December 1944 roster--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Florida Mini-Reunion 2005
January 23-27,
2005
Kissimmee, FL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2005 Biannual Reunion
August 15-19,
2005
Savannah, Ga.
Virginia Jorgen
TO ALL YOU GREAT MEN:
HAVE A VERY
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
GOD BLESS ----
VIRGINIA JORGEN
Dallas Long
Happy Thanksgiving to all the Troopers and families. Jerrie
is slowly recovering from her heart attacks, concussion, and eye surgery. I
have my old age problems, but so much to be thankful for this
Thanksgiving. God willing we will get to reunion, but can't get to Florida
reunion. Have saved all of the Mail Call print outs. One of our grandsons
has asked for them. It is pouring "cats and dogs" in Atlanta now--yuk. Winter is
making its way. Dallas Long
Bob Barrett
Dad,
Thought you might find this interesting. It is an
editorial from the Wall Street Journal last
week.
-------------------------------
Death by Adreleline
By
Edward N. Luttwak
Anyone who has ever been in combat -- not just in a
combat zone, but gun-in-hand against an enemy trying to kill you --needs no
investigation to know exactly what happened in that Fallujah mosque last
Saturday. The anonymous Marine who is seen shooting and killing a motionless and
seemingly unarmed Iraqi in the television footage, was in that special state of
temporary, chemically induced compulsion to kill that makes hand-to-hand combat
possible at all.
Before the fighting there might be tension or not,
depending on situations and personalities. But when the body receives the
message, right or wrong, that the moment of killing or being killed has arrived,
one can actually feel the adrenaline jetting into action. An endocrinologist who
had himself been in combat once explained to me why it is the fighter's molecule
(C9H13NO3) par excellence: It increases the rate and strength of the heartbeat
to add energy, dilates bronchi and pupils to enhance breathing and vision,
increases vasoconstriction and sweating and -- most appropriately -- accelerates
the clotting of blood.
No matter what happens under its influence -- and
people do the strangest things besides fighting -- there is one thing that
cannot happen: Adrenaline does not dissipate instantly when it is no longer
essential for survival. That is why fighters kill surrendering enemies- they are
still chemically compelled to kill, and have someone to kill in front of them. A
moment later, with the effect dissipated, that same fighter becomes a person
once again or, in the case at hand, a disciplined and presumably decent Marine
who would never dream of killing a defenseless, harmless, wounded prisoner. It
is the most common thing in the world for soldiers to kill the surrendering
enemy in that first post-combat instant, and then to help the survivors a moment
later.
It is reported that the anonymous Marine was himself wounded in
the face and had lost a comrade killed by the booby-trapped body of an
insurgent. Perhaps so -- dead insurgents are searched for documents, and
therefore booby-trapping them is a good tactic for their retreating comrades if
they can do it. But it is quite unnecessary to add any further explanation, or
excuse for that matter. For the U.S. Marine Corps -- as for any decent and
law-abiding military force -- the deliberate, cold-blooded, killing of unarmed
prisoners is murder full stop, and must be punished as such.
But that is
irrelevant in this case (unless the anonymous Marine happens to be a common
murderer by some remote chance) because the incident took place on the
battlefield in an unsecured environment before prisoners were taken. The
transitory post-combat compulsion to kill is entirely involuntary and
inevitable -- it could only be ended by ending all infantry combat. It has happened
in every war on the largest scale even in the best of armies. The difference
last Saturday in Fallujah was the presence of a television camera that captured
images that contain deceptive fragments of the truth. For we see and hear not
the anonymous Marine but the fighter acting out the effects of C9H13NO3. The
result is the world-wide condemnation that with some mass media, including Al
Jazeera of course, degenerates into outright incitement.
But it was not
Al Jazeera that revealed the incident; rather it was a pool of unpatriotic
American television reporters and the Marine officers who started an immediate
judicial investigation, for strict American legalism is alive, and well even in
the Marine uniform.
Those are two things for which we can be very
thankful. The last thing we would want are patriotic reporters who would conceal
errors, embarrassments and crimes in our armed forces, thus favoring their
present reputation at the expense of their improvement, or military officers who
would condone atrocity. The pan-Arabists of Al Jazeera do not serve their cause
well by glorifying every Arab attack anywhere in the world, however incompetent,
and refraining from criticizing the killing of the defenseless if the
perpetrators are Arabs. We want both the unvarnished truth from our media and
strict legalism in our, armed forces. But the anonymous Marine cannot be
punished for an inevitable consequence of his duty as a combatant in war.
Mr. Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic &
International Studies, is the author, among other books, of "Strategy: The Logic
of War and Peace" (Belknap, 2002).
Boom Boom Alicki
Art Vesco