Earworm, Antipodean edition

Mrs. Drang, former docent at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, is watching some Animal Planet show set at the Bronx Zoo, where they are dealing with a wallaby that some idiot had as a pet.

So, naturally...


Fav comment from YouTube:

Gary Chamberlain 4 months ago:
I got this song in my head Fred,
I got this song in my head,
It'll be there till I am dead Fred,
It'll be there till I am dead.

ADDED NOTES:

1. This is the original version, with the politically incorrect, racially insensitive 4th verse. I don't have much use for political correctness, but that attitude towards Australia's Aborigine was reprehensible. (Yes, the song could just be saying "Lay them off as they have no further employment after I've snuffed it", but if the rumors I've heard of  "Abo Hunts" are true...)
2. Apparently Mr. Harris had some rather unsavory habits, and was pretty much unpersoned. This is unfortunate, but doesn't change the fact that this is a fun song. 

This reminds me that I missed ANZAC Day.

Sorry, Mate.



And, ANZAC Day:

June 14th...

...is the US Army's Birthday.

Also Flag Day.

Photo ©2010 & 2018 Mrs. Drang & The Cluemeter.

I hear it's also President Trump's birthday, although TBH I don't generally celebrate the birthday of folks I don't know personally. (Note it, sure, but celebrate, no.)

Here are a few pics I just dug out of the archive:

Team Spirit, 1986:

Photo ©1986 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

My Motley Crew for Team Spirit 1986. 3 KATUSAs and two round eyes, on a mountain for two weeks. Part of why I laugh when I hear people speak nostalgically about MREs, or act like ramyun* is a gourmet delight...

Photo ©1986 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

I wish I could remember this guy's name, he was a Ground Surveillance Radar operator augmenting my team. Good guy, despite the (mostly) good-natured rivalry between the "Electronic Grunts" and us SIGINT Geeks.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

Here I am, a year or so later at Ft. Ord, the 7th Infantry Division (Light) "Fight Light, Freeze at Night!"(I can pinpoint this as to date because I am wearing OD green "jungle fatigue" trousers, still authorized for field wear at the time. They got destroyed at the National Training Center soon after this.)

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

My buddy, Steve W. If you recognize him, have him drop me a line.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

IIRC, Steve M. (on the left) and Dave J. (on the right.) No, that's not a duffel bag full of poagie bait, it's the 50+ pound direction finding antenna.

If The Steves and Dave look like drowned rats in these, it's because it was raining non-stop. We were supposed to be dropped in an airmobile insertion, move cross-country, and then get picked up. Somewhere in there, the skies opened up and the pick up got cancelled, and we spend a miserable night under poncho hooches. (Actually, IIRC, it was one big hooch and we pulled the Heinlein Starship Troopers thing where we huddled together...)

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

This is my ruck. There are many like it, but this one was mine. PRC77 radio with KY57 crypto device, a week's worth of batteries, MREs and water, poncho and poncho liner, and one change of socks.

≈125 pounds.

Tactical Hipsters can speak of their "woobie" like it's some sort of security blanket, but I spent too many nights freezing under one to get all misty-eyed.

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

Airmobile insertion, waiting for the bird to pull pitch...
 

Photo ©1987 & 2018 DW Drang & The Cluemeter.

All the pics (except the one at the top, taken by Mrs. Drang), were taken on film, before consumer-priced digital cameras were even science fiction. The ones from Ft Ord were taken with a Vivitar pocket 35mm, that just fits in a 20 round M16 magazine pouch. I'm pretty sure the ones from Korea were taken with a Nikon SLR, otherwise I couldn't have gotten that time-delay group pic. No idea what lens either camera had/has.





*Ramyen -- or "namyun" -- is Korean, Ramen is Japanese...

A Reminder

Not that I think anyone who reads my blog needs it, but here is a reminder of what "male privilege" looked like 74 years ago:

Saving the sum of things for pay, for 242 years, and counting.

20 years, down the drain

And just like that, my Army career was rendered irrelevant.

Pacific Stars and Stripes: Moon and Kim Discuss Denuclearization at Historic Summit

BBC: North Korea's Kim Jong-un Pledges 'New History' With South Korea

The Times: Koreas Poised For ‘Great Transition in World History’

Voice of America: North, South Korean Leaders Hold Historic Meeting

Moon and Kim
Photo from The Small Wars Journal

Moon and Kim
Photo from The Small Wars Journal

Not really, of course.

Note, by the way, that Kim and Moon did not sign a peace treaty, which some of the reporting implied happened. It sounds like they agreed to look into it later this year.

No, what is so momentous is the fact that the heads of state met: Neither country has heretofore even acknowledged that the other existed legitimately. North Korea has always insisted on meeting with the USA alone, while the USA refuses to meet separately, and officially designates it "north Korea", with a small "n".

As I was explaining to a colleague in The Salt Mines,  I served for 20 years, 3 months, and 3 days, and almost 9 of those years were in the Republic of Korea. I spent a fair amount of time on, or within rifle-shot of, the Demilitarized Zone.

One year I was Watch NCO at Field Station Korea; this was under Bush 41, when Mrs. Drang and I were still newlyweds, and de-nuclearization talks on The Peninsula were proceeding well enough that every installation in the republic of Korea was required to make plans for how to deal with commie inspectors.

At a facility that was a wholly-owned subsidiary, so to speak, of the National Security Agency (which was still commonly referred to as "No Such Agency" at the start of my career) you might assume this resulted in some angst.

You would be correct, but it might surprise you that the Secret Squirrel contingent just read the instructions, and made plans accordingly. (Collection operations would be suspended, equipment turned of, and contents of filing cabinets and the like would be covered with kraft paper. IIRC, things would filed so that the kraft paper could be pulled back to reveal files, but they would be set up in such a manner that nothing could be learned of the contents of files by so doing. They would not have the right to inspect read the files, just do a quick scan with the Mark I Eyeball, and wave a Geiger Counter over it, if they wanted.)

(This was the first use I saw of an Access Card scanner; some genius covered those boxes with kraft paper...)

No, the person who really got all spun up was the NCOIC of the Information Technology Section. (Whatever we called it back on 1990.)

Mind you, that doesn't mean we were all impressed, those of us who had already invested a significant amount of time and effort into the "Korean Mission" fully expected the whole thing to come to naught, which it did.

So.

My standard answer regarding peace on the Korean Peninsula remains "I'll believe it when I see it", but I must admit, for the first time since 1980 I do feel some hope.

ANZAC Day, 2018

Everyone (British) Remembered

Just came across this:

This is a truly humbling initiative. Try typing in your surname - or, if you’re male, your full name - count the matches, and feel the tragedy grab you in the stomach. https://t.co/uEfc4sCRDx

— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) November 10, 2017

Every One Remembered - Home

The Royal British Legion, as the UK’s national custodian of Remembrance. is working with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to keep alive the memory of those who died in the First World War. By the end of the Centenary in 2018, our objective is to ensure every fallen hero from across the Commonwealth is remembered individually by those living today. This is your chance to take part in a truly historic and incredibly significant act of Remembrance.

 Entering my (real, legal) surname returned 87 hits, from British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand force, Mostly army, but a few RAF, and quite a few Navy or Merchant Marine.

I found it striking how many came from the south of England, Devon and Dorset particularly.

There also seem to have been a high proportion of Light Infantrymen, plus a few Royal Marines.

ANZAC Day

Earworm, Happy Holidays Edition

Time for my favorite Christmas Song:

Please take a moment to think about our troops (in and out of uniform!) stationed far from their loved ones during the holidays, and another to think of their families.

Seen on Twitter

So, back in Formerly Great Britain, some adherent of the Religion of Peace went all Sudden Jihad Syndrome and cut someone's throat in the Tube.

A bystander informed him that he was, in fact, "no Muslim", earning said bystander all sorts of plaudits, and a hashtag of his  very own..

Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan had some observations:

I'm all for the #YouAintNoMuslimBruv guy; but doesn't the chap who physically confronted the knife man deserve rather more plaudits?

— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) December 7, 2015

So did I:

In the XXI Century, Hashtag Activism > Courageous Action. https://t.co/7ixmDPi3iP

— Drang (@DWDrang) December 7, 2015

Interesting...

JBLM* hosts Indian Army troops | The Seattle Times

I can't help but ponder the fact that the US military is said to be forming closer relations with the Indian Army even while the CINC seems to be bound and determined to piss off all nations that are, have been, and should be friends and allies.

(I note that US-Indian relations showed great improvement under His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Obama's predecessor...)

(Daniel Hannan has pointed out that, having thrown off the Yoke of Perfidious Albion and dabbled in a form of Marxism, that India has been gradually moving closer to the Anglosphere.)

Also, check out this photo:

 

The Color Guard is armed with an M4... with some sort of optic sight attached...

Also wondering if the Indians will have an opportunity to have a meet and greet with the local  Indian community.

*JBLM=Joint Base Lewis-McChord, FKA Ft Lewis and McChord AFB, the local example of the fad to merge certain administrative and logistic functions of military installations that are in close proximity. I don't have a problem with that, but the naming convention is ugly and cumbersome.

Earworm, 4/24. ANZAC Day

Anzac Day. Note especially the paragraph about Turkey.

Gallipoli Campaign

Earworm (and News), Sneaky Pete Edition

When I hear a song with this title, on a satellite radio channel dedicated to the 1940s, I think of guys with burnt cork on their faces and blue steel or parkerized daggers, not walking in the park with my sweetie...

Then fact that the song is from 1953, not a decade earlier, doesn't really change much..

Plus, it showed up during my drive to work the same day this showed up in my in-box:

Ham Among Devil’s Brigade Members to Receive Medal
02/02/2015
A 90-year-old California radio amateur — Stan McEtchin, WB6KDZ, of Paradise — will be among the surviving members of the First Special Service Force (FSSF) known as “The Devil’s Brigade” to receive the Congressional Gold Medal on February 3. The medal recognizes the unit’s extraordinary heroism and service during World War II.

“We used to go behind the lines at night and sit out there, and we could hear the Germans talking,” McEtchin told The Paradise Post. “Our guy would write it down, so we would find out where their guns were and that kind of thing.”

Montana US Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus worked for 5 years to honor the unit. “The Devil’s Brigade represented the very best of our Greatest Generation that defeated tyranny around the world,” Tester said. “The Medal is the highest honor Congress can bestow, and yet, while a small token of this nation’s gratitude, it is an everlasting reminder of the sacrifices these men made for all of us.” Remarked Baucus, “Without these brave volunteers, there would be no Special Forces today.”

The Devil’s Brigade was based at Fort Harrison in Helena, Montana. It was a top-secret combat unit comprising 1800 volunteers from 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. Their training was the first of its kind, specializing in high alpine combat, covert amphibious landings, parachuting, mountain climbing, among other tactics. By the time the war ended, the Force had suffered 2314 casualties, equating to an astounding 134 percent of its original combat strength. It had captured more than 30,000 prisoners, won five US campaign stars and eight Canadian battle honors. The Force never failed a mission.

You may have seen the movie The Devils Brigade, which was Hollywood's take on the First Special Service Forces, and like most Hollywood productions, was less than accurate. Sometimes the inaccuracies are due to an agenda, sometimes because of difficulty filming the truth, and sometimes they are because no one would believe it was true. In this case, maybe a bit of all three...

Officially, the Army's Special Forces trace their lineage to the FSSF, even though there is no actual connection other than the patch ("shoulder sleeve insignia") being similar. The problem is, when the Special Forces were established, the existence of the Office of Strategic Services' (et. al) "Jedburgh Teams" was still highly classified, so rather than just make up a new unit out of whole cloth, the Army decided to pretend that the new unconventional warfare unit with a new mission traced it's existence back to a new-ish unit that had an old mission...

...Which caused complications when the Ranger Regiment was formed, and the obvious regimental-sized basis for it was taken. (Merrill's Marauders, having been a provisional unit, should not have counted for lineage under normal Army rules. Granted we're talking "unconventional" stuff here....)(And Roger's Rangers were British, in case you were wondering.)

While we're on the subject of snoopin' and poopin', this link showed up in my Facebook feed this morning, too: The KA-BAR and the Fairbairn-Sykes: two fighting children of different philosophies | HROARR
(I can see many days being spent clicking links on that site...)

History's rhyming like a sumbitch

So, back in the dark ages, when I was a PFC attending the Basic Korean Course at the Defense Language Institute, we got a new class across the hall from us.  It was small, consisting of (IIRC) three or four Master Sergeants, two majors, and a bird colonel.  It was explained to us that it was a Gateway Class, and we should all behave.

Gateway courses were (still are, for all I know) intended to teach GIs enough about a host nation's language and customs  that they won't cause any international incidents.  I was told, but never had confirmed, that German Gateway was mandatory for all GIs reporting to the Bundesrepublik of Radland¹ who didn't have a Defense Language Proficiancy Test for "GM".  They didn't teach in in Korea; any officers and senior NCOs heading to high-level Eighth Army staff positions that might need it, got it at DLI.

Anyway.  The roach coach would show up mid-morning, and we'd all go outside and get coffee, or whatever.  It was a designated "No headgear, no saluting" area.  So some classmates got annoyed when my roommate and I saluted the bird colonel anyway.

I was annoyed that I had to explain the significance of the little blue ribbon with five stars.

He was annoyed when our classmate asked him how he got it.  "Doing my job when someone was watching" was all he'd say.

Later the word came down to us (roommate and I) "Good job, but he would really prefer you didn't", and to classmate "Don't be a douche.  BTW, he flew the last Huey out of Saigon."

So now, watching Obama fiddle while Iraq and Afghanistan burn, I'm wondering if I'll meet the last pilots out of Baghdad, and Kabul.

I doubt they'll have medals, though.

The poltroons in the Pentagon seem to be so politicized that, even though they started their careers about the same time I did, and had the same instructors, with the same sensation of watching the Republic of Viet Nam fall and negating whatever sacrifice we made, if anyone were to suggest that they should be standing on the Resolute desk, demanding that we at least make air strikes and making supply runs², the most they'd do would be to look sad and mutter things about "civilian control."

Unfortunately, I just don't believe that they're even making the effort to advise the Spineless Quisling In Chief of the long-term fallout of expecting "stern diplomatic notes" to have any effect at all.

***

1. I had a couple of different roommates over the years that used the term; Germans were referred to as "Rads", short for "kamerad", so in typical GI fashion the Bundesrepublik Deutschland was called... 
2. Note that the proximate cause of the fall of the Republic of Viet Nam was that the Republican president had so little political capital that the Democratic-controlled congress refused to authorize air strikes or supply runs.

"Monuments Men"

Hit the two dollar cinema to see Monuments Men yesterday.

Not a big fan of Clooney or Damon, but I do enjoy seeing what Bill Murray will come up with next.  It was fun, certainly worth the two dollars, and may have been worth full price.  Certainly a theater charging more would have more comfortable seats...

The movie is about a team of soldiers who were recruited, and tasked, to recover and return works of art that had been looted by the Nazis.


Mrs. Drang is reading the book, which (she tells me) is intended as a detailed history, so, while the movie is a fine entertainment, it is more "inspired by" than "based on" true events.  For example, the  movie follows 6 or 7 guys, and implies that that was all there were; in fact, the team in France had 18 members, and there was a another team in Italy. (And the author intends to write  separate book about them.)

There was little to set off my military-history-geek-accuracy-BS-meter; one scene where Clooney's C47 landed at an airstrip, and there was a pristine B17, P47, and P51B set up side-by-side, or actually in an arc, like a static display.  Highly unlikely three unused examples of three different aircraft would be parked on the apron like that.  Also, the bumper numbers on all the trucks used were nonsensical.  (Bumper numbers always get my attention, trying to decipher them...)

Highly unlikely that a bunch of radios scrounged from various sources and repaired with tubes, ditto, would have been useful for the separate teams to communicate across all of France and western Germany.  (And en clair, at that!)  Amazing that Clooney didn't get shot up in "blue on blue" action driving around in a scrounged kubelwagon...

In the credits--doesn't everybody stay through those?--I noticed that, in the "props and F/X" category, they had two people listed as "Military Webbing Masters".  I don't get quite that obsessed, but then, I can understand how those unfamiliar with such things might need help...  (Entirely possible that a cinema "military webbing master" isn't tasked with helping actors assemble and wear their web/load bearing gear properly, but that's what seem most likely to me...)

All in all, a pretty good flic.  Especially for the price.

ANZAC Day

Winston Churchill was certainly a great man, but he was fully capable of pursuing stupid ideas to bitter end.

QOTD, 01/12/2014

Gun geek humor, As Seen On Facebook:

Marshall A Willis: Is it true that BATFE does not classify the Chauchat as a Class III weapon?

Veteran's Day

Armistice Day. Remembrance Day.  Poppy Day.

Interesting

Australia Looking for a Few Good [US] Veterans | Military.com
Applications closed in November, but still, it's interesting that, as US forces draw down, the Aussies want to hire them back...