Major Jaimie E. Leonard was killed in combat in Sharana, Afghanistan. The Major died from small arms fire. Leonard was thirty-nine years old and is survived by five brothers and sisters. She was a graduate of West Point Military Academy in 1997. Leonard has seen action in Bosinia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
She was killed by an Afghanistan soldier she was training.
The native New Yorker graduated from Warwick Valley High School in the Hudson Valley.
This past week was the 69th anniversary of the invasion of France - D-Day. Over 12,000 allied soldiers were killed in the battle that was the beginning of the end of World War II. BusinessInsider.com has some wonderful examples of photojournalism from that day.
Spc. Kyle P. Stoecki of Moseley, Virginia was killed in combat in Afghanistan. He is unit was attacked by an improvised explosive device. The twenty-one year single soldier was a graduate of Cosby High School in Midlothian, Virginia. He was very close to his sister. This was his first major deployment to Afghanistan. Below is Spc Kyle Stoecki being returned home to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
The Battle of Midway in June, 1942 took place just seven months after the attack of Pearl Harbor. If Americans had not won this battle, the West Coast of the United States could have been very vulnerable. While the Japanese hoped to catch the Americans by surprise, it was the Americans who created a trap. It was a costly victory for America but one of the most important in turning the tide against the Japanese attack on our nation.
This is a 1942 propaganda film created by the famous director John Ford to tell the story of the Battle of Midway to the American people. It has been digitally restored by Zenos Warbird Videos.
Captain Reid K. Nishizuka was killed in late April in Kandahar, Afghanistan in a crash of his MC-12 aircraft.
The Captain was thirty years old and openly gay.
He graduated from Kailua High School in the 2000 and studied aerospace engineering at Notre Dame University. Since joining the military near eight years ago, he has had five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Several months ago he was deployed again to that nation.
Captain Reid was engaged to be married to his partner Xavier Winters(see below). In a statement, his fiance said:
Together for over 7 years, Reid and Xavier were engaged summer of 2012 and were planning to marry in Washington after Reid returned from deployment.
Xavier said, "I just want everyone to know that Reid and I made each other very happy, and that if he could say anything now, it would be 'my life was complete.'" Xavier wants to make sure other military partners/spouses simply "don't delay joy. Enjoy every moment together because life is way too short."
My best childhood friend from grammar school through high school was Russell Garrison. He lived across the field from my home and lived on a dairy farm. We used to hang out as kids and remained friends through high school. He was drafted and shortly after arriving in Vietnam, he was killed. He was 22 years old. Near 55,000 young soldiers died in the Vietnam War which is ten times more than have died in both Iraq and Afghanistan together. So many who died in Vietnam was forgotten and I want the world to know Russell today.
One more Memorial Day and one more summer is upon us. The two go hand in hand. The holidayy is the starting line for people to head to their summer homes, their first weekend at the beach or the mountains and to have lost that weight so you can cram yourself into that speedo or bikini.
It is the day that gay men started three months ago at the gym preparing for the summer so those six packs glisten in the summer sun. They strut along the beaches proud of their success and if they are especially 'gifted' they walk naked to show off all their assets!
When I was growing up we all went as a family to place flowers on the graves of grandparents, sons, daughters and fathers and mothers. Now, most of my friends are cremated and no longer is that pilgrimage made by survivors of loved ones.
Few anymore go to cemeteries to pay respect to the dead in their families. Hardly anyone tunes to television to watch the President lay the wreath at Arlington. The tens of thousands of headstones that cover the hillsides of that sacred ground receive on this day a single American flag so the fallen warriors are not forgotten. They didn't make the policies that called them to war but all answered the call of their nation.
Americans simply don't know the history of Memorial Day.
In fact, the first known observance was by African-Americans in South Carolina after the war.
Wikipedia describes that very first Memorial Day:
The first well-known observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Charleston Race Course; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves.Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, "Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly ten thousand people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers, and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is used as Hampton Park. Years later, the celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration Day" in the North.
David W. Blight described the day:
"This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”
The first official Memorial Day didn't occur until 1868:
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states.
The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee
So as you tuck yourself just perfectly into that speedo and you celebrate tomorrow being the beginning of summer. Take just a minute and remember those who came before you. Don't forget the fallen warriors. Don't forget the tens of thousands who died of AIDS. Don't forget those that made it possible for you to walk along that beach.
They deserve to be remembered.
Pfc. Cody Towse was killed at the age of twenty-one by an improvised device in Sanjaray, Afghanistan. He died while attempting to save one of his fellow soldiers. As the Army medic rushed to help the wounded a second blast went off and took his young life. He had previously received a 'medic ribbon' for saving another life.
Towse was fulfilling a lifelong dream of being a military medic. He graduated from Salem High School and love the music of the Beatles and Johnny Cash. Towse was an avid reader. He is survived by his parents and two brothers and a sister.
NBC News is reporting on a little covered story and that is the long time epidemic of sexual assaults on men. Estimates are that near 14,000 men have been sexually assaulted which comes to 38 men per day. However, because of the stigma, humiliation and disbelief by superiors, very few of them are reported by the victims.
There is still the belief by many that men can't be sexually assaulted or victims of domestic violence. It is a huge myth. Often gay soldiers are the victims of sexual assault by straights looking for a quick 'outlet'. The same horrendous excuses directed to females victims are also applied to male victims. Such as, 'he really wanted it'.
Journalist Bill Briggs reports:
“As a culture, we’ve somewhat moved past the idea that a female wanted this trauma to occur, but we haven’t moved past that for male survivors,” said Brian Lewis, a rape survivor who served in the Navy. “In a lot of areas of the military, men are still viewed as having wanted it or of being homosexual. That’s not correct at all. It’s a crime of power and control.
“But also, you’re instantly viewed as a liar and a troublemaker (when a man reports a sex crime), and there’s the notion that you have abandoned your shipmates, that you took a crap all over your shipmates, that you misconstrued their horseplay,” he added.
Lewis, who was raped by a male superior officer aboard a Navy ship in 2000, spoke Thursday at a press conference introducing a bill that seeks to strip serious sex assaults from the military’s chain of command. At that event, he said: “Too often male survivors are ignored and marginalized.”
“The biggest reasons men don’t come forward (with sex assault reports) are the fear of retaliation (from fellow troops), the fear of being viewed in a weaker light, and the fact there are very few, if any, services for male survivors,” Lewis told NBC News.
All sexual assault response coordinators within the military are instructed to provide “gender-responsive, culturally competent and recovery-oriented” resources, said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
“Based on that guidance, each of the services customizes its training and implementation specific to their service,” Smith said. DOD offers a 24/7 “safe helpline” providing anonymous victim support, and its staffers “have been trained to assist male victims.”
Still, the Defense Department acknowledges it must do more to help male victims.
“A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared towards male survivors and will include (learning) why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need,” Smith said.
The Pentagon “has reached out to organizations supporting male survivors for assistance and information to help inform our way ahead,” she added.
“I applaud that stand on behalf of male survivors,” Lewis said. “However, I would be interested in hearing what organizations they are partnering with considering there are none especially geared for male survivors of military sexual trauma.”
Princess Diana would have been so proud of her son Prince Harry as he made his way across America this week. The Prince was especially moving as he visited the wounded warriors at Walter Reed Hospital and then at the 'Wounded Warrior' games in Colorado this weekend.
As someone who has served in Afghanistan, the Prince seems to have a special empathy for these service members who were badly injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like his mother, Prince Harry reminds us of those who we need to remember.
Here is Prince Harry at Walter Reed and at the games.
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