Free Republic

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller‘s Mirror blog reported that Alaskan Republican Rep. Don Young was clowning around on the House floor during the naming of a post office. He stuck his fingers in his ears and made funny faces, much like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble on The Flintstones. Post office namings, as you might imagine, are not terribly exciting legislative moments in Washington. But this one actually meant something. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) sponsored the bill to honor a fallen solder.

A funeral service with a special graveside ceremony is scheduled Saturday afternoon to honor Walter Ehlers, a Medal of Honor recipient from World War II. Ehlers single-handedly took out enemy gun nests during the D-day invasion and drew fire to himself to save other soldiers. He died Feb. 19 at 92 of kidney failure. He will be buried at Riverside National Cemetery with full military honors at 1 p.m., said Jim Ruester, spokesman for the cemetery. Seating has been set up for 500 people. The Army's 1st Infantry Division will send a three-star general and 32 soldiers from Kansas to...

With a heavy heart I report that MarkBsnr has gone to his reward. He was learned, intelligent, devout, and a good friend. Please pray for the repose of his soul and for all who mourn at his passing.

THE Victoria Cross has been awarded posthumously to Australian commando Corporal Cameron Baird, killed in Afghanistan in June 2013, Tony Abbott has announced. The Prime Minister told parliament that Corporal Baird, of the Special Operations Task Group, was the 100th Australian recipient of the highest military honour for bravery in wartime. He was the 40th - and last - Australian to die in Afghanistan. He is the fourth Australian VC from the conflict. Mr Abbott said the Tasmanian-born Corporal Baird, 32, was already an iconic figure in the army, and had also received the Medal of Gallantry. He was being...

Written to his mom while he was flying P-40s in Italy. She found it in the chest of his belongings when it was returned to her after his death.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A member of an elite Army helicopter unit was killed and two crew members suffered injuries when their aircraft slammed into the ground as they tried to land at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, a military spokesman said Thursday. The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was returning from a routine training flight when it made a "hard landing" just before 11:30 p.m. Wednesday on or near the airstrip at the base in coastal Georgia, said Army Maj. Allen Hill, a spokesman for the crew's aviation unit. The three-man crew was assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation...

Matthew R. Rodriguez died while conducting combat operations FAIRHAVEN, Mass. —A 19-year-old Marine from Fairhaven has been killed in Afghanistan. Lance Cpl. Matthew R. Rodriguez died Wednesday while conducting combat operations in Helmand Province, the Department of Defense announced. He was assigned to 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif Rodriguez's father, Roland Rodriguez, told the Standard-Times of New Bedford the family is headed for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware where his son's body is expected Saturday. He said declined to make extensive comments, but said his son "made a lot of...

RICHMOND, VA. – A group working to preserve a New York military cemetery from the Revolutionary War says it has identified 15 soldiers from Virginia believed to be buried there. The Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot has pored over old muster rolls, military correspondence, private letters, physicians’ journals and other documents to identify soldiers buried in unmarked graves on privately owned land in New York’s Hudson Valley. So far, they’ve been able to identify 84 listed in the records as having died at Fishkill. The group announced the new identifications on Monday, including the soldiers from Virginia who died...

The four Marines killed Wednesday while clearing unexploded ordnance at Camp Pendleton were bomb removal technicians. The four were killed around 11 a.m. during a routine sweep to make a range safer for future training exercises at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, said a Marine official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. There was no live firing on the range at the time.

4 Marines reported killed in "Range Maintenance Operation" at Camp Pendleton. Accident happened around 11AM Pacific.

I find Remembrance Sunday sadder each year. It’s partly that I’m becoming sentimental – I find it increasingly difficult to recite any poetry without a catch in my voice – but it’s mainly that the fallen are now closer in age to my children than to me. When I was a small boy, I was, as small boys are, uncomplicatedly pro-war. At around eleven or twelve, I started to read the First World War poets, but I was still mainly attracted by the heroic element in their writing: their endurance in monstrous circumstances. Later, as a teenager, I began to...

Delta Flight 2255 from Atlanta to Los Angeles seemed to be an ordinary flight with the exception of Candy, who was the most loving flight attendant I’ve ever encountered. Besides using her Southern charm to quickly defuse every situation, she began her welcome announcement by thanking the handful of uniformed soldiers on-board for serving our country. Her poignant message was followed by applause, and it put into perspective that none of us would be able to do what we do without these brave men and women.

The Pentagon acknowledges that patriotic "arrival ceremonies" for US war dead recovered from Vietnam, Korea and Second World War battlefields do not involve newly returned remains of the missing By Philip Sherwell, New York4:38PM BST 12 Oct 2013 The Pentagon has for years staged emotional but phony "arrivals ceremonies" for missing American war dead when tearful families and veterans were led to believe flag-draped cases on cargo planes contained the remains of service personnel returned home that day. The defence department has now acknowledged that the ceremonies did not involve newly-repatriated victims from foreign battlefields and that the planes involved...

The International Security Assistance Force did not identify the nationalities but the four were Americans killed by a bomb in the early hours of Sunday, U.S. defense officials said. Also in southern Afghanistan, a security guard shot a soldier dead in a separate incident, Reuters reported. It wasn't clear what nationalities of the guard and the soldier were.

Runner Michael Bowen has finished running over 58,000 miles- one for every US vet who lost his life during the Vietnam War. Bowen, 65 living in Michigan has been running since 1982 despite suffering from colon cancer and having three surgeries on his knees.

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan says three of its troops were killed Saturday when a man wearing an Afghan security forces uniform shot them. Afghan officials confirmed the incident, saying the attack took place in the eastern province of Paktia. So-called "insider attacks," when Afghan forces turn their guns on their foreign partners, have killed large numbers of foreign soldiers in Afghanistan.

Family and friends gathered Saturday to say their final goodbyes to a Staten Island staff sergeant who died in Afghanistan. NY1's Bree Driscoll filed the following report.As the American flag-draped casket carrying the body of 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Michael Ollis was carried down New Dorp Lane Saturday morning, friends and family said their final goodbyes to the fallen hero. "It's really a remarkable thing, what he did for his country and what he did for us and the sacrifice that he did, not only giving up his life, but over the years of his service," said friend Bolivar Flores. Neighborhood...

'I believe someone on their side definitely made a deal with somebody on our side' More than two years after President Obama reassured the father of a member of SEAL Team 6 that the government would look into the death of his son, the father is still waiting for a response, and his suspicions are growing. On Aug. 9, 2011, Taliban forces were waiting for a Chinook helicopter carrying members of the elite unit SEAL Team 6 to approach its landing site. The helicopter was attacked from three sides in a coordinated ambush.

Congress has launched an investigation of the helicopter crash that killed 30 Americans in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 unit, The Hill has learned. [WATCH VIDEO] The victims’ families say the Pentagon hasn’t provided answers to their many questions about the deadly attack, which took place on Aug. 6, 2011, three months after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Team 6 forces. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, told The Hill, “We’re going to dive into this.” Chaffetz said he met with the...

The dive that claimed the lives of two members of an elite Navy team wasn't the only thing that went wrong that February day at Aberdeen Proving Ground's Super Pond, witnesses testified during a military hearing Wednesday. First, the underwater breathing units that the team took to Aberdeen failed, forcing the divers to change equipment. Then, the first two men into the water had to cut their dive short when the line that tethered them to their boat tangled. That was when Diver 1st Class James Reyher and Diver 2nd Class Ryan Harris took their fatal plunge. The standby diver...