Vietnam veterans reunite with ailing 'brother'
Tribune-Star
By Alex Modesitt
9 hrs ago
“When I got back from Vietnam I was tired of sleeping on the ground. So I joined the Air Force,” Dierdorf joked. Dierdorf served out the rest of his 27-year armed services career with the U.S. Air Force.
Ken Dierdorf wanted so badly to sit alongside his Army brothers and feel the rush of air blow through an open-sided UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” one last time at Saturday’s Terre Haute Air Show.
But fate, weather and his advanced Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis — ALS — wouldn’t allow it.
Meant as one last hurrah for a group of Vietnam veterans who call themselves the “Dirty Half Dozen,” the Visiting Nursing Association and Hospice of the Wabash Valley arranged for Dierdorf and his U.S. Army brethren from around the country to take one last ride in a Huey.
But the flight, scheduled to take off around 9 a.m., was grounded due to fog blanketing the airfield. True to form, as the soldiers’ wives tell it, the group didn’t pay the weather much attention as they waited, instead they took the opportunity to catch up on each others’ goings on and tell stories.
And boy were the stories from veterans that served together in second platoon of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, Bravo Company worth hearing.
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Bush VA chief: It’s ‘astounding’ that outside advisers are influencing VA from Mar-a-Lago
The Hill
BY MORGAN GSTALTER
08/18/18
A former head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is expressing concerns over a report that a trio of allies to President Trump who do not hold government positions are affecting hiring at the agency.
Anthony Principi, who served as VA secretary under former President George W. Bush, told Stars and Stripes this week that he found the report of alleged influence by members of Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club "astounding."
“If these [Mar-a-Lago] assertions are true, I don’t think that’s good governance. It’s not the way the nomination and appointment process should work," Principi said.
ProbPublica reported earlier this month that three high-profile men — Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter, West Palm Beach doctor Bruce Moskowitz and Washington lawyer Marc Sherman — were interacting with VA officials almost daily and meeting with them at Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resort.
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When your ride is a helicopter
PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
August 19, 2018
LZ Landing Zone
In military terminology a landing zone (LZ) is an area where aircraft can land. In the United States military, a landing zone is the actual point where aircraft, especially helicopters, land (equivalent to the commonwealth landing point.)
In commonwealth militaries, a landing zone is the cartographic (numeric) zone in which the landing is going to take place (e.g., a valley). The landing area is the area in which the landing is going to take place (e.g., the field where the aircraft are to land). The landing point is the point on which aircraft are going to land (e.g., a point of the field). Each aircraft has a different landing point.
From John C Wolf video
Usually I know days ahead of doing these videos what the topic will be. This time, all I could think about is a Vietnam veteran named John Wolf and how his ride was a helicopter.
I posted the following on August 17, 2018 and could not get it out of my head.
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Young Boys Allegedly Abused By Air Force Colonel Now In His Sole Custody
FORBES
Tara Haelle
August 17, 2018
“Eric has admitted he cannot control his anger and sexual impulses. It’s sad he is like this because of the IED explosion, but that won't help the boys if he physically or sexually abuses them.” Air Force Master Sgt. Robert Arrant
Tomorrow morning, two six-year old brothers will leave the sole custody of the mother they have lived with for the past five years to live in the sole custody of their father, an Air Force colonel alleged to have physically and sexually abused the boys for years.
The US Air Force's handling of a child abuse case appears to have influenced a civilian custody decision.U.S. AIR FORCE PHOTO/TECH. SGT. RICHARD P. EBENSBERGER
The Air Force had deemed the abuse allegations against Colonel Eric Holt as lacking evidence, but as this reporter previously covered, an extraordinary amount of evidence from photographs, video, medical records and witnesses supports the allegations. This evidence includes five disclosures by the boys themselves to non-parental caregivers, medical authorities and child welfare authorities.
Yet in an August 15 Maryland Montgomery County family court decision, Judge Joan Ryon awarded sole custody of the boys to Col. Holt and ordered the boys’ mother, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, only to supervised visitation once every two weeks. Ryon did not require Col. Holt to pay any of the more than $100,000 he owed in back child support—despite a previous court order that he do so—but she ordered the boys’ mother, Dr. Holt*, to pay $5700 a month in child support to their father going forward.
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Inside the Daring Life of a Forgotten Female War Photographer
National Geographic
Nina Strochlic
August 17, 2018
But her tally of conflict zones would end in Vietnam, where she became the first American woman correspondent to die in action. Years later, other journalists reported that Vietnamese Airborne troops were still reminiscing about the small, foul-mouthed woman who’d jumped with them.
Dickey Chapelle was one of history's most fearless conflict journalists—and the first American woman to die on the job.
THE 36 HOURS before Dickey Chapelle leaped off a tower with the Screaming Eagles were terrifying. She was 41 years old and parachute jumping for the first time. But fear never lasted for the pioneering war correspondent, and she quickly proclaimed it among “the greatest experiences one can have.”
It was 1959 and Chapelle had hooked up with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, on the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. She’d been working as a war correspondent since 1942 and had reported on dozens of conflicts. She’d been called “the polite little American with all that tiger blood in her veins” by Fidel Castro; held in solitary confinement during the Hungarian uprising; and affirmed as the first correspondent accredited by the Algerian rebels. After learning with the Screaming Eagles, she became the only woman authorized to jump into combat with paratroopers in Vietnam.
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