destined for delivery to the parachute regiment of an African army. But when the deal fell through, the aircraft were sold instead to the Golden Knights. “We had to fly them back from Holland in stages,” Alan Aber recalls. “We added fuel tanks inside the fuselage and hopped from Holland, to Ireland, to Greenland, and finally to the East Coast. We had a couple of factory pilots with us, but it still amounted to on-the-job training to get used to them.” The F27 meets some important criteria for the team: It is of the correct size to transport a team and all their gear from one jump location to the next, while being small enough to operate from short runways and fly slow enough (105 knots) for parachutists to exit the aircraft and stay together in formation.


Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I made my tandem jump is 6,000 feet above sea level. We jumped at 14,000 feet above sea level. As the airplane spiraled upwards in the thinning air, we passed around an oxygen bottle. At one point, I found myself getting light headed and took a few extra lungs-full. I had to sit on Mike’s lap in order to get his harness hooked to mine, and then we stood up and duck-walked down the aisle to the rear of the aircraft. As we approached the open door, with the green light above it, I hooked my thumbs into the harness. I looked out of the door and then it finally hit me that I was about to throw myself into the same nothingness that surrounds the Sears Tower. Oh well, too late to back out now. Pride took over and we stood in the door. As instructed, I lifted my feet, hanging in my harness, legs slid backwards in between Mike’s knees, my heels pointed up. I rested my head back against his left shoulder so that he had an uninterrupted view of the ground, and raised my hands in a surrender position. “Ready?” Mike asked.“Yes, I’m-“ Before I could take a breath, we were gone. Whoa! I wasn’t prepared for such fast acceleration. Our combined weight would cause us to accelerate to 170mph if Mike did not release the small drogue parachute immediately after we left the aircraft. The drogue is designed to keep the speed down to a maximum of 120mph. As we fell to earth in the classic horizontal, arms and legs extended position, two other Golden Knights jumpers swooped down and linked hands with me. For a few precious seconds I was part of one of the finest display teams in the world. I was literally jolted back to reality as Mike deployed the parachute. The sudden deceleration gave me the impression we were shooting upwards, rather than down. And then we were floating silently, gliding in a series of lazy figure eights as Mike steered us to land on the airport grass, scant feet from where we had taken off. What a rush. Forget my fear of heights. I’d do this again in a heartbeat.