Free Republic

LANCASTER [CA] - The football team at Desert Christian High School rose as one Friday morning, standing at attention to celebrate a Marine alum's return from Iraq and to honor another Desert Christian graduate, an Army soldier killed in action on Easter Sunday. "What is a Knight?" the team shouted in unison. "I am my brother's keeper! I am a warrior! I am a champion!" Each student-athlete was signaling respect, rejoicing and mourning. Rejoicing at the safe return of a former teammate, Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick Lee, who received 50 "care packages" from students at his alma mater while stationed...

LANCASTER [CA] - The Army showed up to present a medal for Jerral Hancock. For the millions of soldiers who have earned the Good Conduct Medal - the one sometimes humorously referred to as the "I Didn't Get Caught" ribbon - it may not be such a big deal. But considering that Hancock, 21, was there to receive it at all, it's a pretty big deal. Two Army representatives - noncommissioned officers - drove out to the east Lancaster mobile home park where Army Spc. Hancock resides with his wife, Rachel; his little boy, Julius; and his infant daughter, Anastasia....

How do we make tangible demonstrations of support for our troops? The question was posed recently at Palmdale Barnes & Noble when author and fighting Marine David Danelo turned out to talk about his book, "Bloodstripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq." Danelo was at the dais with Marine Jason Howell, a Highland High School grad now in the Sheriff's Department, who fought the hot war in Anbar Province in 2004. We have an opportunity at the Antelope Valley Fair, which signals the peak of the summer season leading to Labor Day. "Postcard to the Troops" involves stationing...

LITTLEROCK - On the eve of the holiday that honors all who wear the uniform honorably, Littlerock High School students stood up and cheered veterans of all services and wars as if they were rock stars. Vets from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan marched or ambled into the Lobo gym, walking beneath a decorative archway of red, white and blue balloons. After passing beneath the balloons, they walked out onto the gym floor beneath the raised sabers of the school's Junior ROTC cadets. Older veterans wore forage caps of the...

LANCASTER - Flying as crew chief in a CH-53E Super Stallion at 12,000 feet in the mountains of Afghanistan is like riding "the scariest roller coaster at Magic Mountain," only the ride lasts hours instead of minutes. With a laugh, that's how Staff Sgt. Kingslee Gourrick described his job to fairgoers who turned out to participate in the Real-time Heroes forum sponsored by the Valley Press. Gourrick and Sgt. Timothy Reed accepted the invitation to attend the fair and speak a bit about their work as crew chiefs on the Super Stallion, the "biggest helicopter in the free world." The...

LANCASTER - Antelope Valley residents who support the troops and are interested in the work that is being done in Iraq and Afghanistan can meet with the military during the Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival. Among those joining in will be spouses and families of soldiers who served in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Veterans of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom will appear at the fair with Valley Press Editor Dennis Anderson. "It's an interview format, with the public invited," Anderson said. "We will be talking to veterans about their service, and the experiences they...

PALMDALE - In a U-2 flight emergency, Louis Setter's first clue that something was wrong was a sound "something like a small bomb going off." That sound signaled a "flame-out." That would be somewhere above 50,000 feet when the J-57 engine flamed out. In its early days of the Cold War 1950s, the U-2 recorded hundreds of flame-outs - an engine quitting in an oxygen-deprived atmosphere. The flame-out was something like a pilot light going out in your home heating system, but this was the engine quitting more than 10 miles high. "It would take any tiny excuse to quit...

LANCASTER - The joint-Lancaster-Palmdale "Salute to Troops" event scheduled for July 10 at JetHawks Stadium will include a visit by the commanding general of a storied California National Guard division and a star of the Iraq war, an M-1A Abrams battle tank. National Guard troops from Lancaster, Palmdale, and all across the Antelope Valley have served in Iraq. A Marine Corps Reserve helicopter squadron from Edwards Air Force Base is serving in Iraq now, and the other Marine Reserve helicopter unit based at Edwards served in Afghanistan last year. The Lancaster-based National Guard 756th Transportation Co. is back in Iraq,...

LANCASTER - At Lancaster Cemetery, William Dawson Stephens was showing off his new Marine Corps dress blue uniform and his new "high and tight" haircut. Last year, a huge turnout showed up at Stephens' church to observe his 80th birthday. On this Memorial Day, he was celebrating the arrival of his "dress blues," a uniform he somehow had never managed to acquire during his service on Guadalcanal and in the Korean War. "It only took 63 years to get here," he joked. Then he removed his ceremonial white "cover," the Marine Corps dress cap, and showed how he'd been to...

LANCASTER - It was an American flag, faded, dirt-stained and frayed, ready really for respectful destruction. But it was a special flag, distinguished enough that someone just couldn't let it go. A Boy Scout who fought with the Marines in Iraq brought the flag home. The flag flew during the battle of Fallujah, and later, it whipped in the wind above Baghdad International Airport, formerly Saddam International Airport. The Boy-Scout-turned-Marine, who requested anonymity, wondered if the flag might be used for some future good purpose. To raise funds for Scouting, maybe? And perhaps to serve as a piece of woven...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA said Tuesday it will institute strict crowd control for space shuttle launches and landings, and rely more on a seldom-used touchdown site in New Mexico, to better protect the public once flights resume in a few months. Columbia's breakup during re-entry forced a re-evaluation of the space agency's public safety policy. More than 85,000 pounds of debris rained down on Texas and Louisiana as Columbia headed toward its Cape Canaveral landing strip in February 2003. No one was injured by the falling pieces. "Philosophically, what we're trying to do … is to ensure that whatever...

LOS ANGELES - Tommy Franks, the Army general who ran the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, and the architect of the invasion of Iraq, wants people to vote their heart Tuesday. With election results in, then, "Let's go kill terrorists." Franks took the stage this week with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and both gave an audience of thousands an earful on their experiences alongside President George W. Bush, and their opinions about the war on terror. Into the weekend, both men were on the stump for Bush in battleground states such as Ohio. But in Southern California,...

PASO ROBLES - In classic mythology and the histories of the Greek warriors, the fighters were told to come home with their shields, or on them. For the 1498th Transportation Company of the California National Guard, the ceremonies that honored them through the weekend celebrated the merciful fact that these soldiers - many of them from the Antelope Valley - came home with their shields. The unit's more than 250 soldiers all survived a year in Iraq, and many of them, men, women, young soldiers and old soldiers, served with distinction. The unit had three Vietnam veterans in its ranks,...

MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE - Two million miles of bad road. The distance of 80 trips around the earth in the sun-drenched, bomb-laden back country of Iraq, And they all came back. The yellow ribbons fluttered in a light breeze. Clusters of red, white and blue balloons floated into the air above the flightline. And the troops arrived home from a year's duty in the desert on a chartered jet aptly named Champion Air. From the Antelope Valley, from Riverside and Sacramento and from four points of a statewide compass, the 220 hometown troops of the California National Guard returned...

CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait - The combat support truckers drawn from companies in the Antelope Valley, Riverside and Sacramento have made more than two trips around the moon while in Iraq, and they want to return to their home planet soon. They are making preparations to return, even as the bloodiest fighting in a year has shut down traffic on Iraq's main supply routes and thousands of U.S. troops are being tabbed for extensions "in theater" of unknown duration. In the period of nearly a year since deployment from Camp Roberts in California for the hot combat zones of Operation Iraqi...

CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait - Practically everyone in the 1498th Transportation Company of the California National Guard has a story to tell about Fallujah - most of them scary. This is a story written in the eye of the storm. It is written after the opening rounds of the Marine Corps assault on barbaric insurgents inside Iraq's toughest town. By the time this story reaches print, the second stage of the battle may already have opened, or have been decided in the city of 300,000. It was during the early stages of this siege, in the fighting around Fallujah and nearby...

To the mother, the grandmother, even a couple of the menfolk, the verdict was unanimous: "They're just babies!" But while it might seem so to look at them, and while it might seem so to a mother's heart, the dozen or so young men gathered around the barbecue were anything but babies. They'd taken wounded. They'd seen death and dealt it out. They had carried the burden of men in war. The banner hanging above the garage announced their return from Iraq. "Welcome Home 1-4": This welcome home message was crafted for Marines, infantry grunts of the 1st Marine Division,...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Capt. Matthew R. Hook, commander of the 1498th Transportation Company, a National Guard unit in which many Antelope Valley soldiers find themselves serving in Iraq, sent this letter to his sister Marianne, a veteran of Desert Storm. We elected to run this at length because of the unique nature of the experience and the high interest shown by Valley Press readers about their local troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thought you might like to hear that I'm safe and sound after my trip into Iraq. I know that you may have heard about interesting things happening here, and...