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| Royal Navy submarine suffers £500,000 damage after 'hitting ice' via |
Open wound + flies = party!Its a good read!
So you know things aren't going to be fun on your shift:
A) When the radio call report is "infected leg, with maggots".B) When said patient arrives with the leg involved wrapped in a plastic trash bag to the thigh.C) When the paramedics are taking hits off their SCBA breathers.D) When the patient is assigned to your zone.E) When, as part of the meet-and-greet, you have to remove the bag to visualize the situation.F) When the funk miasa coming off the leg would knock a buzzard off a pile of guts, and you haven't even gotten the socks and pants off yet.G) When you finally get to the base layer, and are greeted by a menagerie of several tens of thousands of little brown rice grains, all doing the entomological version of "The Wave", in a pile an inch thick. Bless their hungry little hearts.H) All of the above.
Obama was asked about the United States' tense relations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He clarified he understood the concerns expressed by Israel, and was committed to ensuring Israel's military advantage in the region. "I am willing to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighborhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state that we would stand by them," Obama stated.The statement is obvious, but in the whole time that we've seen the feud between the Israeli Prime Minister and Obama, we've never heard him verbalize this truth before.
"What you might hear from Prime Minister Netanyahu, which I respect, is the notion: 'Israel is more vulnerable, we don’t have the luxury of testing these propositions the way you do'. I completely understand Israel's belief that given the tragic history of the Jewish people, they can't be depended solely on us for their own security."
I am pretty excited, and so is the commandant of the Marine Corps," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said of the seabasing concept during a round-table discussion with Military Times in late March. "This is why I feel really good about Marine Corps/Navy integration. We are going to have an exercise with the JHSV with an MLP and with an ARG, to work out their concept of ship-to-shore, and the connector's piece in the future. We are going to get a really good look at that."Read it here.
Rotklein said the exercise will be schedule-driven, rather than scenario-based, although details of what would take place during the exercise were still being developed.
AS the United States pivots to Asia and the Pacific, the Northern Marianas will be the fulcrum of this strategy with the establishment of the live-fire ranges and training areas on Tinian and Pagan, as hinted by the newly released draft environmental impact statement.Read the story here.
With the U.S. bent on rebalancing its forces and asserting its presence as a Pacific power, it needs to fill its training gaps in Western Pacific with most deficiencies found here; hence, the proposed establishment of unit-level live-fire ranges and training areas on Tinian and the combined level for Pagan.
Swarming kids are no goddamn joke, man. So - true story. And yes it's relevant.
In the U.S. Marines, doing a mock war in the Norwegian city of Trondheim with the Dutch, Germans and other allies, training in urban combat. My infantry unit was positioned in a large soccer field next to an elementary school. Keep in mind there was no actual combat, even simulated; it was mostly just practicing maneuvers and tactics. But we still looked out of place with weapons and gear, etc. It's fucking February. In Norway. Cold as balls. Snow up to our knees. Norway obviously has no snow days, so the kids were all in school.
Anyway, so Norway has this most delicious and amazing delicacy, I have no idea what it's called, but it's basically a bacon-wrapped hot dog; we just assumed it was called Candy of the Lord. As Americans we were naturally and instantly addicted. You find them at gas stations, and there just happened to be one on the other side of the school where we were camped. A few of my fellow Marines and I requested permission to go to the gas station and we set out on our way.
We made it to right about where the main entrance of the school was, and the doors opened; school was out. There were only a few kids, probably 6 or 7 years old. Lots of talking and laughing. Gawking at us as we walked by, with our guns and huge ridiculous snow suits. One precocious little bugger made shooting noises at us. We made shooting noises back.
And then someone in my group. I don't know who. God help me I don't know who...
Someone threw a snowball and hit a little girl in the leg.
And those little Norwegian children unleashed hell.
There was a shrill cry in unintelligible Norseman and the doors to the school burst open. School children flooded out like a never-ending flood of something that never ends. Screeching, smiling, sprinting - how the fuck were theysprinting?? - little bastards were slinging snowballs faster than the laws of physics should allow. It was like that movie Elf. If you can imagine riding in a fast car in a snowstorm and sticking your head out the window. Now imagine the snowflakes that are hitting your face are the size of snowballs. We couldn't fucking see. We couldn't run. We could barely breathe. Holy fuck....
We tried to return fire and threw one, maybe two half-packed, shitty snowballs that fell apart in the air, arms flailing like drunk octopi. I am from Texas. We were a unit stationed in North Carolina. We were so outmatched and out of our element, it only made them laugh harder. We were cutoff from our main forces. We tried to perform a flanking maneuver but fuck me they were fast. I think some of them were throwing rocks!
My comrades. I could see them speed waddling in their huge suits back to camp like a fucked up pair of white Teletubbies, under withering fire. Fuck tactics, fuck me, fuck the Candy of the Lord, this was survival! I was the slow one in the group. My snowboots were too big but they were the smallest size they had at Issue goddammit!! My Marines left me behind.
I tried pulling my hood over my head and keeping my head down. No longer content to pelt my defenseless body with ballistic snow, the enemy swarmed me and dragged me down, cackling like a pack of hyenas descending on a wildebeest. I tried to sling them off by spinning. I came out of one of my boots and fell. I began to scream and plead for them to stop but they neither understood nor gave a single Nordic fuck. They literally pinned me down with about five kids on each limb. It was then that I actually thought - oh shit. I'm really in trouble. My snow-mittens were ripped off and flung into trees. They started shoving snow down my suit. Have you ever had anyone drop an ice cube down your shirt?
Well now imagine someone shoveling handfuls of ice cubes down your shirt. It literally shocked the breath out of my body.
They left me laying like a Family Guy accident victim. Moaning and screaming in the cold. Rifle packed with snow and dirt. Boot buried some-fucking-where. They ran away laughing, jabbering in their crazy language. I lay there trying to figure out just what in the great American fuck had happened.
