Simulating Daily Shipboard Routine

Garland Davis

Every Monday morning completely disassemble and inspect the parts of your lawn mower.  Note that you have accomplished this by initialing the PMS Schedule posted on the back of the kitchen door.  If you initial that you had completed it when you didn’t do it, restrict yourself to the house for a month for “gun decking.”

Every six months disassemble, inspect, and verify all tolerances with the proper instruments. Reassemble your car engine using only a 12″ Crescent wrench, ball-peen hammer, and screwdriver.  In keeping with aviation tool control requirements, inventory the contents of your toolbox to ensure you did not leave a micrometer in the engine.

Develop a PQS program to qualify all member of your family to operate all the appliances in your home (example: Qualified Dishwasher Operator, Qualified Blender Technician, Qualified Toaster Operator, etc.).  These quals will also apply to their Enlisted Home Warfare Specialist (EHWS) Qualifications.  Conduct weekly classes where you teach family members the electrical and plumbing diagrams for your house.  These classes are best conducted after working hours.

Walk throughout your house and garage for four hours, check the tire pressure, oil level, and fuel level of your car every 15 minutes and keep an accurate log (record book) of the readings.

Invite your Grandfather over for Sunday Morning Brunch.  At 2200 (10 pm) the previous night make your family paint the entire interior of the house in the event the Admiral wants to take a quick look around. Don your Sunday best and stand on your front porch waiting for the Admiral (Grandfather).  Have Grandfather call, at the last minute, to say he can’t make it this morning.

Periodically run your household on an “eight on eight off” routine.  Work 8 hours at your normal day job.  Take care of your personal matters during the next 8 hours.  On the next 8 hours off, have an 18 wheeler from a grocery distributor pull up in front of your house.  Gather all your neighbors, form a human chain from the truck down to your basement (be sure to route it through the backyard to avoid “officer’s country”).  Pass the entire contents of the truck hand-to-hand down to the basement.  Turn your cap around and go on your regular work shift.  Repeat the process the next eight off shift, but this time unload a truckload of high explosives. The next shift run hoses and transfer the contents of your neighbor’s heating fuel tank to your tank.

Remove the contents of a walk-in closet and replace with three desks.  At the nearest Salvation Army Thrift Store salvage the oldest computer that you can find (make sure that at least two vowel keys stick) and set it on one of the desks.  Take three of your “closest” friends into the closet and shut the door.  Give everyone a five-page article to type and a 15-minute deadline.  As one is typing, have the other two talk, tell jokes, and hit each other.  As you type the last page, have someone unplug the computer (do not save the document).  Attempt to retype the paper with people yelling, “Hurry up.”  Repeat five times a day.

With the help of your two six-year old nephews and a partial 1976 manual, replace the starter in your 1987 car, working only from the top. Have your father-in-law remind you every 3 minutes that you have 15 minutes to finish because the car is needed for the next mission (trip).

Stand by the phone on the mid-watch (12 A.M. to 4 A.M.) with a log book, fire bell, and intrusion alarm panel within reach. Mount a gauge on the wall to read your house’s water pressure. Have your youngest child walk around with a tape measure to see if your house is flooding. He/she must check each room every hour and report back to you that all conditions are normal.  With each report, phone a neighbor and tell him all conditions are normal at your house and report the water pressure. Have your child wake up your spouse (watch relief) a half hour before the end of your watch, so he/she is sure to be 15 minutes late relieving you. This ensures that you will get two solid hours of sleep before you face another day.

To simulate flight operations walk outside your house, preferably in dreary weather, and direct traffic on the street for 8 hours. If a break in traffic flow permits you a short rest, go in the house but don’t get into your bed – lie down in the hallway.

To simulate working in the pit install humidifiers throughout your house.  Fill humidifiers with a half and half mixture of water and 90 weight gear oil.  Remove the muffler from your lawn mower and bring it into the house.  Run humidifiers and lawn mower constantly.

Disconnect your TV cable box and stare at the snow static for six hours.  Report every 15 minutes to no one in particular, “Sonar holds no contacts.”  Do not fall asleep.  The following 6 hours disassemble your TV and rebuild using VCR operating instructions.  Touch a live circuit thereby shocking you.  Report back to watch and receive extra military instruction to hold safety training on the topic, “Why it is dangerous to be electrocuted.”

Go to a local bridge, stare at the water for twelve straight hours.

To simulate rough weather operations go to an amusement park, fill your stomach with coffee and funnel cake then ride a roller coaster non-stop.

Pick a six month period when your work and home life are at their busiest, get your neighbor to phone you at 2330 (11:30 pm), dress in the dark, and hang a brick on a string around your neck and stare at the backyard from your patio. Identify the whereabouts of all bats, crickets, moths and stray dogs by sound and sight, keep a written record of everything you see, and choke down at least one cup of four-day-old coffee (preferably black) every thirty minutes. Anytime a critter enters the yard, call your wife on the cell phone to apprise her of its movements. On snowy or foggy nights be sure to blow an air horn at regular intervals to warn the neighbors of your whereabouts.

Sit in front of your kitchen stove for six hours. Look at nothing but the stove. Maintain a log (record book) of the position of all the knobs. Have your kid randomly report to the kitchen “conditions normal” in the house. Have him randomly ask permission to turn on various appliances in the house. Grant him authorization to start half of them, and have him immediately report the condition of the each appliance.

Wash and wax all the cars on your block once a week in the rain to simulate washing aircraft.  Have a 10-year-old neighbor kid QA (Quality check) the work and tell you all the places you missed.

Have your father-in-law (Squadron Maintenance Officer) set 20 unachievable goals on Monday morning with the promise that if they are achieved there will be liberty for the whole family on Sunday.  Have the entire family work 18 hour days for the whole week while your father-in-law goes golfing.  Achieve all the goals. Upon his return Saturday night have him announce one of the following on a rotating basis, Due to operational commitments: (1)The duty section (1/3 of the family) will have to work Sunday, or (2) Liberty is canceled.  Do this for a couple of years and then reward your father-in-law with a promotion and a medal for superior operational readiness.

Purchase a beat up 30-year-old car (aircraft).  Keep the following schedule to the letter and with accurate records of everything.  Have three highly qualified people inspect the car before driving (preflight), then have 16 year old who just got his license and knows nothing about cars inspect it again. Have him drive the car as if it were a rented Corvette with full coverage insurance (flight ops).  When he returns have him tell you everything his one month of vast experience tells him is wrong, using vague phrases.  Have three people inspect it (Post-flight/Daily inspection) and the next morning even though the car has not moved have three people re-inspect it and repeat twice a day.  Every third day replace the alternator before driving.  Every 7, 14, 28 and 56 days, take one section apart and reassemble and every 128 days take entire car apart and reassemble.

3.20 When talking to your wife drop every third word in your sentence to simulate ship to shore voice communications.

A Day to Remember

By: Garland Davis

Shortly afternoon, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.

Everyone who was old enough to remember can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. It happened at 12:30 PM CST November 22nd.  It is one of two lifetime events that I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when I was told its circumstances.  The other was the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11.  The country went into shock on that day fifty-three years ago.  Schools closed.  Some companies shut down for a few days.  The United States and the world were stunned.

I was half a world away.  It was 1:30 AM on the morning of November 23rd in the Western Pacific.  I was serving in USS Vesuvius, an ammunition replenishment ship, anchored in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines.  At 3:00 AM, the crew was awakened and the Commanding Officer made an announcement over the ship’s announcing system.  He told us that the president had been killed and as a precautionary measure, the fleet would sortie at first light.  The warships would go first and Vesuvius, the oiler USS Cacapon and the stores ship Pollux would follow once the fighting ships had cleared the bay.

At the time, no one knew the circumstances of the assassination.  There was speculation that the Soviets may have been involved in reprisal for the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The fleet went to sea expecting Soviet Submarines to be waiting.  I stood on deck and watched the warships leave.  I counted 18 cruisers and destroyers.  I can assure you that they went to sea locked and loaded.  As soon as we cleared port, the destroyers were lining up to top off their magazines from us and their fuel tanks from the tanker.

Later that day, one of the carriers that had been inbound for Subic Bay, came alongside to top off her stocks of five hundred pound bombs.

We stayed on alert for a week or two and then settled back into routine operations.

A day to remember.

The Battle of Hampton Roads

Garland Davis

Ask anyone to choose a ship of the Civil War Union Navy and a ship of the Confederate Navy; they will undoubtedly name USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack (CSS Virginia).

Both Union and Confederate sailors lined railings and climbed ratlines, watching, scowling and cheering like a crowd at a heavyweight bout. A short distance away, in the cold waters of Hampton Roads, Va., two ironclad warships battled for the title of the mightiest ship afloat. Bathed in clouds of white sulfuric gun smoke, the contenders slammed away at point-blank range like armored knights dueling with sledgehammers. The winner would dominate naval warfare into the next century.

The showdown on March 9, 1862, between the CSS Virginia—a rebuilt federal frigate that never shook her original name, Merrimack and the USS Monitor created widespread attention on both sides of the Mason-Dixon. The Union and Confederate governments, desperate for a morale boost, spun the tactical draw into a strategic victory. Harper’s Weekly thrilled its readers with an action-packed cover story on the battle; Currier & Ives issued three different lithograph versions of the “Terrific Combat”; and the New York Times ran 17 articles on the battle and its participants over the next three days.

The Monitor and Merrimack were not the first iron-hulled steamers of a major national navy to see combat. That distinction belongs to the Mexican sloop-of-war Guadalupe,  driven off the Yucatán coast by the aggressive Texas Navy in 1843. During the Crimean War a decade later, three French ironclads reduced a weak Russian land battery at Kinburn, and stories embellishing the French navy’s performance spurred the construction of iron-plated steam frigates in Europe.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Union anchorages were crammed with wooden warships already obsolete. Unable to compete with the U.S. Navy on statistical terms, the South saw the opportunity to seize a technological edge that would negate the North’s advantage in timber and guns.

The Merrimack was built out of necessity. Although in April 1861 her Union masters burned the wooden steamer to the waterline during the evacuation of Virginia’s Gosport Navy Yard, the Merrimack’s hull, boilers, and screw propellers remained salvageable, saving the Confederacy precious time and cash. Confederate Naval Secretary Stephen Mallory backed “the fuming, dimly understood, deeply resented machinery” of steam power and teamed with John Mercer Brooke, a gunnery expert, to sheathe the Merrimack in 4 inches of iron plate and fit her out with oak-smashing firepower. By March 1862, the Merrimack was transformed into an iron-plated frigate with guns heavy enough to send any wooden opponent to the bottom.

On the Potomac’s northern shore, the job of stopping the Rebel threat fell to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. Sporting a bushy white beard that prompted President Lincoln to dub him “Old Father Neptune,” Welles looked the part of a hidebound bureaucrat from the Age of Sail. But Welles was no traditionalist. Under orders to blockade 3,500 miles of Rebel-held coastline, Welles aimed to build an ironclad to match the Southern ship and approved an all-metal design by an irascible Swedish inventor named John Ericsson.

Tacking through headwinds of naval doubters and government red tape, Ericsson built the USS Monitor, an unorthodox two-gun steamer with a round, flat turret dubbed the “cheesebox” by incredulous sailors. Ericsson’s design was so radical that his contract contained a unique provision stating that the ironclads validity could only be tested in battle and if the fight went against the ship, the backers would lose not just their final 25 percent payment, but also have to pay back every dollar the government had spent on it

As the Merrimack weighed anchor, the Monitor, the Union’s answer, remained at dockside, an untested experiment whose crew stood a fair chance of dying by drowning, scalding or carbon-monoxide poisoning before reaching the enemy. Without the Monitor, Lincoln’s Atlantic Blockading Squadron was, little better prepared for its enemy’s arrival than another American fleet would be on December 7, 1941.

The Merrimack reached full steam on March 8, 1862, when the 10-gun oddity wreaked havoc on the Union blockading force at Hampton Roads. During the afternoon, she rammed and sank the 24-gun Cumberland and sent the 52-gun frigate Congress to a fiery death. She then turned her large-caliber attention to the stranded 44-gun Minnesota until an ebbing tide and dusk ended the day’s carnage.

At the end of the day, the Union had suffered a terrible defeat at Hampton Roads. Lincoln’s high command was dumbfounded to learn that the naval secretary’s answer to the Rebel behemoth was a two-gun iron box. Lincoln, wrote Welles, was driven to distraction by the specter of the Merrimack returning to finish off his squadron. Gen. George McClellan, “who rarely underestimated a threat,” talked about changing his war strategy, while Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Secretary of State William Seward scouted spots on the Potomac where the dreaded Merrimack might appear to shell the nation’s capital.

That night, the Monitor chugged into Hampton Roads to incredulous looks from the sailors that the little cheesebox was ordered to save. “Was this pathetic metal pie plate the famous Ericsson ram?” Mr. Snow has the Minnesota’s captain wondering. “Was this what the mighty industries of the North had so tardily sent to counter the titan that had cut its killing path through a Union fleet a few hours earlier?” One sailor called the Monitor “but a speck on the dark blue sea at night, almost a laughable object by day.”

But the Merrimack’s crewmen weren’t laughing when the Monitor’s two 11-inch guns wheeled on them the next morning. Thinking they would only fight wooden ships, the Merrimack’s officers had sailed without the armor-piercing solid shot, and the Confederate titan reeled under the pounding of the Monitor’s guns. “You can see surprise on a ship just as you can on a human being,” remembered the Monitor’s quartermaster. “There was surprise all over the Merrimac.”

The design philosophy behind both warships was that you did not need to “drench an enemy in shellfire, but merely to stand up to whatever is thrown at you while delivering a few decisive blows. For three hours, the two ships blasted each other at close range, but neither delivered a coup de grace. Both withdrew, but the Union blockade held. The North would build more Monitors, while the dry-docked Merrimack, threatened by McClellan’s advancing troops, was destroyed by her owners two months later.

The three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, marks the birth of the Modern Navy.

The chorus of a country song appeals to the Asia Sailor/Liberty Hound in me.

The Power of Positive Drinking

Chris Jansen

I believe in the power of positive drinking,

Beer one tastes just like a beer,

Beer two little bit better than one,

Beer three…Beer four…Yeah that was pretty damn good

So hand me one more,

Beer Five and I’m coming alive,

Beer Six…Man it went down quick,

Seven, Eight, Nine I’m feeling fine,

And about number ten Life’s good again.

A passage from “John Brown’s Body”

By: Stephen Vincent Benet

The sinking of the world’s old sea-bitten names,

Temeraire, Victory, and Constellation,

Serapis, Bon Homme Richard, Golden Hind,

Galleys of Antony, galleys of Carthage,

Galleons with gilded Virgins, galleasses,

Viking long-serpents, siren-haunted galliots,

Argos and argosies and the Achaean pride,

Moving to sea in one long wooden wall

Behind the huge ghost-flagship of the Ark

In such a swelling cloud of phantom-sail

They whitened Ocean–going down by the head,

Green water seeping through the battened ports,

Spreading along the scrubbed and famous decks,

Going down—going down—going down—to Mermaid-pools,

To fiddlers Green—to the dim barnacle thrones,

Where Davy Jones drinks everlasting rum

With the sea-horses of his sunken dreams.

Chief Petty Officers – The Backbone of the Navy
Stole this one off the net.

This is how you tell if you are in the presence of a “real” Chief:

The Chief is not afraid of the dark; the dark is afraid of the Chief.

The Chief once visited The Virgin Islands. They are now simply called “The Islands”.

Superman owns a pair of Chief pajamas.

The Chief has never paid taxes. He just sends in a blank form and includes a picture of himself.

If the Chief is late, then time had damned well better slow down.

The Chief actually died four years ago, but the Grim Reaper can’t get up the courage to tell him.

The Chief can divide by zero.

The Chief has counted to infinity … twice!

If the Chief ever calls your house, be in!

The Chief doesn’t leave messages; he leaves warnings. You had better pay attention to them.

The Chief can slam a revolving door.

The Chief was sending an email one day, when he realized it would be faster to run over with it.

When the Incredible Hulk gets mad, he becomes the Chief.

When the Chief exercises, the machines gets stronger.

Bullets dodge the Chief. If not, he catches them in his teeth.

Chiefs think Ensigns should be seen and not heard, and should not be allowed to read books on leadership.

Chiefs do not have any civilian clothes. As civilians, they keep their uniforms forever.

The Chief’s favorite national holiday is CPO Initiation.

The Chief’s favorite food for breakfast is SOS.

Chiefs don’t know how to tell civilian time.

Chiefs only dream in Navy blue, gold, white, haze gray and khaki.

Chiefs have served in ships that are now war memorials or tourist attractions.

Chiefs get tears in their eyes when the Chief dies in the movie “Operation Pacific.”

Chiefs have pictures of ships in their wallets.

Chiefs do not own any pens that are not inscribed “Property of U.S. Government.”

Chief’s favorite quote is from the movie Ben Hur: “We keep you alive to serve this ship.”

A Chief’s last ship (or duty station) is always best.

Chiefs know that the black tar in their coffee cup makes the coffee taste better.

A Chief’s idea of heaven: Three good PO1’s and a Division Officer, all of whom do what they’re told.

Chiefs believe John Wayne would have made a good Chief, if he hadn’t gone soft and made Marine movies.

‘Rules for a Gunfight’

by Drill Sergeant Joe B. Frick.

They are simple, straightforward, sometimes funny, and always true.

1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap – life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap – funerals are expensive
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a semi or full-automatic long gun and a friend with a long gun.
7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running. Yell “Fire!” Why “Fire”? Cops will come with the Fire Department, sirens often scare off the bad guys, or at least cause then to lose concentration and will and who is going to summon help if you yell “Intruder,” “Glock” or “Winchester?”
9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on “pucker factor” than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
11. Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. Have a plan.
13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won’t work. “No battle plan ever survives 10 seconds past the first contact with an enemy.”
14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible, but remember, sheetrock walls and the like stop nothing but your pulse when bullets tear through them.
15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
16. Don’t drop your guard.
17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees. Practice reloading one-handed and off-hand shooting. That’s how you live if hit in your “good” side.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. Smiles, frowns, and other facial expressions don’t (In God we trust. Everyone else keep your hands where I can see them.)
19. Decide NOW to always be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.
22. Be courteous to everyone, overly friendly to no one.
23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with anything smaller than “4”.
25. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. “All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket.” At a practice session, throw you gun into the mud, then make sure it still works. You can clean it later.
26. Practice shooting in the dark, with someone shouting at you, when out of breath, etc.
27. Regardless of whether justified of not, you will feel sad about killing another human being. It is better to be sad than to be room temperature.
28. The only thing you EVER say afterward is, “He said he was going to kill me. I believed him. I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m very upset now. I can’t say anything more. Please speak with my attorney.”

Finally, Drill Sergeant Frick’s Rules For Un-armed Combat.

1: Never be unarmed.
2: If you have your hands, your feet, your mind and your Spirit as an American Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine or Coastie, you are never unarmed.

Mogadishu

Edited by Garland Davis

As told by Mark Bowen

The photo featured above was taken during this liberty!

It was early in the year 1982.  The ship arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia after one hundred eight days at sea.  The beach area bars seemed to be the best liberty to available.  The required liberty uniform was whites.  The cost for beer was approximately $3US. But we didn’t care.  After all, we were sailors and one hundred eight days is a hell of a long dry spell.  Several hookers were hanging around the bars.  Some Hash was being smoked along with the beer.

The ship was moving supplies to the embassy as the Ambassador was hosting a party at his residence for the crew.  There were buses to the beach area and for the transportation back to the ship.  All members of the Liberty party were required to return to the ship at 1800 for transportation to the Ambassador’s home.

Once we reached the beach bars and slaked our immediate thirst, my LPO and I rented a couple of cuties early in the day.  They took us to a park area in the desert.  I guess you could call it an oasis.  There were trees, shrubs with pits dug between them. The bottom of each was covered with a woven mat.  In the beginning, it was a scary experience, especially during the ride since we weren’t sure where they were taking us.  But it all turned out okay.  My LPO and I had adjoining pits.  It was fun, and hilarious see a naked girl hanging from a tree and some of the other shit we did during the hours we were at the Mogadishu Fuck Park.

By the time we returned to the bar, everyone had returned to the ship.  It was 1800.  We decided to have a couple of beers and go directly to the Ambassadors.  We took some beer and the girls along with us.

The taxi we hired pulled into the Ambassador’s compound and, as fate would have it, stopped directly in front of our CO and the Ambassador.  We figured the turd had hit the proverbial fan.  We were not supposed to use the local taxis, and since the girls were wearing our white hats, we were wearing their scarves.  We could see the Skipper clouding up as we stepped from the taxi just as the Ambassador says, “Captain, I am happy to see that some of your crew are interacting with the locals.”

We traded the scarves for our hats and sent the girls back to the bar in the taxi.  Nothing was ever said about our using the taxis and uniform infractions.  “Liberty Larry” Blumburg was a pretty cool skipper.

As the party wrapped up, we took cases of the beer the ship had provided for the party back aboard the bus and continued the party on the pier until the wee hours of the morning.  Needless to say, there was no beer left.

Veterans Day

Garland Davis

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrows,
We gave our today

This famous epitaph by John Maxwell Edmonds speaks of those who did not return.  It also applies to those of us who did come home.  We gave up the comfort and luxuries of that home to those who didn’t serve.

Today is the holiday we celebrate as Veterans Day. It originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938.

Veterans Day is often confused with Memorial Day, a common misunderstanding. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Memorial Day (the fourth Monday in May) honors American service members who died in service to their country or because of injuries incurred during battle, while Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans, living or dead, but especially gives thanks to living veterans who served their country honorably during war or peacetime.

I was ten years old in 1954 and remember when President Eisenhower officially changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. In 1968, the Uniform Holidays Bill was passed by Congress, which moved the celebration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. The law went into effect in 1971, but in 1975 President Ford returned Veterans Day to November 11, due to the important historical significance of the date.

Britain, France, Australia and Canada also commemorate the veterans of World Wars I and II on or near November 11th: Canada has Remembrance Day, while Britain has Remembrance Sunday (the second Sunday of November). In Europe, Britain and the Commonwealth countries it is common to observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. every November 11.

The brave men and women who serve and protect the U.S. come from all walks of life; they are parents, children, and grandparents. They are friends, neighbors and coworkers, and an important part of their communities. Here are some facts about the current veteran population of the United States.

There are approximately 23.2 million military veterans in the United States.

• 2 million veterans are over the age of 65.
• 9 million veterans are under the age of 35.
• 8 million veterans are women.
• 8 million veterans served during the Vietnam War era (1964-1975), which represents 33% of all living veterans.
• 2 million veterans served during the Gulf War (representing service from Aug. 2, 1990, to present).
• 6 million veterans served during World War II (1941-1945).
• 8 million veterans served during the Korean War (1950-1953).
• 6 million veterans served in peacetime.
• As of 2008, 2.9 million veterans received compensation for service-connected disabilities.
• Five states have more than 1 million veterans in among their population: California (2.1 million), Florida (1.7 million), Texas (1.7 million), New York (1 million) and Pennsylvania (1 million).
• The VA health care system had 54 hospitals in 1930, since then it has expanded to include 171 medical centers; more than 350 outpatient, community, and outreach clinics; 126 nursing home care units; and 35 live-in care facilities for injured or disabled vets.

Marine Corps Birthday

Garland Davis

November 10th is the two hundred forty-first birthday of the United States Marine Corps.  I wish my brothers and sisters in the Corps a happy and safe birthday.

The Marines’ Hymn

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country’s battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marine

Our flag’s unfurled to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun;
We have fought in every clime and place
Where we could take a gun;
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic scenes,
You will find us always on the job
The United States Marines.

Here’s health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve;
In many a strife we’ve fought for life
And never lost our nerve.
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines.