[February 12, 2021] The movie Dirty Harry (1971) came out in theaters 50 years ago to great fanfare. When a madman calling himself “the Scorpio Killer” menaces the city, tough-as-nails San Francisco Police Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and ferret out the crazed psychopath. This movie was popular because it tells an old story… Read More »
[February 11, 2021] Yeah, I’m an old guy (oh, should I just say age-challenged?), so I remember when no one got a trophy for winning a school baseball game. We competed for bragging rights. Not today. What’s more, some schools won’t give out grades below “C,” so no student will “feel bad.” This means that those in leadership… Read More »
[February 10, 2021] “Look at that, it’s weird,” my best childhood friend Wilson was transfixed. Hanging behind the bar in the small town we grew up in was a Gadsden flag with the words Don’t Tread on Me in bold letters. We were attempting to sell empty coke bottles1 to the bartender when the sheriff arrived and escorted… Read More »
[February 9, 2021] I’ve written of many battles in my leadership blog and frequently gave accounts of heroism, lessons learned, the horrors, and the struggle of the ordinary foot soldier and basic seaman. No other battle – actually a series of battles over six months – portrays the American spirit in times of great difficulty than the Battle… Read More »
[February 8, 2021] My final trip home to New York City after retiring from the U.S. Army took me through the Atlanta Airport; the largest airport in the U.S. Atlanta remains a central air-transport hub and is the site of the biggest USO on the East Coast. As I walked into this USO, it brought back fond memories… Read More »
[February 7, 2021] I spent my first year in the U.S. Army as a Private (E-1, in military jargon). A private is the lowest rank, least experienced, most impressionable soldier. They make up the largest population of soldiers, and we find lots of them on the battlefield. My peers from the Officer corps put little faith in them. … Read More »
[February 6, 2021] Two days ago, I attended a Vietnam War veteran’s funeral. The turnout was about 35 people, family, and many older veterans who knew him. A good number of attendees, in my estimation, given that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We were curious why vaccinations were so few in our state. In this… Read More »
[February 5, 2021] I learned this important leadership lesson the hard way. My Infantry unit deployed to Ft. Pickett, VA in the late summer of 1983 for a “shake down” exercise. As Platoon Leader, I placed our crew-served M60 machinegun on our right flank and had my men dig in. My commander didn’t like the placement and told… Read More »
[February 1, 2021] My Junior High School civics teacher had been some kind of counter-intelligence official during WW2. I remember nothing about him other than his wartime service and the time we studied propaganda. He told a bunch of wide-eyed kids that someday we would need what he was saying. He was right. Propaganda is a form of… Read More »
[January 30, 2021] The Great Raid (2005) is a war film about the Raid at Cabanatuan prisoner of war camp on the island of Luzon, Philippines, during WW2. I saw it again, for the fifth time, last night. The film tells us about “the most daring rescue mission of our time.” The rescue included American soldiers, Alamo Scouts,… Read More »