"When they would go out on furlough, the black Marines couldn't go certain places," she said. "There was an incident on a train to New York. They were trying to put out my father, but the white Marines all stood up and said, 'No, we are all Marines, stay right here.'"TAMPA — In 1943, as the Marines were slogging through a bloody Pacific island-hopping campaign, two good friends from Nyack, New York, showed up at a recruiting station to join the fight.
Feb 12, 2012
Last night at the Orlando Nam Knights there was a surprise guest. Charles O. Foreman, a WWII veteran, member of the Montford Point Marines came. He is part of the group of Marines receiving the Congressional Gold Medal. At 87 he is just amazing. No matter what he had to go through because of the color of his skin, he'd do it all over again. He credits the Marines with making him the man he is today.
Gen. Joseph L. Votel and Lt. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III attend a Senate hearing on March 9, 2016. J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/APSenators late Thursday approved the nominations of Army Gen. Joseph Votel to run U.S. Central Command and Gen. Tony Thomas to take over as the top officer at U.S. Special Operations Command. Both commands are headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
Garrett Goodwin was a medic, working in the emergency room at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, in September 2001.So how did he end up this way?
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, he was in bed, watching TV before an afternoon shift, when he saw what turned out to be United Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
Goodwin, a combat medic with the Army National Guard who had experience in disaster recover efforts, says he packed his bag, hopped in his truck and drove down to MacDill Air Force Base, hoping to catch a flight north to help during the unfolding catastrophe.
But nothing was flying anywhere. So he and a friend drove north, toward the Pentagon.
“We did rescue work for three or four hours, but there was no one to save, so we went to New York,” Goodwin says.
They arrived about 6:30 a.m., Sept. 12. Goodwin says he checked in with the military authorities on scene, they told him what he could do, and he was given a “red card” allowing him access.
For the next 24 days, he worked between 18 and 20 hours in what used to be the tallest building in America. It had become a mass grave.
Marijuana as a Treatment for PTSD
The belief that marijuana can be used to treat PTSD is limited to anecdotal reports from individuals with PTSD who say that the drug helps with their symptoms. There have been no randomized controlled trials, a necessary "gold standard" for determining efficacy. Administration of oral CBD has been shown to decrease anxiety in those with and without clinical anxiety (18). This work has led to the development and testing of CBD treatments for individuals with social anxiety (19), but not yet among individuals with PTSD. With respect to THC, one open trial of 10 participants with PTSD showed THC was safe and well tolerated and resulted in decreases in hyperarousal symptoms (20).
Read more from the VA on Medical Marijuana here
Sgt. Maj. Michael Jarnevic, seen here in 1995, will retire from the Army on July 8. He is believed to be the last Vietnam War veteran serving on active duty.
(Photo: Courtesy Michael Jarnevic)
The story of Brunette’s life speaks volumes about the difficulty of dealing with veteran suicides, say her family and friends.
The original lawsuit pointed out several multi-million dollar contracts The Experts, Inc. has had with the U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The suit also names the U.S. Navy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and two defense contractors as defendants. The family has been seeking $37.5 million in damages.
photo: United States Department of the Navy (CCTV), FBI via Wikimedia Commons CCTV footage of Aaron Alexis on September 16, 2013The lawsuit filed by the family of Florida resident Mary DeLorenzo Knight, one of the victims slain by Aaron Alexis during the Washington Navy Yard massacre in 2013, has been ordered out of Florida by a federal judge. The suit, filed in December 2013, alleges negligence by the government.
After a year in Iraq, spending time in armored Humvees, M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles in Baghdad – where the temperature would reach more than 110 degrees in the summer – Jones finds Tampa’s weather almost mild.
Chris Faris, command sergeant major of U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base,is retiring at the end of February after 31 years in the military. He is also a co-grand marshal of Gasparilla 2015. Photo courtesy Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino
He acknowledged the battle that cost the lives of 18 U.S. troops and left 73 others wounded is never far from his mind. "I probably think about it two million times a day, every day," Faris said. "You don't go to war without being changed."TAMPA — Chris Faris was wounded in Mogadishu in 1993 as a member of the elite Delta Force during the battle made famous in the book and film Black Hawk Down. And he has spent nearly six years deployed overseas since 2002, often while on secret missions in the world's most-dangerous places. But the work one of the grand marshals of the 2015 Gasparilla celebration wants to be remembered for is his effort to encourage soldiers to seek the help they might need after returning from war.
Suicide Rise in Special Ops Spurs Call for Review
Tampa Tribune
By Howard Altman
Tribune Staff
Published: April 29, 2014
Concerned with the increase in commandos taking their own lives, a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is calling for the Pentagon to review Department of Defense efforts regarding suicide prevention among members of the Special Operations Forces and their dependents.
The call for a review is included in proposals by the Military Personnel Subcommittee as part of the half-trillion dollar-plus military budget request for the fiscal year beginning in October. If the measure passes, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel would have three months after passage of the budget to report the findings to the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
“If the final bill calls for a report, we will work with the Department of Defense to ensure they have all the information they need to report to Congress,” said U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw.
The subcommittee is also calling for a look at the overall issue of troop suicides, as well as how the military is handling sexual assaults, military health care costs and other health and well-being issues.
Earlier this month, Socom commander Adm. William McRaven told a Tampa intelligence symposium that commandos are committing suicide at a record pace this year. Though he offered no figures, he was repeating a concern he first raised in February at a Congressional hearing on his budget.
“The last two years have been the highest rate of suicides we have had in the special operations community and this year I am afraid we are on the path to break that,” McRaven, whose headquarters is at MacDill Air Force Base, said at the GEOINT 2013* Symposium in Tampa earlier this month.
read more here
U.S. special forces struggle with record suicides
Jason Wyatt, left, performs the national anthem while Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, center, and Command Sgt. Maj. Frank A. Grippe stand at attention during the dedication ceremony.
The decision to sell firearms at MacDill comes at a time when the military is wrestling with the rising number of suicides in the armed forces.
More than 320 confirmed or suspected suicides have been reported so far this year, according to the Pentagon, surpassing the previous high of 310 in 2009. By comparison, 241 U.S. troops have been killed by enemy forces so far this year, according to icasualties.org.
In 2011, slightly less than half of the approximately 280 suicides involved weapons that were not issued by the military, according to Department of Defense spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.
That fact is not lost on Scott Neil, a retired Green Beret who served as the senior enlisted adviser to the Director of the Interagency Task Force at U.S. Special Operations Command.
Neil, who runs sport shooting events that benefit the wounded, said gun policies on bases are actually more restrictive than those outside the gates.
"It is highly controlled on the base," he said. "As far as fear that Joe the Private walks from the barracks to get a gun and commit suicide, it's the same as if he drove 10 miles downtown to a pawn shop. There are probably less regulations or oversight or issues for him to get a gun cheaply at a pawn shop."
read more here
