DOD was not ready to test deployed troops for COVID-19 and still not testing!

‘No availability’ of coronavirus tests for troops in Afghanistan

Roll Call
By John M. Donnelly
Posted March 13, 2020

The committee has asked Defense Department officials similar coronavirus questions about U.S. troops stationed or deployed in or near other risk countries in addition to Afghanistan. The committee is still waiting for replies, an aide said.

In a March 11 letter to Pentagon and National Guard leaders, Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin asked if testing is available in Afghanistan. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are not being tested for the novel coronavirus, U.S. military officials told the House Armed Services Committee.

There is “no availability of testing for COVID-19” for troops there, a U.S. Central Command representative told the committee in a March 12 statement made available by the committee on Friday.

Members of Congress are particularly concerned about the nearly 13,000 troops in Afghanistan because many of them are deployed near Iran.

Iran has more than 11,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, the third most in the world behind China’s 80,000-plus cases and Italy’s more than 15,000, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Many U.S. troops are stationed in Italy.

South Korea, another nation with a substantial U.S. military presence, has nearly 8,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — the fourth most in the world.
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19 year old soldier found dead in Italy

173rd Brigade soldier found dead in Vicenza barracks is identified

STARS AND STRIPES
By NANCY MONTGOMERY
Published: March 6, 2019

VICENZA, Italy — The 173rd Brigade paratrooper found dead in the barracks Sunday morning has been identified as Pvt. Peter Cimino.

The paratrooper found dead in the Vicenza, Italy, barracks Sunday morning has been identified as Pvt. Peter Cimino, 19. U.S. ARMY

Cimino, 19, was a mortarman assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Cimino was from Danville, Ky. He arrived in Vicenza in August, four months after he enlisted in the Army, according to brigade officials, and was a recipient of the National Defense Service Ribbon and the Army Service Ribbon.

The cause of death is under investigation.
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The desperate fight at Monte Cassino and the veteran who remembers

Soldier who was there wants people to remember WWII battle of Monte Cassino

Pittsburg Post Gazette
Torsten Ove
August 27, 2017

Pearl Harbor. Midway. D-Day. The Battle of the Bulge. Iwo Jima.

The epic battles of World War II still resonate 70 years later.

Yet one of the costliest U.S. campaigns is barely remembered: The war in Italy and its linchpin, the desperate fight at Monte Cassino.

"You never hear anything about it," says Albert DeFazio. "It just boggles my mind. That's why I'm [ticked] off."

Mr. DeFazio is 92 and lives in Penn Hills.

He has two scars on his back, shrapnel wounds he suffered from a German shell burst at Monte Cassino in 1944. He earned the Bronze Star for actions under fire with the 36th Infantry Division and later came home suffering from shell shock — post-traumatic stress disorder in today's lingo — after more fighting on the way to Rome. He says he has symptoms of PTSD, all these decades later.

For years after the war, he rarely talked about his experiences in Italy. It’s a typical pattern among World War II veterans. His late brother Pat was shot in the neck at the Battle of the Bulge. The two brothers went home to live in the same house in Penn Hills, yet they never once talked to each other about what happened to them in the war.

"Never spoke a word," Mr. DeFazio says.

But Mr. DeFazio is talking now.
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Staff Sgt. Halex Hale Still Missing

UPDATE

Italian police examine body in search for missing US airman
Virginia Pilot
July 11, 2016

MILAN (AP) — Italian authorities are investigating whether a body found in the Adriatic Sea could be related to the disappearance of a U.S. airman some 40 kilometers (30 miles) away.

Missing Aviano airman may have drowned, police say
Stars and Stripes
By Nancy Montgomery
Published: July 11, 2016

VICENZA, Italy — The Aviano airman still missing for more than a week despite a massive search effort may have drowned, Italian police said.

Police — aided by dogs, divers, helicopters and volunteers — called off a three-day search on Sunday for 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Halex Hale. Assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base, he was last seen when he left a friend’s house in Sacile, the small town near the base where Hale lived.

“The most plausible theory for now is that he was inebriated with alcohol, left the house and fell into one of the nearby canals, which were swollen due to particularly stormy weather,” Grigoletto Michele, the national police captain in charge of the search, told NBC News on Sunday.

That theory was disputed by Hale’s father, who traveled to Italy last week from his home in Indiana.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Lance Hale told the network. He said he’d walked the route his son was thought to have taken from the cookout, where he was last seen about 10 p.m.
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Deputy Chaplain Lt. Cmdr. John Keith died in Naples after surgery

UPDATE

Navy chaplain Keith remembered in Naples

Navy chaplain in Naples dies following surgery
Stars and Stripes
By Steven Beardsley
Published: March 24, 2014

NAPLES, Italy — A Navy chaplain assigned to Naples died over the weekend following complications from surgery.

Deputy Chaplain (Lt. Cmdr.) John Keith, 49, of Irvine, Calif., was a familiar face in the small military community. He led a Protestant church service every Sunday, Bible studies and the occasional memorial service.

“He is very well-known and well-loved by the community, and he’s leaving a huge hole here for us,” base Chaplain (Cmdr.) Manuel Biadog said. “The folks are just completely overwhelmed, shocked. At yesterday’s service there was no dry eye there.”

Keith died early Saturday in an Italian hospital in Castel Volturno after being transferred from the nearby Naval hospital in Gricignano where he had arrived Friday night complaining of pain, according to several officials on the base.
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WWII soldier's letter reaches daughter after seven decades

WWII soldier's letter reaches daughter after seven decades
The Associated Press
By Martin Griffith
September 22, 2013

RENO, Nev. - A World War II soldier's heartfelt letter to his daughter has finally reached her, seven decades after it was written.

"The letter gave me more knowledge of who he was," she told The Associated Press. "He poured out his heart to me, and a lot of men don't put that kind of emotion in writing. I'm just overwhelmed by everything, trying to absorb everything."

Peggy Eddington-Smith received the letter penned by her father, Pfc. John Eddington, as well as his Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals, during an emotional ceremony Saturday in Dayton, Nev., about 40 miles southeast of Reno.

The father she never met wrote the three-page letter shortly after she was born and shortly before he died in Italy in June 1944. He sent it while stationed in Texas, just before he was sent overseas.

Getting his medals was nice, but the letter meant more because it made her feel closer to her father, Eddington-Smith said. She knew little about him since her mother could rarely bring herself to discuss the love of her life.
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Italy Quake leaves 150 dead, 1,500 injured and 70,000 homeless

150 dead, 1,500+ injured after quake jolts Italy
Agence France-Presse
Published: Monday April 6, 2009


L'AQUILA, Italy (AFP) – Rescuers scrambled in the dark Tuesday to find survivors from a powerful earthquake in central Italy that killed at least 150 people as thousands of homeless sought shelter in hastily built tent cities.

With nightfall adding to the driving rain hampering the search, emergency services said 100 people had been pulled alive from the rubble of Renaissance and Baroque buildings around the historic town L'Aquila since the quake struck early Monday.

The government has estimated that up to 70,000 people have been left homeless by the quake which measured magnitude 6.2 that damaged 10,000 buildings, many beyond repair.
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150 dead, 1,500+ injured after quake jolts Italy