Veterans...Get the hell in here now!

Oh hell yeah, today's one of my favorite day's. We're celebrating with a shooting day for a few friends. Living way out in the boonies has its perks, and being able to shoot whatever caliber, up to .50 BMG, and in whatever fire selection mode you're legally licensed for is one of them. Happy Fourth of July everyone, and be safe. My neighbors are going to think it's WW3 around here :bigjoint:.
 
www.nytimes.com

Biden Awards Medal of Honor to Vietnam Soldiers for ‘Incredible Heroism’ (Published 2022)

“They went far above and beyond the call of duty,” the president said as he bestowed America’s highest military honor upon four recipients.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
www.army.mil

Major John J. Duffy | Medal of Honor Recipient | U.S. Army

The official U.S. Army website for Major John J. Duffy, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts during the Korean War
www.army.mil
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www.army.mil

Specialist Five Dennis M. Fujii | Medal of Honor Recipient | U.S. Army

The official U.S. Army website for Specialist Five Dennis M. Fujii, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts during the Korean War
www.army.mil
www.army.mil

Specialist Five Dwight W. Birdwell | Medal of Honor Recipient | U.S. Army

The official U.S. Army website for Specialist Five Dwight W. Birdwell, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts during the Korean War
www.army.mil
www.army.mil

Staff Sergeant Edward Kaneshiro | Medal of Honor Recipient | U.S. Army

The official U.S. Army website for Staff Sergeant Edward Kaneshiro, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic acts during the Korean War
www.army.mil
 
Today in Military History:


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Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand (left) and Maj. Dale Buis (right) •July 8, 1959: Ovnand and Buis were killed during an ambush on a U.S. compound in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, marking the first American casualties of the Vietnam war​
Article as it appeared in ASSOCIATED PRESS | July 8, 2009 at 8:39 am

"It was July 8, 1959 and Stanley Karnow, Time magazine’s chief correspondent in Asia, was on his first trip to Saigon when he heard about an attack at an Army base about 20 miles north of the city.

Six northern Vietnamese had attacked the Army’s residential compound in the town of Bien Hoa, killing two American men while they watched a movie on a home projector. Karnow wrote three paragraphs about it for Time.

“It was a minor incident in a faraway place,” said Karnow, who reported from southeast Asia from 1959 to the early 1970s. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that these two guys would be the first in a memorial to 50,000-some others.”

Today, those guys — U.S. Army Maj. Dale Buis and Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand — were remembered on the anniversary of their deaths during a special ceremony near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. An armed services color guard marched and a bugler played “Taps” on a hill overlooking the memorial wall, where Buis’ name is listed first, followed by Ovnand’s, in panel 1E, Row 1, at the wall’s apex.

“Today we are here to reflect and honor the individuals who paid the supreme sacrifice for our country,” said Jan Scruggs, president and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, a nonprofit authorized by Congress in 1980 to build the memorial.

Scruggs said the group began organizing today’s ceremony just three weeks ago. “We thought it would be a really good idea to remind people of this first tragedy among many deaths that followed from the Vietnam War,” he said, adding that he hoped people would pause to remember servicemen and women killed in combat, as well as those at war now.

More than 58,000 Americans and some 1.5 million Vietnamese were killed during the Vietnam War.

According to Karnow’s 1959 Time article, Ovnand, of Texas, had just mailed a letter to his wife and Buis, who was from California, was showing off pictures of his three sons. They were two of eight men who lived at the compound, and among the six who took a break in the mess hall that July 8 to watch “The Tattered Dress,” starring Jeanne Crain.

The soldiers were sprayed with bullets by “terrorists” when Ovnand turned on the lights to change the home projector’s first reel, Karnow wrote.

Ovnand was just a month away from finishing up his yearlong tour of duty, according to Nathaniel Ward IV of San Diego, a retired Army captain whose father was chief of staff of the U.S. Army Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam. Ward was 17 at the time of the Bien Hoa attack and remembers his father changing into his fatigues to rush to the outpost that had been ambushed.

Ward and others said little is known about Ovnand, except that he was married when he died at 44.

Buis was originally from Nebraska, but was living in California before he went to Vietnam. He was a 1942 graduate of Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Mo., and is one of 13 Wentworth graduates listed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Buis arrived in Vietnam just two days before he was killed at 37, leaving behind a wife and three young sons. Ward, who in the mid-1980s tried to locate relatives of Ovnand and Buis, said only one of Buis’ sons is alive today and lives in San Diego.

Today, a wreath of daises, lilies and irises was laid at the memorial wall under the year 1959, where Buis and Ovnand’s names appear. Mementos propped against the wall included a plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of their deaths, a red Wentworth Military Academy flag and a copy of a story in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, with the banner headline: “2 Americans Killed by Saigon Terrorist.”

“They became a part of history,” Ward said of the fallen soldiers, “when they never intended to.”
 

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The Battle of Britain begins​

"July 10, 1940, the Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain, which will last three and a half months.

It has been described as the first major military campaign fought entirely by air forces. The British officially recognize the battle's duration as being from 10 July until 31 October 1940, which overlaps the period of large-scale night attacks known as The Blitz, that lasted from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. German historians do not accept this subdivision and regard the battle as a single campaign lasting from July 1940 to June 1941, including the Blitz.

After the occupation of France by Germany, Britain knew it was only a matter of time before the Axis power turned its sights across the Channel. And on July 10, 120 German bombers and fighters struck a British shipping convoy in that very Channel, while 70 more bombers attacked dockyard installations in South Wales. Although Britain had far fewer fighters than the Germans–600 to 1,300–it had a few advantages, such as an effective radar system, which made the prospects of a German sneak attack unlikely. Britain also produced superior quality aircraft. Its Spitfires could turn tighter than Germany’s ME109s, enabling it to better elude pursuers; and its Hurricanes could carry 40mm cannon, and would shoot down, with its American Browning machine guns, over 1,500 Luftwaffe aircraft. The German single-engine fighters had a limited flight radius, and its bombers lacked the bomb-load capacity necessary to unleash permanent devastation on their targets. Britain also had the advantage of unified focus, while German infighting caused missteps in timing; they also suffered from poor intelligence.

Historian Stephen Bungay cited Germany's failure to destroy Britain's air defences to force an armistice (or even outright surrender) as the first major German defeat in World War II and a crucial turning point in the conflict.

But in the opening days of battle, Britain was in immediate need of two things: a collective stiff upper lip–and aluminum. A plea was made by the government to turn in all available aluminum to the Ministry of Aircraft Production. “We will turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes,” the ministry declared. And they did."

“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
--Prime Minister Winston Churchill referring to the pilots of Fighter Command, House of Commons, 20 August 1940
 
Today in Military History:

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On 16 July, 1950, 19th Infantry Regiment Chaplain Herman Felhoelter and 100 other men attempted to escape from advancing North Korean troops after a battle near Taejon while carrying nearly 30 wounded Soldiers. When evading the enemy with so many injured men proved impossible, the Catholic Chaplain stayed behind with the wounded while others escaped. From a distance, a sergeant looked back to see enemy troops overcome and murder the wounded, to include Chaplain Felhoelter, who was praying over them. Eleven days after American Soldiers had entered the fight, and on the day before his 37th birthday, the first Army chaplain casualty of the Korean conflict lay dead on the battlefield.
“I am not comfortable in Korea (that is impossible here) but I am happy in the thought that I can help some souls who need help,” Chaplain Felhoelter had written to his mother four days before his death.

Felhoelter was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his selfless service. During the Korean conflict, 13 chaplains were killed. Six died in the first month of the war. In 1953, 175 Army chaplains had received 218 decorations including 22 Silver Stars. More medals were awarded later, including to CH (CPT) Emil Kapaun, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on 12 April 2013.

The President of the United States of America, under the provisions of the Act of Congress approved July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to Captain (Chaplain) Herman Gilbert Felhoelter (ASN: 0-549715), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy of the United Nations while attached to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. Captain (Chaplain) Felhoelter distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action against enemy aggressor forces on the Kum River, north of Taejon, Korea, on 16 July 1950. When seriously wounded men of the 19th Infantry could not be evacuated in the face of an overwhelming night attack by superior enemy forces who had cut off the main route of withdrawal, Chaplain Felhoelter, without regard for his own personal safety, voluntarily remained behind to give his wounded comrades spiritual comfort and aid. When last seen, Chaplain Felhoelter was still administering to the wounded.​
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SwarthySchlong said:
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My best friend was Delta. He was shot 2 times and caught by a mine once. That one retired him. 338 lapua to the arm. 12 gauge to the chest and the bouncing Betty. He had to stand on that mine with that nail in his foot 16 hours until eod and a nearby seal team could stage a rescue. A piece caught him in the foot. He walks on two canes now with two arm braces. But he was a bad mother fucker
 
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