Posted on 04/08/2025 1:48:51 PM PDT by DFG
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he intends to partially reopen the “Jungle School,” where up to 9,000 troops a year trained in jungle warfare from the 1950s to 1999 in the former Panama Canal Zone. Secretary Hegseth made the announcement to U.S. troops in Panama amid an ongoing trip to the Central American country, where he will attend the Central American Security Conference (CENTSEC).
Thanking the troops for their service, Hegseth said, “We will have your back; President Trump has asked me to share that with all the groups of troops I talk to,” stressing the importance of the military’s “warrior ethos” to the administration and its determination to rebuild the military.
“I should never put you in a fair fight. My job is to put you in a fight where you are overwhelming… First of all, hopefully, deterring the enemy, [but] if it comes to conflict, overwhelmingly closing with and destroying the enemy,” said Hegseth, himself a decorated former infantry officer.
The Defense Secretary is joined on his Panama trip by Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, providing exclusive coverage and commentary to Pulse+ members as the trip unfolds.
The Panama Canal Zone was under U.S. sovereignty in perpetuity until its surrender to Panama in 1979 under the late Democratic President Jimmy Carter. The canal was largely American-built and funded, and incumbent President Donald J. Trump has expressed a desire to regain control over it, lamenting its handover as one of his predecessors’ worst-ever deals.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenationalpulse.com ...
Inching up our presence there.
A message to China. Also a fig leaf to Panama.
Troops and a stabilizing influence. Plus money.
Be good practice for killing Venezuelan commies.
Really a shame that all of our bases and housing have been converted to civilian housing and shopping malls...our quarters on Albrook AFS overlooked the Miraflores Locks.
Colonel, USAF JAGC (Ret)
A patch I wanted and a school that I tried to get to.
Line up for your Yellow Fever shots, boys.
"The Western Hemisphere is our turf, from Greenland to Cape Horn".
LOL, I got that one back in the Sixties when my dad got orders to go overseas and he took the family with him.
And Cholera. And Bubonic Plague.
Cholera was the worst, IIRC.
A continous flow from Fort Bragg and the 82nd Abn Division
Ft. Sherman! Chagres river, black palm, howler monkeys, coatimundis, and fer de lances.
Great diving off the coast!
Memories....
Lethality
Kobe beach sand fleas.I had those things for years afterwards
I still have scars on my palm from slipping on the rocks at Kobbe beach and being sliced by the barnacles. CSC 3/5th IN 78-81.
Ew. I didn’t have to get the cholera one. For some reason the injectable Typhoid vaccine had given me horrible projectile vomiting within minutes, followed by a few days of shaking chills when I had to get it back in elementary school. So many years later when I had to get it for SE Asia, they gave me the capsules and I had no reaction at all.
I was a civvie and felt sorry for the .military guys who had to take all those shots, including cholera, plague and even rabies.
But then ... they never quite figured out whether I had Rat Bite Fever or good old fashioned bubonic plague there at the field hospital, but it was awful, much worse than the resistant falciparum malaria I had recovered from. A huge lump under my armpit the size of a baseball — no kidding, and super painful hugely swollen spleen. I was one sick girl. But whichever it was, they said the cure was the same: eat more doxy.
Ah, the “Scare Badges”! IIRC, The specialty schools all the cool kids (circa mid-80’s) chased after were the Jungle School, Northern Warfare school, Ranger School, Airborne/Air Assault School and Pathfinder.
All, except NW had a patch or badge one could adorn his uniform with. For me, the holy grail of Scare Badge awards was the Canadian Airborne school: its jump wings had a red maple leaf on the face. It was one of the few foreign badges authorized for wear on the BDU. I came close, but the moons never lined up close enough to get there.
Good memories, cheers!
Before my brother went to Vietnam in 1966, he was sent to Hawaii for jungle training. He was stationed at Schofield Barracks having been assigned to the newly re-activated 25th Infantry Division. He’d previously been stationed in Alaska.
What was the beach with the rusty shark fence?
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