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The bravest among the brave, some soldiers stand head and shoulders above the rest for war exploits that will make your jaw drop. For example, Audie Murphy’s actions in World War II that won him a Medal of Honor:
Murphy’s unit was down to 19 men out of 128. They couldn’t fight, they needed to rearm, and they needed somebody to hold the line. So Murphy stayed behind, shooting Germans until he ran out of ammo. Then, deciding he wasn’t done killing Germans, he jumped onto a burning tank and starting using its .50 caliber machine gun. He even killed an entire squad of Germans trying to sneak up on him. Oh, and he did this for almost an hour, while wounded in the leg. And then his men showed up, and Murphy led them on a forward action. Translation: after spending an hour in the freezing cold on a burning tank spraying Germans with machine gun fire, he decided that wasn’t enough and decided to get close and personal.
And he is just one of ten soldiers from all over the world listed as the most badass. Link -via Unique Daily
You know them, you love them, but you might not know the complete background stories of your favorite science fiction authors, actors, and producers. John Farrier looked deep and saw that many of them were actual heroes, serving their countries in time of war. You know about Kurt Vonnegut’s war experience, as he wrote about it in Slaughterhouse Five, but others never mentioned their military stints. Find out about five of them at NeatoGeek. Link
Here’s an interesting and surprising list of celebrities who were leathernecks, including Bozo the Clown, Pat Robertson, and even Captain Kangaroo!
Prior to being Clarabell the Clown on The Howdy Doody Show and then the kindly Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan was a trained killer. An urban legend claiming that he fought alongside actor Lee Marvin on Iwo Jima is false. Keeshan never saw combat because the war was over by the time he was of enlistment age (Lee Marvin was indeed a leatherneck who was wounded during the Battle of Saipan, but was not at Iwo Jima).
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Wired has a roundup of eleven of the strangest military programs you can imagine. Man made northern lights? Psychics? Nuclear weapons launched from a backpack? They’re all here, including the plan to use bats in warfare.
Toward the end of World War II, the Air Force was looking for a better way to burn Japanese cities to the ground. A dental surgeon contacted the White House, and suggested strapping small incendiary devices to bats, loading them into cages shaped like bombshells and dropping them over a wide area.
According to the plan, millions of bats would escape from the bombshells as they parachuted toward earth, and the flying mammals would find their way into the attics of barns and factories, where they would rest until the charges they were carrying exploded. In the early 1940s, a test with some armed bats went awry, and they set fire to a small Air Force base in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The bats eventually had a successful test, although the bats themselves wouldn’t consider it so. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Flickr user Furryscaly)
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.
For more than a century, “Taps” has been the bugle call to mark the day’s end and evening rest in the U.S. military. Its soothing 24 notes have comforted many when played as a final farewell to a former soldier laid to rest. Given its long history, it’s not surprising that it is the subject of many legends.
By the Civil War, bugle calls existed for all types of commands-from “Time to get up!” to “Wear your overcoat today!” or “If you’re sick, now’s the time for sick call!” But it was during the Civil War’s Peninsula Campaign in July 1862 that “Taps” became the bugle call command to extinguish all lights and fires and prepare for sleep. Historians agree on when and where “Taps” was first played, but there’s more than one version of the story surrounding its origin and composer. (Image credit: Flickr user yark64)
One popular story says that the man who first ordered “Taps” played was Union Captain Robert Ellicombe. While encamped with the Army of the Potomac at Harrison’s Landing, Virginia, Ellicombe risked enemy fire to rescue a wounded soldier. When the captain lit a lantern, he realized that the young man was dead, and a Confederate soldier, but even more shocking-the young man was his own son. Inside the soldier’s pocket was a musical score. Ellicombe requested that a bugler play his son’s composition at the burial, and that was when the Army of the Potomac first heard the somber music of “Taps”.
The country’s foremost authority on the tune as well as the former curator of Arlington National Cemetery’s “Taps” Bugle Exhibit, Jari A. Villanueva, researched the story and found no record of any Captain Ellicombe in the Union Army or at Harrison’s Landing. What Villanueva did find was an episode of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not television show where the tragic tale of a Union father and a Confederate son first aired.
The true history of the birth of “Taps” was told by bugler Oliver Norton in an 1898 letter he wrote in response to a Century Magazine article that claimed the origin of the tune was unknown. Norton explained that he knew how “Taps” originated because he’d been the first to play it.
According to Norton, one July evening he was called to the tent of Major General Daniel Adam Butterfield, the chief of staff for the Army of the Potomac. Encamped at Harrison’s Landing, recovering from a defeat at the hands of General Robert E. Lee’s army, Butterfield’s exhausted and wounded soldiers suffered from heat, mosquitos, dysentery, and typhoid. The standard bugle call for lights-out had a harsh military cadence, and Butterfield thought a more soothing bugle call might help his men rest. (Image credit: Civil War Librarian)
The general handed Norton an envelope with musical notes written on the back and asked the bugler to play them. The bugler lengthened some notes and shortened others until the sound was melodious and slow enough to suit Butterfield, who ordered the melody played every evening at the final bugle call. Century’s editors wrote to Butterfield, who confirmed the incident.
General Butterfield didn’t actually compose the tune, sometimes called “Butterfield’s Lullaby”, but had simply revised an early French version of the “Scott Tattoo”. (A tattoo was a bugle call used to order soldiers to leave a tavern and return to their quarters for the night.) The name “Taps” probably came from an obsolete drum roll command called “Taptoe” that ordered tavern keepers to turn off their keg spigots at the end of an evening.
From the first night he played it, Norton knew that “Taps” would be a hit. In his letter to the magazine he wrote, “The music was beautiful on that still summer night, and was heard far beyond the limits of our Brigade. The next day I was visited by several buglers from neighboring Brigades, asking for copies of the music, which I gladly furnished.”
“Taps” wasn’t just a Union favorite. Confederates heard the tune in their nearby camps and liked it so much that by 1863 the Confederate army’s mounted artillery drill manual contained the order that “‘Taps’ will be blown at 9:00 at which time all officers will be in quarters.”
(Image credit: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley, from the Flickr stream of Beverly & Pack)
“Taps” was first used for military funeral services out of necessity. In 1862 Captain John Tidball presided over the burial of one of his fallen men. Tradition ordered that three rifle volleys would be fired at the ceremony, but Tidball’s troops were hidden in the woods, and he feared that any nearby enemy would hear the gunshots, figure out their location, and then attack them in the belief that there was a resumption of hostilities. To substitute for the rifle volley, the captain ordered the bugler to sound “Taps”.
Playing “Taps” became an unofficial custom at Union army funerals. The rebels also played the call to honor fallen soldiers-most notably at the 1863 funeral of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson after his death by friendly fire in the Battle of Chancellorsville.
After the Civil War, “Taps” became an official bugle call of the U.S. Army, and by 1891 an official order in the U.S. Army Infantry Drill Regulations made the bugle call mandatory at formal military funerals and memorial ceremonies.
Possibly the most memorable rendition of “Taps” was played on November 25th, 1963, at the funeral of President John F. Kennedy. A World War II veteran, Kennedy was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. At the ceremony, the command for present arms was given, and the traditional three volleys were fired. Then Sergeant Keith Clark of the U.S. Army Band played “Taps”-not on a bugle but on a B-flat trumpet.
Clark had played the call perfectly hundreds of times at hundreds of ceremonies. In fact, he’d played it in President Kennedy’s presence only two weeks earlier at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Veteran’s Day. But this time, as he played, he “cracked” the sixth note so that it sounded shortened and off-key. Clark admitted that nervousness was the cause, but the media immediately assumed that the cracked note was intentional, and they found it especially poignant.
Newsweek described the broken note as “a tear”. William manchester, author of Death of a President, described it as a “cactch in your voice or a swiftly stifled sob.” For about two weeks following the presidential burial, other Arlington buglers missed that same sixth note.
__________
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
Almost every aspect of war spawns new words, and, over time, many of them slip into everyday use. Sometimes, they even become downright peaceful in the process. For instance, triumph used to mean a victory ceremony for Roman conquerers, and skedaddle signified retreat during the Civil War. And if you’ve ever had a snafu (“Situation Normal: All F’ed Up”), then you owe a debt to the WWI soldiers who invented the acronym to describe the trenches. With each passing conflict, the list of pacified war words gets longer and longer.
undermine: If your colleagues constantly undermine you, just be glad they aren’t doing so in the traditional sense. Undermine, a word that dates back to the 14th century, was once a military term for digging a clandestine passage under a building to sneak up on the enemy. The term quickly turned metaphorical, but in Shakespeare’s day, its literal meaning was still commonly known. He even playe with it in All’s Well That Ends Well , when the maiden Helena asks a soldier if there’s a way to safeguard her virginity. He replies, “There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.”
fleabag: Starting in the 1830s, a fleabag was a soldier’s bed. Although the word fleabag now seems wedded to hotel, it can be applied more broadly, as in the 1958 example for the Oxford English Dictionary, “God, how I hated Paris! Paris was one big flea-bag.”
basket case: Today, a basket case is simply a neurotic person, but during WWII, it meant a living soldier who had lost all his limbs and was brought home in a basket. The United States military denies that real baskets were ever used to carry soldiers. Regardless, the original meaning of the word is still gruesome.
(Image credit: Flickr user drakegoodman)
flak:Celebrities catch a lot of flak for idiotic behavior, but contemporary flak isn’t what it used to be. When the term originated in the 1930s, it was short for fliegerabwehrkanone, the German word for anti-aircraft guns. After a generation, the meaning shifted so that catching flak now means absorbing criticism instead of cannonfire.
gung ho: You may be gung ho about collecting stamps, playing solitaire, or other individual pursuits, but originally the term was more applicable to teams. The U.S. Marines first used it a as a slogan during World War II, after general Evans Carlson adapted the Chinese kung ho, which means “work in harmony”. While the teamwork element of the definition has faded, the enthusiasm bit has certainly remained.
fobbit, hillbilly armor, and IED: The war in Iraq is contributing its own expressions. A popular word on the rise is fobbit, a term that combines FOB (forward operating base) with hobbit. The word is a derogatory term for soldiers who stay too close to base and help themselves to three square meals a day. Another expression gaining steam is hillbilly armor, a term for scraps used to bulletproof vehicles.
Some words have already entered civilian life. IEDS, or improvised explosive devices, refer to the homemade bombs created by terrorists and insurgents. A recent GQ article about inappropriate office-party behavior uses it like this: “The workplace minefield is hard enough to negotiate without planting your own IEDs.” So, what are the chances any of these new words will stick around? Who knows? The only thing that’s certain is that as long as there are new wars, new words will crop up, too.
___________________________
How Violence Increases Our Vocabulary was written by Mark Peters. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) were volunteers who learned to fly during World War II to supplement the US military, which was suffering from a shortage of pilots.
A few more than 1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, flew almost every type of military aircraft — including the B-26 and B-29 bombers — as part of the WASP program. They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting — with live ammunition. The WASP expected to become part of the military during their service. Instead, the program was canceled after just two years.
They weren’t granted military status until the 1970s. And now, 65 years after their service, they will receive the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. Congress. Last July, President Obama signed a bill awarding the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal. The ceremony will take place on Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Fewer than 300 WASPs are still alive to receive the honor today. Read the story of the program and a few of the pilots at NPR. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Texas Woman’s University)
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll about the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy asked the same question in two different ways and got significantly different answers.
The results highlight the importance of wording on the issue. In a test, half of the poll’s respondents were asked their opinion on permitting “gay men and lesbians” to serve, and the other half were asked about permitting “homosexuals” to serve.
The wording of the question proved to make a difference. Seven in 10 respondents said they favor allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve in the military, including nearly 6 in 10 who said they should be allowed to serve openly. But support was somewhat lower among those who were asked about allowing “homosexuals” to serve, with 59 percent in favor, including 44 percent who support allowing them to serve openly.
The poll was taken by telephone and included responses from 1,084 adults. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Flickr user splorp)
One of the most glorious sites in France is the Les Invalides, a complex of buildings featuring a hospital, museum, and mausoleum where the spirits of soldiers and the turbulent past of France make this site a memorable experience.
The Église St. Louis des Invalides was the grand initiative of Bruant and his successor Mansart. On display within the walls of this masterpiece are the many flags captured by the French army. Soon after, Louis XIV constructed the Eglise du Dome, built in the vision of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. A section was cleared from the north of the central building to the River Seine and the Pont Alexandre III. It was here that the most recognizable and influential leaders of the military were laid to rest, including Napoleon Bonaparte.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
Can you distinguish whether a name belongs to a cat litter brand or an actual military operation? That’s the challenge in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I didn’t know any of the answers, because they all sounded like military operations to me, but I managed to score 70%. Link
Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum was ordered to Iraq in July. His four-year-old daughter Paige had a hard time letting go, so much that she held onto his hand in formation. No one, including the commanding officer, had the heart to pull her away. The picture of the incident, taken by Paige’s mother, has gone viral and touched people all over the country. Link -via Buzzfeed
(image credit: Abby Bennethum)
Slate has an interesting piece up on the current state of that Marine Corps Army indoctrinator, the fearsome drill instructor sergeant. I have it on good authority from my nephew, who is currently serving valiantly, that there’s definite truth to this article about Teresa King, one of the first female D.I.’s currently making sure the recruits are “squared away.” It started with 9/11.
In the period after 9/11, the Army was losing about 10 percent of its volunteer recruits during boot camp, a number that was way too high, especially given the Army’s trouble meeting recruitment quotas and the growing demand for troops first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. To help keep people in basic training, drill sergeants reined in the verbal abuse and began providing more mentorship.
If a recruit is acting petulant, the drill sergeant may ask him what’s wrong—or ask his friends. He’ll give tips for how to get along with peers in close quarters, how to get by on an Army paycheck, and how to handle homesickness.
So, is this a step in the right direction for the military, or a laming down of the troops?
It takes a true friend to wear a dress to a funeral -if you’re a man. Barry Delaney of Dundee, Scotland wore a lime green minidress to the funeral of a soldier killed in Afghanistan to fulfill a pact the two had made.
Private Kevin Elliott and his friend, Barry Delaney, had agreed that whoever survived the other should wear a dress to the dead man’s funeral. Mr Delaney duly fulfilled the pledge as a tribute to Private Elliott, who was killed aged 24 while on foot patrol in the southern province of Helmand on August 31.
Mr Delaney wept on his knees at the graveside in Dundee as shots were fired during the military funeral. His dress plans are believed to have been known about in advance by other mourners.
Elliot, who had fulfilled his hitch and could have left the army, decided instead to fight in Afghanistan at the last minute. Hundreds turned out for the funeral. Link -via Fark
A well-insulated 20,000 square foot home complete with an airstrip and a Jacuzzi sounds really nice. This one is underground in an abandoned missile silo! It was once the home of an Atlas-F missile built for the Cold War, but it’s been converted into a luxury home. See seven such military installations now used as living spaces. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
In an update on the story about the new military robot in development that refuels itself by consuming biomass, Robot Technologies and Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. issued a press release denying that its robot would consume human bodies. Wired published the release, which says in part:
RTI’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.
The Battle of Little Bighorn happened 133 years ago today. George Custer and his men were certainly outnumbered, but their defeat may have also been assured by the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors’ superior weaponry.
If the Indians were, in fact, better armed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer may have contributed to the situation by declining to include Gatling guns in his van. Because he was setting off on what amounted to a search-and-destroy mission, he argued that the Gatlings were too cumbersome and would only slow him down.
At the point where he was surrounded and outnumbered by a ratio as high as 9-to-1, he probably regretted making that choice. In such a dire situation, the Gatling gun would have considerably reduced the enemy’s numerical advantage and may have even proven decisive in turning the tide.
The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors did join the battle with a number of Henry and Spencer repeating rifles, which provided a higher rate of fire than the single-shot Springfield Model 1873 carbines carried by the cavalry troopers.
In the end, several factors led to the deaths of the 197 men under Custer, each stemming from his underestimation of his adversaries. Link
“My hobby deals strictly with World War II militaria & insignia.
However, rather than collecting the actual items, I collect and use high resolution photos of them to create Photoshop images that show myself in the uniform of a Captain (or equivalent rank) in whichever armed force and branch of service those insignia were worn by.
Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: Richard Mosse)
Robert Ballard, the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic, has just revealed that the expedition was actually a cover story for the US Navy about two lost nuclear submarines:
The Navy was not interested in the Titanic. … I mean, they funded the technology because it had so many military applications. And I was a naval intelligence officer for 30 years, and so I did a lot of missions for the Navy. Many remain classified, my best stuff. Rats …
Yes, the Titanic was a cover for a series of military operations. The Titanic was here, and over here was the Scorpion and over here was the Thresher (as he says this, he arranges three objects on a tabletop, roughly in a line, the center one depicting the Titanic).
And had that not occurred, I probably would not have found the Titanic because they wouldn’t have funded me. I mean, if the Titanic was in the Indian Ocean, it’d probably still be in the Indian Ocean. But … it was straddled by two very interesting subs that we had lost — and the Scorpion was lost on war patrol … and it was carrying nuclear weapons. So it was a very hot sub to the Navy …
Boeing has taken the first step in making the laser gunship a reality by installing the weapon on a C-130H.
Boeing completed the laser installation Dec. 4 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The laser, including its major subsystem, a 12,000-pound integrated laser module, was moved into place aboard the aircraft and aligned with the previously-installed beam control system, which will direct the laser beam to its target.
With the laser installed, Boeing is set to conduct a series of tests leading up to a demonstration in 2008 in which the program will fire the laser in-flight at mission-representative ground targets to demonstrate the military utility of high-energy lasers. The test team will fire the laser through a rotating turret that extends through the aircraft’s belly.
ATL, which Boeing is developing for the U.S. Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations.
Link: defensetech
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