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Post by quincannon on May 11, 2012 13:39:08 GMT -6
Fred: The standards for the Combat Medic Badge and the Combat Infantry Badge are the same, active participation in combat with an armed enemy. Check the regs. You do not qualify for the badge, by being a medic in the rear with the gear. Even being at a infantry battalion aid station by itself does not qualify. You must have had participated in a direct firefight. You must have participated in combat attached to an infantry or similar combat maneuver unit. The badge was originally established to recognize medics attached to the infantry who were not authorized the award of the CIB. The standards have not changed.
While I am at it I will throw one more tidbit your way. This last Saturday past, Fort Carson opened a brand new obstacle course. They celebrated the event by inviting anyone here in the community, military or not, to run the course. I have seen the course under construction. It is five miles long and every bit a tough as anything you or I ever ran at Benning or anyplace else. Now why do I tell this story? The ordained vocational deacon at my church, a graduate of Yale, a 29 year old slightly built female, and a civilian with no military training, although she has successfully climbed mountains in Chile and elsewhere, ran the course along with 2000 odd others. She finished in the top ten times for the course. Not top ten for female. Top ten. She also has a black belt in one of those martial arts catagories, and is a dead shot with both rifle and pistol, as well as being a college level varsity basketball player, which is rather odd because she comes just over my shoulder level of my six foot two frame in high heels. She is one woman I would not want to mess with at 69, and I doubt very seriously if I would want to try it at 29.
It is just not our world anymore Fred. We can either accept the change that is happening all around us, or we can let it pass us by. I choose to look closely and see for myself these things admiting that there was initially a lot of lowered standards in pursuit of PC, in all areas not just the military and public safety. This was because of old geezers like you and me being brought up in a June Cleaver world, and faced with forced mandates. That is not how it is now, because it does not need to be. In today's Army you either cut it or you hit the bricks and what brand of genitilia you were issued does not enter into the equasion. When was the last time you, Fred, steped onto an Army post or any military installation and observed what happens today, not 1970 or even 1990?
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 11, 2012 14:09:56 GMT -6
What happened with the Iowa misfire was almost identical to what happened to the warthog pilot that crashed in Colorado somewhere a decade or more back. The military postulates out of thin air a romantic, preferably gay, horror and runs with it. Total lies, all. Japanese did the same thing, looks like. Disgruntled sailor, accused of theft, etc.
Apparently no heterosexual male can become suicidal or depressed or suffer momentary incompetence, being a Man and all. The fixation on a sexual issue, though - given they've all been bogus - speaks to an issue within the military. And navy, for those old like me who separate the two.
Further, battleships have had similar events from the beginning, and blown up for predictable reasons: the bags of powder are dangerous as hell. The Maine, the Vanguard, the Iowa, some Japanese battleship during the war, others. And when the powder bags are a half century old the safety does not improve.
Really? Menstrual blood smells different than, you know, blood from the numerous small scrapes and wounds all soldiers must have?
And if our obesity epidemic doesn't stop, we may have no choice but to have gay females with one leg on patrol. The military has discovered common ground with environmentalists (because of cover and camo and survival) and may with food fanatics yet. They've already made it for vegetarians, i.e. my friend the Ranger Sergeant who served three tours, 2 in Iraq, 1 in Afghanistan. MREs for vegetarians, yes there are.
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Post by quincannon on May 11, 2012 14:32:47 GMT -6
DC: As I am sure you know Maine was first initiated by a coal dust explosion that set off the magazine. Iowa was already covered. Mutsu was the IJN battleship and her magazines went up as a result of a cordite fire, essentially carelessness around the powder bags. Did not know about Vanguard. Arizona herself would have suffered a ho-hum bomb hit, had the bomb not exploded on the deck above the forward main gun magazine, and you could say the same for Hood.
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Post by fred on May 11, 2012 14:57:02 GMT -6
Again... you are missing the point. An average man enlists. Is this gal the average woman? Or has she focused on athletics?
Did this gal enlist? Is she in the service? How much can she carry on her back in the jungle? Or in the desert? I am not questioning stamina, especially for someone who has obviously spent a lot of time training. The military doesn't afford people the luxury of training when they want, climbing when they want, taking judo lessons when they want, playing basketball when they want. And put her up against a male black-belt... then what. That's what she will meet on the battlefield. No one cares about equality out there. I am quite sure the Taliban had no one the equal of Pat Tillmon. As a matter of fact, I doubt they have anyone who could run as fast as Jackie Joiner Kersee. It isn't a matter of a single individual female competing against a vast array of average men who couldn't care less. Put the same effort into men. Put together a template of women and their physical skills, then place it against a similar template for men. What would it look like?
This whole discussion is about opening up combat to women... women in general; women who want to serve. It isn't about some gal who has made physical exertions her life dream. Do women in general, serving in combat roles, make the army better? Or even-- replacing men-- the same? My contention is, Not a chance, and therefore why lower the quality of our military just so women can serve in combat.
The fact that a few women, in extraordinary circumstances, have found themselves in combat is incidental. Those female medics you talk about... how do you think they would have performed carrying wounded back to the battalion CP during Ia Drang? How about your blackbelt gal? That is the issue here. How about in hand-to-hand?
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by quincannon on May 11, 2012 15:21:26 GMT -6
Well Fred, there is only one standard that could possibly apply for me. Would I trust them, and their abilities were my life to depend upon them in combat to include the woman of God, herself with no military training? The answer is yes I would, just as much as any man. I no longer look at women in uniform as women in uniform. I look at them as soldiers. There is a difference.
Fred, frankly if you have not seen women in today's Army, or any of our uniformed services, you have no standing here if you only have your own forty year old experience to go by. I am not blowing smoke up your butt one bit. You must point to something that is relevent today, not 1970. They are very good, very very good, and are the equal of any man you served with, or I did for that matter. They know their jobs, the are physically fit, Most of them above the grade of E-4 or O-1 have more combat under their belts than anyone who served in Korea or Vietnam for one tour. If you look upon them as an average male or female you see walking down Broadway, think again. I would rate all that I have met, including the basketball playing, mountain climbing, sharpshooter with a black belt with the face and disposition of an angel, to be a shade above woodpecker lips in the toughness catagory.
When it comes down to the final card the only thing that counts is performance. Preconceptions matter not one whit.
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Post by Dark Cloud on May 11, 2012 15:49:17 GMT -6
I've read the hypotheses about those ships, but it would be wrong to characterize them as solved. Coal was always an issue (the Titanic was on fire, for example, in one coal bin), but so were the huge black powder bags and static electricity. Since anyone who would actually know went up with the ships, we can't pretend to know. But misfiring and explosion in turrets was hardly unheard of. Dangerous stuff.
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Post by quincannon on May 11, 2012 16:03:59 GMT -6
DC: I seem to remember the IJN losing another large ship between the wars. Can't remember the details but it was an accidental powder explosion.
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Post by quincannon on May 11, 2012 18:42:43 GMT -6
Fred: I want you to understand that I am not trying to change you mind here. What I am doing is trying to open your mind to a similar experience to the one you talked about a week or so ago concerning your gay friend.
You cannot call almost equal - equal. It is like being pregnant, either you are or you are not, with no middle ground. Now that equality is an equality of opportunity under the law. What it refers to is that anyone who is qualified must be equally considered. If they are not equality does not exist. It does not matter if these things are issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, or any of the other things that might be descriminators in a society. It is not a matter of equal performance. It is a matter in this instance of having the right to compete to see if you meet the standards of performance, all of the standards. If you do there should be no bar to anyone.
Now to use your example of a 71 year old man playing MLB. It is completely wrong, therefore a bar to your equality to prohibit you from competing to become a major league baseball player because of your age. Completely wrong. Now, I as a manager of a MLB team my say to you Fred, based upon my testing of your abilities, you do not qualify to play MLB. So equality is intact. You performance has been found wanting. It should be the same here.
In former days being a homosexual was a bar to enlistment or retention. That is not equal. Then came don't ask, don't tell, where it was OK to be homosexual, just don't tell anyone about it. That was not equal. Today it is OK to be open, honest, and above board about who and what you are, should you so choose. That is equal. And why this change after 230 years of inequality, because the uniform services finally realized that homosexuality was not the issue. Bad conduct was the issue, and it does not matter one whit if the bad conduct was homosexual or heterosexual. It is conduct.
In former days the color of your skin, or your gender was a bar to you exercising the right of every citizen who has reached a certain age, to vote. That is not equal. In former days, and you remember them well training in the South, if you were white you used one restroom, if you were black another. That is not equal. Only equal is equal. And part of that equality must include the ability to compete for any job, in or out of uniform, which you feel you are qualified. That does not mean you must be accepted for that job. You may be easily denied if you do not meet the standard, and rightly so. The ability to compete though, the ability to apply must be there regardless.
Now I have no bone here for two old dogs to fight over. If we establish rules that say only males may do this or that, I don't really care. What I do care about is hypocracy in saying we are equal, as in "All men (gender nonspecific) are created equal" a line from our basic founding document, conducting a two hundred thirty year publicity campaign with that expression in neon lights, and not really meaning it. I have a lot of heartburn with that.
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Post by wild on May 12, 2012 1:13:33 GMT -6
Armies are uniform.Introduce women and you have a variable/chemistry which cannot be regulated.
Women in the army would belong to a minority which because they could never form a realistic combat unit would be seen as inferior.
What man would have women fight a rearguard while they made their escape
They would prove to be a sexual distraction.
An all female unit would introduce a fault line in the cohesion of multi unit formations.
The home front would never stand for Women POWS being humiliated such as happened to men in Abu Ghraib.
It provides a weak link for enemy interrogators to work on.Waterboard/rape the female soldier in the presence of her male comrade.
There are primeval social relationships wnich just do not lend themselves to combat.
But above all, women are not equal they are different and "viva le difference" will just f**k up everything.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 12, 2012 7:27:54 GMT -6
Ah I remember this old chestnut coming up before, I did not get involved because it is a very sensitive topic, but I don’t think it matters how well Women can fire a weapon, drive a AFV or Aircraft etc., the bottom line is that both the British and Americans don’t want to see Females coming back home in large numbers in body bags.
Ian.
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Post by fred on May 12, 2012 8:08:31 GMT -6
... the bottom line is that both the British and Americans don’t want to see Females coming back home in large numbers in body bags. I know what you are saying here, Ian, but to me, I couldn't care less. A life is a life and if a female chooses to join the army... tough. I stand by what I said. When it comes to life and death I am not in the least interested in gender equality, nor in all the efforts to try to turn women into something they are not: men. Enough of this horseshit, however. If this is what is to be, so be it. The bar has been lowered so much in this country, another notch down won't matter a bit. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Yan Taylor on May 12, 2012 8:39:49 GMT -6
I can see your point Fred, like Clint Eastwood said, if she wants to play lumberjack she must carry her side of the log, but I think that Governments and politicians will not allow Girls to be killed in large numbers, imagine the Taliban seeing Female soldiers on battle patrols, I bet they would single them out as targets and hope that this will sway the folks back home into getting the troops out pretty quick.
Ian.
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Post by noggy on Apr 1, 2021 4:23:31 GMT -6
The regimental breakdown was as follows: Hi Fred. Is this still the "correct" set-up, or has it changed during your work with the second edition of Participants? Anyone else who knows; feel free to answer also Noggy
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Post by fred on Apr 1, 2021 6:06:25 GMT -6
Geir,
I know of no changes to the troop strength in the 2nd edition: 607 troops (576 enlisted men, 31 officers) and 48 sundries, 655 total.
The major change in the 2nd edition is the addition of more than 5,000 Indians who could have been in the village.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by noggy on Apr 1, 2021 8:06:25 GMT -6
Geir, I know of no changes to the troop strength in the 2nd edition: 607 troops (576 enlisted men, 31 officers) and 48 sundries, 655 total. The major change in the 2nd edition is the addition of more than 5,000 Indians who could have been in the village. Best wishes, Fred. Thank you very much for the reply, Fred. I for some reason thought I owned the second edition but it is the first, sigh. Hope all is well with you and yours. Geir
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