10 November 2022

 THANK YOU LIBS AND DEMS


You put a doddering, incompetent fool up for President, backed by a seemingly inane female island girl, and now — in Pennsylvania ” got a brain damaged radical elected as a senator.

We've gone from producing our own oil to allowing other countries determine what we'll pay, opened our souther border to an invasion, keep our homeless Americans on the street, promise to raise taxes on pretty much everything and have let crime run rampant ...God almighty ... what next, you fools?

Good going.

Can't wait to see what disasters befall us in the next two years. 

Whatever happens ... try and take our guns ... because we are undoubtedly going to need them.




24 September 2021

ON THE EDGE OF AMERICA: RIDING WITH THE US BORDER PATROL

Here's a story I wrote about the US Border Patrol. It was written — I believe — in 2001-02 after the September 11, 2001 attacks. I got to ride with a marine patrol on a body of water that is shared by Mexico and the US — specifically, Texas — called Lake Amistad.

I'm doing this because I think the President of the US  — Biden, that is — is a horse's ass and is intent on destroying this country — even though he — also — isn't un-aware of it.

Enjoy


On the Edge of America

Story by Gary P. Joyce 

 

Those of us involved in boating have noticed the increase in security on our home waters since the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded, and more recently since the invasion of Iraq began on March 19 this year.

But “home waters” covers a greater expanse than those of us on the nation’s coasts may realize. Along our northern border, boats play an important part in national security. But it’s – surprisingly – in the arid areas of cactus, wide-open spaces, Longhorn cattle, bad-ass sun, Stetsons and scuffed cowboy boots of America’s Southwest where boats have been put to their latest use in protecting our nation. 

As unlikely as this venue is for boating, are the people who man these boats. It’s an unheralded service, usually not even an after-thought in most American’s ideas of who our protectors are. While they patrol both northern and southern borders, the main responsibility for monitoring and interdicting incursions – with virtually no assistance from the abutting government – across the 1,989 miles of border separating the U.S. and Mexico falls to the U.S Border Patrol (BP). 

The Border Patrol Agents in this story are rugged individuals working in small teams, sometimes alone. Their deeds usually go unsung, yet they perform their job with relish, professionalism and integrity. They are excellent outdoorsmen, trackers, hunters, public relation specialists, intelligence operatives, search-and-rescue personnel and, yes, boaters, all wrapped up into a quintessentially Western breed of law enforcement officer. They are people who are matter-of-fact in their approach to a job that is difficult by definition, and grows more difficult everyday. Yet, they’re also enthusiastic, intrigued, compassionate and dedicated to preserving the security of America. 

 

Amistad  – “friendship” – National Recreation Area is the American side of a beautiful international recreation area in western Texas about two-and-a-half hours west of San Antonio. The park is administered by the National Parks Service (NPS) out of a headquarters in Del Rio, Texas, and its main feature is the Amistad Reservoir, formed by the Rio Grande, Pecos and Devils rivers, the flow stemmed by the Amistad Dam. The reservoir sports 850 miles of coastline and shares 310 miles with Mexico. The dam provides hydroelectric power, water reserves for agriculture and recreation for millions of people on both sides of the border. 

Spying the lake for the first time shocks the eye; an expanse of blue water nestled in the jagged, arid, limestone-beige terrain spotted here and there with barely discernible patches of greenery and the bright white wakes of bass boats running hither and yon. 

The only thing as startling as the water’s color is the boat ramp at the Diablo East put in. Concrete, it’s about as wide as an eight-lane freeway … it’s also a loooong way downhill to the water.

 “The lake’s down about 40 feet from its full height. The last time it was full was 1992, but it’s still plenty deep,” says Jeffery Parsons, the assistant chief of the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector, and a dead ringer for every western-movie, square-jawed, good guy marshal you’ve ever seen.

There are approximately 1,000 agents in the Del Rio Sector that includes 10 forward stations covering 59,541 square miles of land and 205 miles of Rio Grande River. The agents perform the gamut of BP duties: flight ops, highway interdiction, undercover work, special tactics work, search-and-rescue and marine enforcement, the relative newcomer to the service’s repertoire having been in existence barely two years. 

The NPS had the responsibility of patrolling the lake, but security concerns have required round-the-clock ops since September 11, and thus the BP boat patrols. NPS Ranger Dennis Anderson and his boat crews were instrumental in getting the BP crews up to snuff. The NPS uses bright orange RIBs as patrol craft. “We do a lot of boardings for safety inspections and whatnot,” said Anderson. “Guys would get a little touchy if we pulled up to their $30,000 bass boats in a hard boat, so we figured the BOBs were the way to go.”

BOBs? “Big orange boats,” clarifies Anderson with nary a smile. If you’re going to play with Texans, you have to get used to a dry humor that’s hard for this Easterner to detect. And be prepared to let no foible go by unnoticed or unmentioned ... dryly.

Agent Ernie Carrillo, a 19-year veteran with the BP, is the boat unit’s supervisory agent. “The purpose of the Whiskey boats is high-profile deterrence,” he says, as he hands me a Sospender self-inflatable PFD. “And we mean high profile, literally. We’re standing about nine foot tall, and most of the bass boats out there aren’t but about two feet.”

The boats – two 23 foot SeaArk aluminum patrol boats – have a nice cabin atop which are mounted a beam-wide halogen light bar, radar tower and blue emergency lights. Bass boats at a distance can only be recognized by their wakes, so the Whiskey boats – the two boat’s callsigns start with the letter W, “whiskey” in communication parlance – definitely stand out. The boats have eight-foot, six-inch beams, look narrower, yet ride surprisingly dry and stable. “We’ll get six-foot swells and 30 knot winds out here,” said Senior Agent Travis Konkle, our helmsman. “These boats handle it pretty well.” And Konkle handles the Whiskey boat pretty well.

 Powered by twin counter-rotating Merc 200 EFI’s, the boats have a Kohler 800 generator mounted forward of the engines to power the halogen light bar and the heater and a/c unit; temperatures reach extremes on both ends of the thermometers. Konkle sits in one of the two Air-Ride electric chairs in front of the full-size wheel, Raymarine radar and Furuno GPS. Boaters on the lake generally use cell phones; the Whiskey boats have Motorola FM radios allowing them contact with other BP and NPS units. 

Aside from all the requisite boat gear, Carrillo and Konkle carry backpacks containing their personal gear of first-aid supplies, radio, water, food, handheld GPS and Gen-IV night vision scopes. Weaponry consists of .40 caliber Beretta semis, Remington 870 .12 gauges and the new M-4 submachinegun. It can get dicey for two men out in the wilds of the desert that comprises much of the western end of Lake Amistad (from the Amistad Dam west, Mexican territory is on the south and west. East of the dam is all Texas), and should trouble arise the two men – sometimes one-man – can be 30 miles from backup; not a thought the agents dwell on, but a reality they accept. 

 The boat is merely a means of reaching patrol areas, then the agents quietly beach the craft, secure it, and head inland on foot. “A lot of our work,” says Carrillo, “is gathering intelligence and looking for patterns of alien traffic and narcotics transport. We also have Mexican commercial fishermen hauling people and drugs that we keep and eye on.” The bottom line according to both agents is that the boats provide a presence, and by virtue of that presence, a deterrence. There are no patrol patterns, and with the access the SeaArks provide, the agents can appear anywhere. 

We cruise west making slalom turns at the buoys as we adhere tightly to the international border’s contours, working our way up the Rio Grande towards the confluence of the Pecos River. We pass Mexican and American recreational anglers along the way, with both seeming to adhere to their sides. Everyone gets a wave from Carrillo, but you can also see him mentally running the boat through the list of suspect “bad-guy” boats the NPS and BP have amassed. Carrillo is quiet and unassuming, but you can tell there’s little that escapes his attention. Every inch of coast we cruise provides a different moonscape of small, twisty, side canyons, caves, rock scree and cactus – hard, tough terrain.

“When they cross from Mexico,” said Carrillo, “the object, obviously, is to get into America. We stand an excellent chance of grabbing them when they come across close to towns, but those are still the favored routes. The ones that really want to get in will head overland and hit someplace way deep in the state.”

“How far will they travel,” I ask. 

“Virginia,” says the Texas born-and-raised Carrillo, a reference to where Konkle was born; ergo: Texas humor. “There’s a route that runs 90 miles to the first town,” he adds. “They’ll try and go windmill to windmill, staying out of sight. Most of the land is privately owned ranches, and the windmills provide water for stock. Sometimes they make it,” he says, “and sometimes they don’t. Regardless, we’ll start a group [cross their trail] and track them, sometimes for three weeks before we get them.”

One of the more interesting – and in today’s climate, scary – facts I learn is that it’s not just Mexicans. “Central Americans, South Americans, sure. But we also are seeing lots of Europeans – Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs – just about every nation in eastern Europe. They get into Mexico City and make their way to cross here,” said Carrillo. The import of this internationality is not lost on the agents; not with the country at Alert Level 4.

Konkle spots something on a bluff and spins the boat around. “See those two kind of black balls on that bush on the bluff?” he asks. I don’t see it till he runs the boat aground at the base of the bluff. 

“It’s a marker for a crossing point,” explains Carrillo. “Those black dots are catfish heads.”

We tie up the boat and are joined by NPS Ranger Anderson in a BOB, and scramble up the loose scree and boulders. There’s a fire circle of rock, and a few other traces of use. The two catfish heads are about the size of footballs. Everything is bigger in Texas.

The men are consummate trackers and quickly work the site, but there’s no sign of recent use. Carrillo takes me over to where I crossed the rock surface and points out where I stepped. A pebble overturned shows its dark side, the sun-baked shine of a point of rock is dulled, the slightest shoe toe print stands out to him in a rare patch of loose dirt. 

“This guy weighs about 150 and has 59 cents in his pocket,” Konkle says to me, causing me to give him a mouth-breathing look of wonder. He shakes his head as I feel for the large “L”-for loser on my forehead. “It’s my foot print,” he finally notes, “but I’ll tell you this: if you learn how to track in west Texas, you can track people anywhere on earth.”

And track down and nab violators are what the agents do so well: the boat patrol drug seizure numbers for Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 (five-and-a-half months into it) should exceed 2002’s if they stay on the same pace ($5,861,949/7,328 pounds in FY2002 versus $2,973,294/3,718 pounds). Alien apprehensions look like they will be down or even with 2002 – a factor due to increased manpower and patrol activity (1,265 apprehensions in FY 2002 versus 456 as of March 25, 2003). The smugglers in both categories rely heavily on boats and the Amistad Reservoir; and thus must deal with the likes of Carrillo, Konkle and their fellow agents.  

We scramble back to the boat and head down canyon to another area. You can’t muffle the sound of the big Mercs and the canyons are natural reverbrators, so any interdiction is usually accomplished by overland foot patrol or coordinated boat/land ambushes. We beach the boat again, and Carrillo and Konkle shoulder their packs. We take a few steps when photog Greg Johnston steps on the first booby trap.

“Dog pear,” says Carrillo, removing the spiky sea urchin-on-steroids-looking ball of pins from Johnston’s calf. The dog pear has long, rigid spikes that, when brushed upon, jump off the ground and impale. “You’ll have a nice welt there,” says Konkle. “That’s why we wear these 10-inch boots.” Alas, Johnston and I are dressed in boating shoes, since we thought we were doing a boating story. I spot another patch and studiously avoid it, but trip over something else in the process. “You want to watch out for rattlers, too,” notes Konkle.

Gee, thanks.

Forty-five minutes and we are back at the boat and headed down river. The patrol will last 12 hours and gobble huge amounts of the lake and shore. Sometimes we’ll double back to where we’ve been, sometimes we’ll make long runs to other landings. The job goes on day and night, everyday in all weather, and then there are special ops combining the forces of the boat; ground and aerial assets; the job is relentless.

The next morning we spend some time with the airboat patrols on the downstream section of the Rio Grande, with Mexico 50 feet away. Agent Kevin Czechowicz drives us through what looks like a farm equipment graveyard to the launch site and introduces us to Senior Patrol Agent Rowdy Ballard, and Patrol Agent Landon Schaffner. Along the way he points out bent fencing where people have crossed. 

The airboat, an 18-foot, 330 horsepower, Panther Lightning, is one of 10 in the sector and is used on the below-dam portions of the Rio Grande as well as on the skinny parts of the Pecos and Devils rivers. We cruise up the Rio Grande past a huge soccer field crowded with Sunday players and families on the Mexican side, under the international bridge to a low-head dam where two Mexican fishermen are working the eddy below the dam. Just downriver from the dam are several raw sewage outlets from the Mexican side that add, shall we say, a certain pungency to the beneath-bridge climate.

 “There’s a monitor tower there,” says Ballard, pointing to the US side, “that keeps an eye on the fishermen in case they decide to slide over to the US.” One fisherman is actually in American territory, but turns and waves to the agents, seemingly intent on his fishing.

“There are a bunch of spots that are monitored by camera and various other means I can’t tell you about,” says Ballard, not having to add “or I’d have to kill you” to the statement. “Those are all usually at the known crossings … yup, there are regular crossing spots. Hell, there’s a horse down river that knows how to transport people by itself,” he says.

 “The other day we got a call that one of the monitors picked up some folks crossing,” said Landon. “We were nearby, so we went on down there, and then hit the road tracking them.” On the heaviest travel crossing spots, a drag trail – a road of powdery dirt – has been constructed, which allows the agents to spot footprints easily. Then it’s a matter of directionally leap frogging ahead of the illegals to intercept them. The tactic, along with precision cooperation and planning with their compatriots on ground patrol, works.

 

The BP’s motto is pride, integrity and vigilance. It is a truly unique organization combining a variety of disciplines into one unit. Recently reassigned as part of the Department of Homeland Security, the BP is, with the exception of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the only paramilitary arm of the Federal government that has their own academy and trains their own people from scratch. It’s the only service that demands their agents maintain a working fluency in Spanish, the only service where you can ride a horse, airboat, 4x4, helicopter and a boat in a day on the job. It’s an outfit that mandates all its agents work in the field … pilots, clerks, boatmen, regardless, you’ll spend three years pounding the ground first. It’s the only service where you’ll guard and patrol against incursions onto our shores, save people lives, interdict drug smugglers, work undercover, and spend all your time outdoors.

The Border Patrol is a superbly trained, professional force of unsung men and women who are literally acting as our first line of defense.

And I gotta say, I feel a whole lot better having met them. 

12 August 2021

 Don’t Be the Last Man Out ...or ... Fuck You and Die

 

The idiot running our country right now is sending 3000 grunts to Afghanistan to evacuate the American Embassy.

 

All I have to say is: if ONE of those grunts are killed, the parents should either hire an assassin — and believe me, there’d be plenty of guys willing to go down that path — or sue the US government.

 

President Biden and Vice-President Harris are, at best, incompetents. At worse, trying to destroy America for absolutely no reason other than their only interest is to get elected again.

 

Biden’s a goner (do you Democrat asshole REALLY think he's presidential material?)


Harris is semi-patiently waiting to take over.  And anyone with a brain knew this.

 

So, we have an incompetent island gal waiting for Pelosi (don’t get me started on that thief) to declare the President incompetent, and the non-Black-passing-for-Black VP to take over so she can finally run things. Pelosi, that is.

 

The Democrat party consistently said that the last President “split the country.”

 

I say, that the only reason — and unless you’re a total asshole and can’t see this — the country is split is because the last president isn’t here. 

 

Prove me wrong.

 

We’re almost nine months into a new presidency and the fucking scumbag media STILL leads with the word “Trump” on every negative story.


Meanwhile, the elect and the Bizzaro media (read Superman comics, assholes) continue to make believe they know what they're doing.


What they're doing ia killing your children and grandchildren. And if you can't SEE that, you're as big-a-fool as was ever made.

 

Fuck you and die.


But ... hey ... YOUR kids won't have to pay back all the shit the Dems are spending. They'll be slaves instead.



05 April 2021

 The Un-Making of America - Part 2


March 8 — Senior DHS rep says — anonymously — that Biden administration has ordered that DHS not speak to media regarding border crisis. Where’s Twitter when we need it?

 

March 9 — It is reported that Vice-President Kamala Harris has met with the heads of six foreign countries without the President. Hmmmm?

 

March 10 — President Biden signs a Defense order making the military and — by default — the Veterans Administration (i.e., the taxpayers of the United States) liable for sexual re-orientation operations. Number 2: Honest. You can’t make this shit up.

 

March 11 — President Biden signs $1.9 trillion ”covid” bill. In the bill another Democrat bullshit hidden clause becomes apparent. Freelancers — i.e., gig workers — can no longer exist. They must be employees. 

 

March 12 — President Biden holds an address to the nation. The New York Times (heart be still)! fact checks most of it as “wrong.”

 

March 25 — President Biden finally holds press conference with — obviously — preset questions and reporters. FOX news reporter uncalled on. President is literally and uncharacteristically “wide-eyed.” He couldn’t

pass a road sobriety test unless the cops were blind.

 

March 25 — Psychotic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi after saying a few months ago that questioning state-certified election results was akin to “treason” … questions state-certified election result in Iowa. You can’t make this up.

 

March 27 — VP Harris has no plans to go to southern border. (As of April 5 she still hasn’t but the president put her in charge of the non-crisis.

 

March 27 — As country sinks into anarchy, President invites 40 world leaders to summit on climate “crisis.” Not border “crisis.”

 

March 28 —60 Minutes after a year-plus of Covid-19 finally discovers Wujan, China, and thinks something fishy went on there! Now that’s journalism for you.

 

April 1 — And unfortunately not a joke. The Biden administration pointed to the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans and Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York as two examples of “long-standing and persistent racial injustice,” in infrastructure. The plan set forth by the Biden administration would see billions spent on an effort to “reconnect neighborhoods” by destroying current highways and making sure that new projects “advance racial equity and environmental justice.” ONLY Democrats can make inanimate objects “racist!”

 

April 2 —MLB announced they were moving the 2021 All-Star Game and the 2022 Draft out of Atlanta because the State of Georgia had the temerity to pass legislation requiring voters to identify themselves before being allowed to vote

 

April 5. — BLM freezes traffic in Baltimore unless drivers “beep” in support (See April 1 entry…and again, no joke). Only video observed (by this writer) shows cop supporting their efforts. 

03 April 2021

 I quit FB 

You wanna read what I have to say ... you gotta go here.

Possibly I'll do it a podcast ...but for now ...

The Un-Making of America

 

President Trump leaves office. Iran wants President Biden to resume nuclear deal … which they’d broken. Israel goes on war footing. Thank you, Democrats.

 

President Biden signs Executive Order revoking Keystone pipeline permit. Every union schmuck that voted for him loses their job. Loss estimated at 10,000 jobs and $1.6 billion dollars in revenue. Canada seriously pissed off. Arabs happy, since we — once again —have to depend on them for oil. 

 

BLM (Black Lives Matter) is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Honest. You can’t make this shit up.

 

President Biden wants $15 minimum wage. Estimates are it will cost a loss of between 1.3 and 3.3 million jobs.

 

February 6 — House Democrats seek to ban the words “alien” and “illegal alien.” 

 

February 21— Disney added a disclaimer to “The Muppet Show” 

on its streaming platform, 

citing “wrong” portrayals of “people or cultures.”

 

March 1 — Biden White House leaves out Dr. Seuss books for “Read Across America Day,” citing alleged “racial undertones.”

 

March 4 - According to former officials in the Obama administration, the standard for a border crisis was 1,000 attempted crossings a day. Who was on the team that set that standard? President — then VP — Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, then Deputy Secretary, and now Secretary, of Homeland Security. When the Trump administration ended, the U.S. was deporting more people than were illegally coming into the country. In less than a month under Biden, the number of people illegally coming into the country is more than 6,000 per day—that’s six times the crisis level as set by the Obama team, er, that is, the guy who is now President. 

 

March 5 — While the governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, gets bitch slapped for sexual harassment during Women’s History Month, what does the Democrat-controlled NY legislature do? Pass a bill to curtail Cuomo's “pandemic powers,” which does nothing.

 

March 8 — Influx of illegals at all-time high. Called a “humanitarian crisis” by Doctors Without Borders. White House response? All-time nothing.

 

March 8 — “Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty and favoring individuals over businesses,” the headline on the Washington Post’s website proclaimed., as America sinks into Democrat-fed-depression. Gas prices under Trump (in NY) $1.99 a gallon in January. Now? $2.57 a gallon (3-8-21- NY) under Biden administration. Lotsa luck, America.

 

March 8 — Senior DHS rep says — anonymously — that Biden administration has ordered that DHS not speak to media regarding border crisis. Where’s Twitter when we need it?

 

March 9 — It is reported that Vice-President Kamala Harris has met with the heads of six foreign countries without the President. Hmmmm?

 

March 10 — President Biden signs a Defense order making the military and — by default — the Veterans Administration (i.e., the taxpayers of the United States) liable for sexual re-orientation operations. Number 2: Honest. You can’t make this shit up.

 

March 11 — President Biden signs $1.9 trillion ”covid” bill. In the bill another Democrat bullshit hidden clause becomes apparent. Freelancers — i.e., gig workers — can no longer exist. They must be employees. 

 

March 12 — President Biden holds an address to the nation. The New York Times (heart be still)! fact checks most of it as “wrong.”

 

March 25 — President Biden finally holds press conference with — obviously — preset questions and reporters. FOX news reporter uncalled on. President is literally and uncharacteristically “wide-eyed.” (Read that

as drugs. Yeah ...that's the fuck what I mean).

 

March 25 — Psychotic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, after saying a few months ago that questioning state-certified election results was akin to treason, … "questions state-certified election result in Iowa" You can’t make this shit up.

 

March 27 — VP Harris has no plans to go to southern border. A of April 4 she still hasn't seen even though the President appointed her of "in charge" of the border ...um ... well, whatever is happening that isn't a crisis.

 

March 27 — As country sinks into anarchy, President invites 40 world leaders to summit on climate “crisis.” Not border “crisis.”

 

March 28 —60 Minutes after a year-plus of Covid-19 finally discovers Wujan, China, and thinks something fishy went on there! Now that’s journalism for you.

 

April 1 — And unfortunately not a joke. The Biden administration pointed to the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans and Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York as two examples of “long-standing and persistent racial injustice,” in infrastructure. The plan set forth by the Biden administration would see billions spent on an effort to “reconnect neighborhoods” by destroying current highways and making sure that new projects “advance racial equity and environmental justice.” ONLY Democrats can make inanimate objects “racist!”

 

April 2 —MLB announced they were moving the 2021 All-Star Game and the 2022 Draft out of Atlanta because the State of Georgia had the temerity to pass legislation requiring voters to identify themselves before being allowed to vote. Heart be fucking still. How dare the State of Georgia want people to prove who they are to vote!!!!






31 January 2021

52nd Annniversary

 Back prior to 1969, there were a bunch of us — all volunteers, all paratroopers — who served in an outfit called the LRRPs — Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. Some were Long Range Patrol but we all had the same job. 

 Yes, that’s where the name for this blog came from.

In my case our official designation was E-Co., 58th Inf., LRRP, 1/10 Cavalry, 4th Infantry Division. Every division had a LRRP (or LRP) of its own, operating with teams composed of anywhere between three or four to eight men and sometimes more. In E-58 we used the three-four combination (usually three Americans and a Montagnyard), a concept developed by the Australian SAS.


Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War, by James F. Dunnigan, Albert A. Nofi, (pp 79-85) gives a fairly accurate summation of what the LRRP teams did in Viet Nam. 

My article Evolution of the LRRPs gives a broader picture of the small unit concept.

The U.S. Army Rangers Association also has a good — and briefer — history of the unit as well as a listing of which LRRP outfits became which Ranger companies.. 

The reason I’m telling you this? 

On February 1, 1969 all the LRRP companies in RVN were re-designated 75th Ranger companies, tracing their lineage back to the famed Merrill’s Marauders (5307th Composite Group) of WWII (Burma) fame. My unit became K Company, 75th Rangers.

So, here’s to 52nd birthday of the modern Rangers, and to all of the men — dead and alive — who served as LRPs and LRRPs in Viet Nam and as Rangers in conflicts around the globe. 

“Lieutenant General John H. Hays, Jr., who commanded the 1st Infantry Division from February 1967 to March 1968 and went on to become the deputy commanding general of II Field Force, serving until August 1968, said that the LRRPs were, “… generally considered to have the most uncomfortable and dangerous job in Vietnam…,” but also noted that, “… the way in which the long range patrols were used was one of the most significant innovations of the war.””Evolution of the LRRPs — GPJ

02 October 2020

LRRP's World: OPERATION GOTHIC SERPENTToday. October 3, 2020,  ...

LRRP's World: OPERATION GOTHIC SERPENT Today. October 3, 2020,  ...: OPERATION GOTHIC SERPENT Today. October 3, 2020,  marks the 27th anniversary of the start of the raid — Operation Gothic Serpent — in Mogadi...

OPERATION GOTHIC SERPENT


Today. October 3, 2020,  marks the 27th anniversary of the start of the raid — Operation Gothic Serpent — in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 19 American soldiers were killed in the contacts immortalized in the Mark Bowden’s book, and the Ridley Scott movie made from it, Black Hawk Down.


Although often thought of as a 75th Ranger ops (B Company, 3rd Bn.), Special Forces (1st SFOD-D), Navy SEALs (DEVGRU), Air Force Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers (24th Special Tactics Squadron) and 160th Special Operations Regiment (Night Stalkers) pilots were all involved in the battle, and the rescue element that extricated the Rangers, et al., was composed of US 10th Mountain Division troopers, as well as armor elements of Pakistani and Malaysian military.

Lost n the memory of the day was the fact that the object of the raid — capturing some criminals — was successful and that somewhere between 700 and 1500 Somalia street fighters were killed during the attack. Seventy-three Amercians were wounded in the attack and rescue/wrap up. 

The two Blackhawk helicopters taken down were hit by RPGs. Whether they were locals or al Qaida imports is still  (02 Oct 20) debatable. 

Lest we forget:
SFC Randy Shughart, a Delta Sniper killed defending the crew of Super Six 4, the Medal of Honor.
MSgt. Gary Gordon, a Delta Sniper killed defending the crew of Super Six 4, the Medal of Honor.
MSgt. Tim “Griz” Martin, Delta soldier killed on the Lost Convoy, Delta Force.
SFC Earl Fillmore, Delta soldier killed moving to the first crash site, Delta Force.
SSgt. Daniel Busch, crashed on Super Six 1 and was killed defending the downed crew, the Silver Star, Delta Force.
CWO Clifton Wolcott, pilot of Super Six 1 and died in crash, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal, and the Air Medal with Valor Device, Night Stalkers.
CWO Donovan Briley, copilot of Super Six 1 and died in crash, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Air Medal with Valor Device, Night Stalkers.
CWO Raymond Frank, copilot of Super Six 4, Silver Star, Air Medal with Valor Device, Night Stalkers.
SSgt. William Cleveland, a crew chief on Super Six 4, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Air Medal with Valor Device, Night Stalkers.
Staff Sgt. Thomas Field, a crew chief on Super Six 4, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Air Medal with Valor Device, Night Stalkers.
Sgt. Casey Joyce, who was killed on the Lost Convoy, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
Spc. James Cavaco, who was killed on the Lost Convoy, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
Cpl. Jamie Smith, who bled to death with the pinned-down force around crash site one, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
Sgt. Dominick Pilla, who was killed on the convoy rescuing Pfc. Todd Blackburn, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
PFC Richard Kowalewski, who was killed on the Lost Convoy, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
Sgt. Lorenzo Ruiz, who was killed on the Lost Convoy, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, 75th Ranger Regiment.
Sgt. Cornell Houston, who was killed fighting on the rescue convoy, the Bronze Star with Valor Device, De Fleury medal, 10th Mountain Division.
PFC James Martin, who was killed on the rescue convoy, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry, 10th Mountain Division.
Sgt. Matt Rierson, who was killed on Oct. 6 by a mortar which landed just outside the hangar, Delta Force.
Pvt. Mat Aznan Awang (posthumously promoted to Cpl) driver of a Malaysian Condor APC hit by a RPG on Oct. 3rd.

My prayers — such as they are — for their families.