I banked with USAA when I was in the Navy, but got out of it after I was discharged from the Navy. The University I went to had a credit union that was just amazing and I had some issues with getting my scholarship money, deposited and available with USAA in a timely matter so it was just more convenient.
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They are just in rotations, not new deployments.
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Anyone else see lawsuits 10 years down the road or fighting the VA for help.
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William Calley, convicted over the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, dies aged 80
Story by Our Foreign Staff
• 9h • 3 min read
[image]
Lt. William Calley arrives at a pre-trial hearing prior to his court martial for his involvement in the My Lai massacre - Bettman© Provided by The Telegraph
William Calley, who during the Vietnam War led his US Army platoon into the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai and carried out one of the worst war crimes in American military history, has died aged 80.
The Washington Post on Monday first reported Calley’s death, which happened in April, according to a death certificate the newspaper cited. The New York Times, citing Social Security Administration death records, also reported Calley’s death.
Neither paper gave a cause of death. Calls to numbers listed for Calley’s son, William L. Calley III, were not returned, Reuters reported.
American soldiers killed 504 people on March 16, 1968, in Son My, a collection of hamlets between the central Vietnamese coast and a ridge of misty mountains, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre. The killings shocked the US and galvanised the anti-war movement.
US soldier torching a house during the My Lai massacre - History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)© Provided by The Telegraph
Initially charged in a US Army court martial for 102 deaths, Calley was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for the killing of 22 civilians. He was behind bars for only three days before then-President Richard Nixon ordered he be released under house arrest.
Despite being told that My Lai was a hotbed of communist National Liberation Front guerrillas, US forces met no serious armed resistance and found very few weapons, according to the Army Historical Foundation.
Four soldiers were brought up on charges stemming from the massacre but only Calley was convicted.
Calley spent three years in home detention at his apartment in Fort Benning, Georgia, where he had visits from his girlfriend, and was then paroled and cashiered out of the Army.
Maintaining that he had merely followed orders and considering himself a scapegoat, Calley became a lightning rod for a country bitterly divided over the unpopular Vietnam War.
Former Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang and his wife Mai Thi Hanh help lay flowers in 2018 during the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre in My Lai village - Kham/Reuters© Provided by The Telegraph
In later years, as a successful businessman in Columbus, Georgia, Calley refused to talk about My Lai with reporters or historians.
Friends, however, said he admitted committing the deeds he was charged with and had learned to live with it. In 2009, he made his first public apology.
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told a Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Ohio.
“I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”
William Laws Calley Jr was born on June 8, 1943, the only son and fourth child of a Miami businessman. He attended four high schools in four years, two of them military academies. After he dropped out of junior college, he worked as a bellhop, dishwasher, insurance investigator and train conductor.
Broke in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1966, he joined the Army and excelled. Despite a poor academic record, Calley graduated from Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning one year to the day before the My Lai incident.
After his discharge from the Army, Calley married Penny Vick in 1976 and went to work for her father in the jewelry business in Georgia, becoming a certified gemologist. They had one son and later divorced.
Royal Navy aircraft carriers rely on Norwegian protection. How the mighty are fallen
Story by David Axe
• 9h • 4 min read
[image]
Type 23 frigate HMS Westminster shadows a Russian warship through the English Channel. A warship, the Fleet Ready Escort, is normally kept on standby ready for such occasions - Ministry of Defense/Crown copyright/PA
When the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales deploys to the Pacific region next year, she’ll be accompanied by a pair of Norwegian warships, including one of Norway’s four Nansen-class frigates.
The UK government characterized the Norwegian participation in next year’s deployment as a demonstration that “the security of the Euro-Atlantic region and Indo-Pacific is indivisible.”
But, for the overstretched Royal Navy, it’s also necessary. The navy’s own frigates are old, overworked – and dwindling in number. For the next few years, UK carriers may always need a little help from foreign warships when they deploy far from home.
With the decommissioning – premature, some might say – of the last of the Royal Navy’s Type 22 frigates in 2011, the 13 newer Type 23s became the navy’s only frigates. Alongside six bigger Type 45 destroyers, the 436-foot, missile-armed frigates are the fleet’s workhorses.
They patrol UK waters, trawl the North Atlantic for Russian submarines, show the flag in foreign ports and, perhaps most critically, escort the Royal Navy’s capital ships – its two carriers and its amphibious assault ships, though the latter are now mothballed for lack of sailors.
Nineteen escorts was not enough: and then they became even fewer. As recently as 2015, the Royal Navy planned to keep all 13 Type 23s it had left out of 16 built – the United Kingdom sold three to Chile in the early 2000s – until new frigates were available.
Related video: Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales sailing from Portsmouth delayed (Dailymotion)
But the new frigates – eight powerful Type 26s and five more basic Type 31s – are late. And the decades-old Type 23s are wearing out. When Yarrow Shipbuilders and Swan Hunter built the Type 23s between the large 1980s and early 2000s, they built them to be light and inexpensive. That meant keeping their hulls thin.
The downside, of course, is that a thinner hull is flimsier than a thicker hull. That might not have been an issue had the Royal Navy steadily built frigates through the 2000s. But it didn’t. In fact, to save money it took a 17-year break between cutting steel on the last Type 23 and cutting steel on the first Type 26.
So the Type 23s sailed for years past their planned out-of-service dates. They sailed … until they literally rusted away. While cutting into the frigates for a planned life-extension program starting a few years ago, shipbuilder Babcock International discovered more corrosion and metal fatigue than anyone had expected.
The Royal Navy made the hard decision to decommission four Type 23s years earlier than planned. The result, in 2024, is that the fleet has just nine frigates. And delays to the Type 26s and Type 31s mean the frigate flotilla won’t begin growing again until 2027 at the earliest.
Yes, the surviving frigates are getting better weapons, including Sea Ceptor air-defence missiles in place of the widely mistrusted Sea Wolf, and anti-ship Naval Strike Missiles which also offer a proper land-attack option for the first time in RN frigates. But a frigate can be in only one place at a time. Capacity matters as much as capability.
Ominously, frigate numbers might drop lower – to eight or even seven – in the three years before the first Type 26s and Type 31s commission into service. With at most nine frigates, the Royal Navy can reliably deploy just three or four at a time. The others will be in refit or working up for deployment.
With three or four deployable frigates and a handful of deployable destroyers, the Royal Navy might be able to muster half a dozen escorts for a carrier – assuming, of course, it assigns every single available major surface combatant to the carrier group.
Realistically, however, the fleet can’t assign every available frigate to shepherd its deployable carrier. That’s because the frigates also handle a second vital mission: towing a high-tech Type 2087 sonar to detect Russian submarines slipping from their anchorages into the wider Atlantic Ocean. Seven of the remaining nine Type 23s have the Type 2087. There’s also a need to keep a working ship ready to respond to sudden short-notice tasks, such as shadowing Russian or Chinese warships when they pass through British waters.
The paucity of available escorts helps to explain why the Norwegians will be part of the next major carrier deployment. Expect foreign warships to be an indispensable part of Royal Navy carrier deployments for the next several years, if not longer. It could be 2031 before the fleet has 13 frigates again.
The sad decline of the Royal Navy’s once-powerful frigate flotilla is the inevitable result of decades of under-investment in UK sea power. Just one thing can reverse these dire fortunes, and liberate the Royal Navy from reliance on foreign escorts.
I am humbled again. 
*Lest we forget again. *
Creating a memorial to the horrors of World War I
Story by Guest Author
Over the past 40 years, memorials to America’s 20th century wars
have sprung up across Washington, D.C., with one conspicuous omission: There was no national memorial to veterans of World War I in our nation’s capital.
“If you ask anybody on the streets where the World War I memorial is in D.C., most of them will point you to the D.C. Veterans Memorial,” said Joe Weishaar. “For a long time people assumed that it was the national memorial. But the little rotunda that’s there is only to district residents.”
In 2015, Weishaar was a 25-year-old intern at a Chicago architecture firm when he heard about an open design competition for D.C.'s first national World War I memorial. “I set up a shelf in my closet, I set my computer on the shelf, and that was my office,” he said. “I was doing this, like, in nights and weekends after work.”
He sent off his design and then forgot about it, until … “I got a very strange phone call and they’re like, ‘You’re one of five finalists. We need you in Washington, like, tomorrow,’” he said.
Weishaar had never even been to Washington. “No, I had never been. Didn’t own a suit!”
Weishaar’s design beat out more than 360 applicants from over 20 countries.
A rendering of Joe Weishaar’s winning design for the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., constructed at the site of the former Pershing Park, dedicated to Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. / Credit: World War I Centennial Commission
When the memorial opened to the public in 2021, only one thing was missing: an intricate, 60-foot-long bronze relief, the memorial’s centerpiece, created by classical sculptor Sabin Howard, a firebrand and self-appointed bulwark against the scourge of modern art. “Artists like de Kooning or Jackson Pollock, I’m in opposition to them,” said Howard. “It’s a scam, what’s happened in the last 100 years. I’m here to rectify that scam.”
For his tableau depicting World War I, he said, “I threw out the last hundred years of history in the art world, and I went back to what preceded that period of time.”
Sabin Howard sculpting figures for the National World War I Memorial. / Credit: Courtesy Superhuman Film Productions
Shepherding Howard through the byzantine approvals process was his client, the Congressionally-created World War I Centennial Commission.
“You go to these meetings, and none of the people in the room are artists; they’re all lawyers and, you know, Washington bureaucrats,” Howard said. “The commission asked me, ‘We need to see more – a dying soldier, perhaps, and more suffering.’ I started posing the models. You had madness, you had amputations, death. So, I went pretty deep.”
When he brought that iteration into the commission office, he said chairs were literally thrown in the room.
“I was treated as, ‘You’re working for us.’ And I took that for a long time. But then we got to a moment in the relationship, I stood up and I said, ‘I will not compromise this design. And if you don’t like it, you sculpt it, and I’ll send you some webinars.’”
The World War I Centennial Commission said they are “proud of the magnificent Memorial that Joe Weishaar and Sabin Howard have created,” and that it “provides a model of how a complex and collaborative process can work.”
Sculptor Sabin Howard describes his tableau, titled
Howard may lack tact, but he doesn’t lack confidence. His sculpture charts a soldier’s wartime journey, from his ambivalent departure, to his wordless homecoming, to the animal savagery of combat in-between. Pointing to one soldier, he said, “If you look at this figure, I don’t think in the history of art that there’s ever been a figure with this much explosive energy.”
A detail from
Howard’s “movie in bronze,” consisting of 38 figures weighing 25 tons, ends with a soldier, home from war, lowering a helmet to a young girl.
For World War I historian Jennifer Keene, the sculpture’s final tableau illustrates the heavy toll the war exacted on its veterans: “They were not prepared for what they were going to find – the quagmire, the terror of artillery shells, rats and lice and trench feet. No, they are completely unprepared.”
Keene said, “I think that idea at the end, that it’s just a gesture, right? ‘Here’s the helmet.’ There’s no words there, because maybe there aren’t words that can really describe what that soldier has been through.”
More than 4.7 million Americans served in World War I. More than 116,000 did not return home from fighting in Europe. / Credit: CBS News
The sculpture, which will be unveiled at a ceremony later this month, took nine years of Sabin Howard’s life. “Yeah, but that’s not a lot, when you think about it,” he said.
Asked what he hopes visitors to the memorial a century from now would experience, Howard replied, “I want the visitor 100 years from now to have the same feeling that I had when I went to go see the David when I was 25. We are made in God’s image. That sculpture is made in God’s image. So is mine. It’s a simple thing, but very deep.”
A detail from Sabin Howard’s sculpture created as part of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., the first national monument to those who served in the Great War. / Credit: CBS News
For more info:
- National World War I Memorial, Washington, D.C. (National Park Service)
- Sabin Howard (Official site)
- Joe Weishaar (Official site)
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Perfect.
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Awesome piece of work. Great post brother @BRUCE26
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One of the last Navajo Code Talkers from World War II dies at 107
FILE - Navajo Code Talker John Kinsel Sr., of Lukachukai, Ariz., listens as his comrades speak of their WWII experiences Tuesday Aug. 14, 2007, in Window Rock, Ariz. (AP Photo/Donovan Quintero, File)
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) — John Kinsel Sr., one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers who transmitted messages during World War II based on the tribe’s native language, has died. He was 107.
Navajo Nation officials in Window Rock announced Kinsel’s death on Saturday.
Tribal President Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-staff until Oct. 27 at sunset to honor Kinsel.
“Mr. Kinsel was a Marine who bravely and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the greatest responsibility as a Navajo Code Talker,” Nygren said in a statement Sunday.
With Kinsel’s death, only two original Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the Marines to serve as Code Talkers during the war, transmitting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.
They confounded Japanese military cryptologists during World War II and participated in all assaults the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima.
The Code Talkers sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications crucial to the war’s ultimate outcome.
Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite Code Talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982 and the Aug. 14 holiday honors all the tribes associated with the war effort.
The day is an Arizona state holiday and Navajo Nation holiday on the vast reservation that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.
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Marine gunner court-martialed over Mattis task force confusion
Story by Hope Hodge Seck
• 1h • 5 min read
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Marine gunner court-martialed over Mattis task force confusion
Adecorated Marine gunner whose perspectives on doctrine and lethality have been widely published is headed for court-martial at Quantico, Virginia, this month on charges that include unauthorized absence - equivalent to absent without leave.
But according to the Marine and his lawyers, it’s a bizarre misunderstanding that involves sworn statements from top generals, including a former commandant of the Marine Corps.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 Stephen LaRose also faces charges of dereliction of duty, false official statement and conduct unbecoming a Marine officer, according to a charge sheet received by Marine Corps Times. His trial is set to begin Dec. 17 before Navy Cmdr. Kate Shovlin, a circuit military judge. According to military dockets, it’s set to last three days and to be adjudicated by a jury panel of military officers.
LaRose, who served from 2020-2022 as an advisor on the Defense Department’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force, or CCLTF, established in 2018 by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, said in an interview that the charges stem from an anonymous complaint against him made to the Marine Corps Inspector General.
The charges concern a period from 2022 to 2023, during which time LaRose said he was beginning to transition from the Marine Corps to civilian life amid changes to the CCLTF that left the task force without any dedicated Marine staff.
Marines to get most significant marksmanship overhaul in 100 years
In 2021, the Army moved to take point on the task force, headquartering it at their Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Moore, Georgia. As a result, LaRose said, the Marine Corps moved to “matrix support” for the unit, allowing a small number of staff to advise it remotely from the Washington, D.C. area.
LaRose, who said he was initially assigned to the task force partially in recognition of injuries sustained from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan that left him unable to run up and down ranges, said he began a medical board process as a pathway out of service.
What followed, according to LaRose’s account, was an unconventional period in which he was “shared” by multiple elements, including the task force and Marine Corps Training and Education Command, without a clear chain of command. On top of that, he said, he advised the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in an unofficial capacity.
“I was never assigned to [Marine Corps Warfighting Lab], because it was just pro bono work as I’m transitioning out of the service,” LaRose said.
According to his civilian attorney, Nathan Freeburg, LaRose’s paperwork underscores the confusion: he hasn’t had a fitness report since 2019, even though FitReps are supposed to be completed annually by a Marine officer’s supervisors.
The case also underscores the unique position Marine gunners, the Corps’ senior weapons experts, hold in the service. Only a handful of gunners are in uniform at any given time, and they tend to act as mavericks who can transcend levels of command and set their own tasking with more freedom than other officers.
A point of particular controversy came in November 2022, when LaRose accepted a position as a Marine Corps infantry officer at defense contractor ManTech, and showed up on base in his contractor role.
LaRose maintains that he was on terminal leave at this point, and had secured an opinion from the Marine Corps’ ethics office that cleared him to work for ManTech, though he had to avoid certain activities until out of uniform, such as working contracts for money and doing work for the contractor from his office in Quantico.
His charge sheet accuses him of engaging in outside employment “which conflicted with his official duties” and accepting compensation from the contractor “for making representations to the Marine Corps.”
His unauthorized absence charges say he was absent without permission from the CCLTF for all of September 2022, and from the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab from the end of May to the end of July 2023. But LaRose’s legal team maintains he was always working during these time periods, though it was not always clear to whom he was reporting.
“We demanded a bill of particulars from the government on some of the dereliction of duty charges and they went looking for his FitReps [to] determine what his duties should have been that he allegedly failed to perform,” Freeburg said in an interview. “But he hasn’t had a FitRep since 2019.”
The false official statement charges, meanwhile, have to do with statements LaRose is accused of making about his future plans, including that he was planning to go to the Wounded Warrior Regiment, a unit for convalescing Marines; that he had, in October 2022, been given a terminal leave date and a separation date; that he worked for ManTech as a teleworker; and that work for the Warfighting Lab did not represent a conflict of interest. The prosecution alleges all these statements were false.
Freeburg said the evidence to convict him just isn’t there.
“False official statement … requires a mental requirement of actually knowing that something is completely false, etc.,” he said. “And he’s had multiple [traumatic brain injuries], 100% VA rating for PTSD, all combat-related. And we intend to litigate all of that.”
Because of LaRose’s role and close interactions with top brass, multiple generals and senior leaders have been asked to give statements or testify in LaRose’s case, including former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger; Brig. Gen. Kyle Ellison, commander of the Warfighting Lab; retired Maj. Gen. Charles Gurganus; and Joe L’Etoile, commander of CCLTF until 2020.
While it’s not clear who initially complained about LaRose, he wonders if his outspoken support of the Corps’ controversial forward-looking strategy, Force Design 2030, including multiple published pieces at outlets like War on the Rocks, made him enemies within the service. He also admits that his aggressive way of approaching tasks has resulted in “hurt feelings” at various places he’s worked.
However, he maintains his record speaks for itself. In addition to two Bronze Stars earned earlier in his career, he received the Defense Superior Service Medal from CCLTF and the National Infantry Association’s St. Maurice award in the last two years.
“All of this while I’m under investigation,” he said.
For Freeburg, the move to deal with the accusations against LaRose at court-martial, rather via counseling or a non-judicial remedy, is inappropriate.
“It’s hard to understand,” Freeburg said, “why a [Chief Warrant Officer 05] who is essentially a war hero is being court-martialed for an AWOL and some ticky-tack charges on very thin evidence.”
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R.I.P. Donald. Thank you.
Donald McPherson, America’s Last World War II Ace Pilot, Dies at 103
Donald M. McPherson, the Nebraska farm boy who grew into a Navy fighter pilot and the last surviving American “ace” of World War II, has died at 103.
He passed on August 14 in Adams, Nebraska, closing a chapter in US history that spanned dogfights over the Pacific to decades of quiet service back home.
McPherson earned his place in the annals of aviation aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex (CV-9), flying F6F Hellcat fighters with Fighter Squadron 83.
By the war’s end, he had downed five enemy planes, a feat that gave him the coveted “ace” designation recognized by both the American Fighter Aces Association and the Fagen Fighters World War II Museum. His combat record brought him the Congressional Gold Medal and three Distinguished Flying Crosses, though he rarely spoke of the medals.
Two US Navy Grumman F6F-3 Hellcats in flight, circa 1943. (Wikimedia Commons)
One mission stayed with him. While patrolling over the , he spotted two Japanese aircraft skimming low across the water. Diving on the first, his guns tore the plane apart, sending it crashing into the sea. He swung his Hellcat into a wingover, throttled full power, and fired on the second until it exploded in midair. Only later did he realize just how close he had come—when a sailor pointed out a bullet hole in his plane, a foot behind his seat.
“Maybe God is not done with me,” McPherson later told his daughter.
For McPherson, survival carried responsibility. After the war, he returned to the family farm in Adams, married his wartime sweetheart Thelma, and redirected his energy toward faith, family, and community. He helped build local baseball and softball leagues, served as Scoutmaster, and held leadership roles in the Methodist church, the American Legion, and the VFW.
The town ballfield was renamed McPherson Field in honor of him and Thelma, who kept score and ran the concession stand.
Even in his later years, as museums and historians honored him as the last living US ace, McPherson preferred to be remembered not just for the skies he conquered but for the lives he touched at home. As his daughter put it: “His first thing would be that he’s a man of faith.”
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It took 4 years.
Trump6 signs proclamation honoring those killed at Abbey Gate
Trump signs proclamation honoring those killed at Abbey Gate
Story by Brett Samuels
News Nation
The Hill’s Headlines — August 25, 2025
President Trump on Monday signed a proclamation to mark the fourth anniversary of the bombing at Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service members during the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.
Trump met in the Oval Office with family members of some of the service members who were killed during the bombing, which the president used throughout the 2024 campaign to attack the Biden administration and accuse then-President Biden of showing a lack of compassion.
Florida AG asks Duffy to block drivers licenses for ‘aliens’
“There are some great souls that are looking down on you right now, and they’re very proud of their parents, and brothers, and sisters, and moms and dads especially. That’s what I seem to have dealt with mostly,” Trump said before signing the proclamation.
“And the media, I want to thank you because you’ve been very respectful of this group of people, and they deserve it,” Trump added. “They went through hell for no reason. It should have never happened.”
The proclamation itself calls out Biden by name multiple times and describes the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan as the “single most embarrassing display of American foreign policy in the history of our country.”
“As our Nation solemnly marks 4 years since the attack at Abbey Gate, we honor the memory of the 13 brave souls and every military service member to ever die in the line of duty — and we renew our resolve to protect American lives, defend American interests, and uphold American sovereignty,” the proclamation states.
Trump pushes to rename Department of Defense the ‘Department of War’
Trump and his campaign in 2024 repeatedly attacked Biden and Vice President Harris over the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the Abbey Gate bombing in particular.
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Longest-serving active-duty Marine to retire after 42 years
Longest-serving active duty Marine to retire after 42 years
Story by Drew F. Lawrence
When Lt. Col. Rhonda C. Martin was 19 years old, she unintentionally walked into a Marine recruiting office on her way to join the Peace Corps.
More than four decades later, she is the longest-serving active duty Marine, according to a service press release last week, and is set to celebrate her retirement at the end of the month.
She began her 42-year career as an administrative specialist, going on to serve as a drill instructor — though women were not allowed to don the iconic campaign cover at the time — before earning a commission as an officer in 1996.
She deployed multiple times, including in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, and throughout her career, she both witnessed and took part in the Corps’ institutional changes, especially as it slowly allowed women into more roles within the service.
A Marine Corps Dress Blues cover rests on a table scattered with photos and other memorabilia of Lt. Col. Rhonda C. Martin. Marine Corps photo by Shaehmus Sawyer.
“To say that I came in and saw so much progress for Marines, and especially female Marines, over my time … it hits me really hard,” Martin said, according to the press release.
She reflected on her experiences and some of those changes, having been in the Corps since women were first permitted to qualify with the M16A2 on the recruit rifle range in 1985, all the way through to the Defense Department decision to lift its ban on women serving in direct combat roles more than twenty years later.
“It’ll be tough, but I’ve had 42 years of doing what I love, and I’m leaving at a time when the Marine Corps is stronger than ever,” she said.
Multiple Marines lauded her leadership, knowledge and professionalism, noting that in her administrative role within the unit she was critical in keeping morale high and keeping a level head when a Marine helicopter crashed in Nepal in 2015, killing the pilots, crew and two combat cameramen on board.
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This is awesome, excellent for her!
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A WARRIORS WARRIOR.
George Hardy, decorated Tuskegee Airman who served in 3 wars, dies at 100
Lt. Col. George Hardy, one of the last surviving members of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, has died at age 100.
Hardy served in World War II as part of the unit of America’s first Black military pilots. At age 19, he became the youngest Red Tail fighter pilot to fly his first combat sortie over Europe, according to the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. National Office.
“His legacy is one of courage, resilience, tremendous skill and dogged perseverance against racism, prejudice and other evils,” the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. national office said in a statement Friday. “We are forever grateful for his sacrifice and will hold dear to his memory.”
Stationed at Ramitelli Air Field in Italy during WWII, Hardy completed 21 missions over Germany and occupied Europe in P-51 Mustang aircraft. His death leaves only 13 Documented Original Tuskegee Airmen alive today, the organization noted.
Hardy, who was born in Philadelphia in 1925 and was the second of seven children, was upstairs doing homework on Dec. 7, 1941, when he was interrupted with news of the Pearl Harbor attack, according to the National WWII Museum.
In 1944, he entered the U.S. Army Air Forces, trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. By early 1945, Hardy deployed to Italy with the African American 99th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group, the National WWII Museum noted.
Hardy’s service extended beyond World War II, flying 45 missions in the Korean War and 70 in the Vietnam War.
He later earned degrees at the Air Force Institute of Technology and helped develop the Department of Defense’s first global military telephone system before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1971, according to the National WWII Museum.
Following his retirement, Hardy became an advocate for keeping the Tuskegee Airmen’s story alive, speaking to students nationwide. The Tuskegee Airmen received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 and, in 2024, the National WWII Museum’s American Spirit Award.
“When I think about the fellas who flew before me and with me at Tuskegee, and the fact that we did prove that we could do anything that anyone else could do, and it’s paid off today … it’s hard to believe that I’m here receiving this award — with them,” Hardy said when accepting the American Spirit Award on behalf of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Original article source: George Hardy, decorated Tuskegee Airman who served in 3 wars, dies at 100
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The Price Of WAR.
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FREEDOM is NOT FREE!
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Freedom is being free.
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Merit-based advancement is key to military excellence
By Amber Smith
October 5, 2025 5:00 am
The decision by War Secretary Pete Hegseth to dissolve the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services is a clear statement about the direction our military must go if it is to remain strong, mission-ready, and effective.
His recent speech railing against wokeness and manufactured, ill-conceived standards in front of our military’s top brass demonstrates his drive to eliminate this pernicious ideology from our armed forces. The focus on merit-based standards is both a policy choice and a necessary shift to ensure that our armed forces remain the world’s finest fighting force.
For decades, this advisory committee has focused on ensuring women in the military receive the support they need, from appropriate healthcare to the provision of properly fitting body armor. These are valid concerns — no one disputes the necessity for all service members, male and female, to have the tools they need to succeed in the harshest of environments.
However, what the committee’s focus on gender-specific issues has too often overlooked is the importance of ensuring that every service member, regardless of gender, meets the same rigorous standards.
There is no question that women are a critical part of our military. I should know more than anyone. The contributions of women in uniform are invaluable, and their service should be recognized and supported. But the idea that we should base military policy and military readiness on gender alone is dangerous and divisive. The goal should be to recruit and retain men and women who are qualified, capable, and ready to serve, not simply to meet a gender quota.
In this context, I agree wholeheartedly with Hegseth’s move to eliminate the advisory committee. The focus must return to merit-based advancement, not gender-based policies. The committee’s work, although well intentioned, has too often become bogged down in policies that prioritize gender representation over operational readiness. The idea that women need special treatment to succeed in the military does not serve the long-term interests of our armed forces, and it undermines the merit-based culture that has made our military the most effective in the world.
To be clear, I am not advocating the elimination of support for women in the military. As a former combat helicopter pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand firsthand the challenges women face in a male-dominated military. However, those challenges should be addressed in a way that enhances the overall strength of the force. This is done not through separate standards but through policies that ensure all service members, regardless of gender, are held to the same high standards of physical and mental capability.
We have to return to the principle of merit, and we must ensure that military policies reflect that. Quotas do not advance excellence. They compromise it. Our military is a place where the best and the brightest should rise to the top based on their abilities, not their gender. That’s the only way we ensure we maintain a military that is ready to face the challenges of the modern world, whether that’s deterring our adversaries or defending our homeland.
We cannot afford to prioritize identity politics over military readiness. The dissolution of the advisory committee is a step in the right direction, but it’s just one step. The real work lies in ensuring that our military maintains a focus on merit, strength, and operational effectiveness at every level of the organization.
Let’s ensure that every woman and man who serves our country earns their place in the military based on merit, not special treatment.
Amber Smith, a military adviser for the Coalition for Military Excellence, is a former U.S. Army combat helicopter pilot and former deputy assistant to the secretary of defense.
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