Posted on 05/06/2022 11:34:26 AM PDT by Cathi
I set the unofficial record from K-Town to Spangdahlem, before the autobahn was completed to the Eifel. 90 miles in 55 minutes, 110 MPH on the autobahn, up to 80 MPH on the back roads to the front gate at Spangdahlem.
I have seen it before and it hurt back then. Today it is insulting. I made my first jump on my 18th birthday... after 6 wks BCT and then Infantry AIT for IIC, plus three weeks of Zero’s - had I not had three Zero weeks at Ft Benning, I would have been a paratrooper at 17. Next off to the 82d, and a joyride that lasted 20 years. In 74 my unit in the 82d was about 45% vets from the 1968/69 TED offensive deployments - a band of brother of sorts back then. They took care of us young-ins. They raised us in the school of hard knocks and we knew life was not fair. We also knew our Country with the exception of democrats cared about us. Even the democrats in our midst knew their political fold hated the military back then - yet the DNC had until Obama praded around like some sort of caring and compasionate side of the political spectrum which today the entire see’s was BS all these years.
Today, a few miles north of my home outside Ft Bragg, the soldiers are under GAG orders. They are afraid to talk in groups of two or three, but get one alone and by God they wail like the Army has died. They are afraid of each other in today’s 82d Abn Div. Lloyd Austin was Battalion Commander in the 82d and I worked with his wife in ACAP after I retired - they were not woke back then, but he had not been to DC or given DNC spots as a board member on a major defense industry company board. Today he comes off as both a racist and a jackass.
None of us saw this coming...
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