Remember Our Troops at Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Day in 1970, my platoon and I worked our way toward a landing zone where we were scheduled to receive a Thanksgiving dinner as part of a resupply. A few hundred meters short of the landing zone, we stumbled upon a North Vietnamese bunker complex which was, thankfully, unoccupied.

It was a gigantic complex, complete with large bunkers and even classrooms. We had to clear every single structure, but there were no bad guys or enemy supplies. I radioed the coordinates to my company commander, and we moved to the landing zone to wait for the resupply helicopter.

A couple of Red Cross girls (we called them Donut Dollies) were on the chopper, and they delivered our turkey, stuffing and other food. It was great to see a couple of attractive "round-eyed" girls. We were out in the jungle with enemy soldiers not very far away, but the touch of Americana raised everyone's spirits.

Just as we were about to enjoy the food, we received word that our unit was dropping gas on the bunkers we had cleared. This was an effort to make them unusable for the enemy. Unfortunately, those making the drop misjudged the wind, and we started to get a little tingling in our eyes.

We had to pack up everything, including the Thanksgiving meal and the Donut Dollies, and move to another landing zone a long distance away. The girls weren't used to moving through the jungle, so they were understandably a little scared about the proximity of the bad guys.

We eventually made it to the other landing zone and enjoyed the meal. The Red Cross girls flew away on the helicopter while we moved out on our next mission - with full stomachs and renewed energy.

Today, in Iraq, Afghanistan and other lesser known places around the world, our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are holding the line in the war on terror. They have placed their lives on the line for all of us, and some of them have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Remember them in your prayers on Thanksgiving. Without their efforts, this would be a much different world.

For my fellow warriors who may read this, may God protect you this day and every day. You are indeed appreciated by those you left behind...

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

A Cop's World: Sometimes It Ain't Easy

The old woman died while her husband spent the night in the hospital. She was 83; he was 87. They had been married for over sixty years.

Shortly after the paramedics pronounced her dead, the old man arrived home. Along with another officer, I met him at his car and informed him of his wife's passing. He was stoic but obviously shaken.

I stood by with a social worker while the funeral home prepared to remove the old woman's body. Then the old man asked if he could see his wife one more time.

We walked him up the stairs to his apartment. Just climbing those stairs was tough for the old man because time has taken its toll. Walking is difficult, even with a cane. With halting steps, he entered the bedroom where his wife had been found; we waited by the door.

The old man walked up to the woman with whom he had shared over sixty years. He touched her face, her neck, and her hand. We had learned that there were no other family members and, at their age, the elderly couple had outlived all of their friends. The old man was now completely alone.

After a couple of minutes, he slowly turned and started to walk out of the bedroom. Then he stopped and turned to look at his wife again. With halting steps aided only by the cane, he walked up to her for the last time. He touched her face, looking at her as if he were waiting for her to open her eyes and smile. To tell you the truth, I was starting to have a tough time myself because the emotion of the moment was affecting all of us. Yeah, cops have feelings too.

The old man came out of the room and sat in a living room chair. Looking up at the social worker, he said, "What do I do now?" I looked around the small apartment and, even though I had never met the couple, the place now had an eerie emptiness about it. There was an unfinished sandwich on the kitchen counter. Next to the television was a stack of old movies from the 1940s. I looked at the small loveseat and pictured them sitting together, holding hands, and sharing memories while they watched some old Fred Astaire movie.

There was a time when they were young, when they danced to the music from some big band, when they looked into each other's eyes and shared their hopes and dreams. They had lived that future, but one of them was destined to be the first to die. The old man must now walk alone into a hazy, solitary future.

The rest of us will gather with our families on Thanksgiving. We will laugh, share food and memories, and savor the joy that fills our homes on holidays. The old man will sit alone, grieving for his lost love, and pondering the uncertain days ahead.

When we say our prayers before our Thanksgiving feast, give thanks, but also remember those whose own holiday will be a lonely one.

Remember the old man...

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Night Shift is a Health Risk for Cops

The following article appeared in today's Orlando Sentinel. Anyone who has had to work overnight shifts will relate to this:

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Health risk for cops: Night beat

By Jeannine Stein, Tribune Newspapers

Midnight shift workers often find it hard to get enough quality sleep on a consistent basis. Police officers are not exempt, often working late shifts and overtime as part of their jobs.

A new study suggests that their schedule may cause cops to develop metabolic syndrome, a cluster of symptoms including high blood pressure, insulin resistance and high triglycerides that advance development of such conditions as stroke, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The research, published in the current issue of Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, focused on 98 police officers who were part of the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress study, which began in 2003. The participants had their blood pressure checked, took a blood test and had their waist circumference measured. They also filled out a questionnaire focusing on lifestyle choices such as sleep habits, physical activity, smoking and alcohol use.

Researchers discovered that in general, those on afternoon and midnight shifts were younger than those working during the day, and predominantly male. Overall, 30 percent of the police officers on the night shift had metabolic syndrome. In the general population, that number was 21 percent, taken from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The younger officers on the night shift (average age 36.5 years) also had higher rates of metabolic syndrome than their age group in the general population.

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For those of us who have worked these shifts, such information really comes as no surprise.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Check Out the Website for My Book: "My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran's Tour in Iraq"

I hope you will continue to visit my new website at www.MyLastWar.com. You can get information about my book, view the book trailer, and even order the book!

When you read the book, please give me some feedback, either by email to TheRangerCop@aol.com or by leaving a review at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com.

Thanks again for your support.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Lewis Millett Dies at 88 - Awarded the Medal of Honor

We have lost another great American warrior. The Washington Post tells the story of Medal of Honor winner Lewis L. Millett, who died on November 14.

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Lewis L. Millett, 88
Daring soldier was awarded Medal of Honor

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Lewis L. Millett, 88, a career Army officer who was briefly and somewhat misleadingly court-martialed for desertion during World War II and went on to receive the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge during the Korean War, died Nov. 14 at a veterans hospital in Loma Linda, Calif. He had congestive heart failure.

Col. Millett, who sported a red handlebar mustache, cut an audacious and unconventional path during his 35 years of military service. He led daring attacks in two wars and was instrumental in starting a reconnaissance commando school to train small units for covert operations in Vietnam.

He also was an Army deserter. He later said he had been so eager to "help fight fascism and Hitler" that he left an Air Corps gunnery school in mid-1941 -- months before the U.S. entry into World War II -- to enlist with the Canadian army and go overseas. He manned an antiaircraft gun during the London blitz before rejoining the U.S. Army, which had by that time declared war and apparently was not being overly meticulous in its background checks.

As an antitank gunner in Tunisia, he earned the Silver Star after he jumped into a burning ammunition-filled halftrack, drove it away from allied soldiers and leapt to safety just before the vehicle exploded. Not long after, he shot down a German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter that was strafing Allied troops. Col. Millett, who was firing from machine guns mounted on a halftrack, hit the pilot through the windshield.

He had fought his way through Italy, participating in the campaigns at Salerno and Anzio, when his paperwork caught up with him. A superior officer told him that he was being court-martialed for his desertion to Canada and that his punishment was $52. He also received a battlefield promotion for fearlessness in combat.

His letters back home were unfiltered epithets aimed at the chain of command. "Letters were censored in World War II, and the next thing I knew I was standing before the battery commander," he told the journal Military History. "He told me that the War Department had ordered three times that I be court-martialed. They finally did it to prevent someone from really throwing the book at me later. Then a few weeks later they made me a second lieutenant! I must be the only Regular Army colonel who has ever been court-martialed and convicted of desertion."

During the Korean War, he received the military's highest awards for valor, including the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, for two bayonet charges he led as a company commander in February 1951.

"We had acquired some Chinese documents stating that Americans were afraid of hand-to-hand fighting and cold steel," he told Military History. "When I read that, I thought, 'I'll show you, you sons of bitches!' "

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading a charge up Hill 180 near Soam-Ni on Feb. 7. When one of his platoons was pinned down by heavy fire, he placed himself at the head of two other platoons and ordered the men to charge up the hill.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, he bayoneted several enemy soldiers and lobbed grenades in their direction while rallying his men to fight. Grenade fragments pierced Col. Millett's shin, but he refused medical evacuation.

"Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill," the Medal of Honor citation read. "His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder."

Charles H. Cureton, director of Army museums at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, said that Col. Millett's intimidating, close-combat bayonet charge was "very unusual. By the time you get to the Second World War, the range of lethality of weapons is such that a bayonet charge is very hazardous."

Lewis Lee Millett was born Dec. 15, 1920, in Mechanic Falls, Maine, and grew up with his mother in South Dartmouth, Mass., after his parents divorced. After his Korean War service, he went through Ranger training at Fort Benning, Ga., and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division as an intelligence officer. He later was sent to Vietnam as a military adviser to a controversial intelligence program called Phoenix, which killed thousands of suspected Viet Cong and their sympathizers in an effort to destroy the Viet Cong infrastructure in towns and villages.

He said he retired in 1973 because he was convinced that the United States had "quit" in Vietnam. He championed the return of U.S. prisoners of war from Vietnam and then worked as a deputy sheriff in Trenton, Tenn., before settling in the San Jacinto Mountains resort village of Idyllwild, Calif., across the street from an American Legion post.

His first marriage, to the former Virginia Young, ended in divorce. His second wife, Winona Williams Millett, died in 1993. Survivors include three children from his second marriage, L. Lee Millett Jr. and Timothy Millett, both of Idyllwild, and Elizabeth Millett of Nevada; three sisters; a brother; and four grandchildren.

A son from his second marriage, Army Staff Sgt. John Millett, died in the 1985 airplane crash in Gander, Newfoundland, that killed more than 240 U.S. service members returning from a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East.

Reflecting on his career, Col. Millett once told an interviewer: "I believe in freedom, I believe deeply in it. I've fought in three wars, and volunteered for all of them, because I believed as a free man, that it was my duty to help those under the attack of tyranny. Just as simple as that."

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An inspiring story about a man who was a legend among his fellow warriors. Our condolences to Colonel Millett's family and friends.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Hackers Take the Fun Out Of Facebook

After much prodding and encouragement, this old Baby Boomer entered the world of Facebook. It was a lot of fun for a while - the personal page, the networked blog aspect, the fan page for my book.

Then came the hacking.

Perhaps you saw the news a few day ago when scores of Facebook accounts were hacked into. This happened to me, and I became only one of many victims. Suddenly, people who had befriended me were being sent obscene messages and pornographic videos - in MY name!

I dealt with this for a couple of days, changing my password multiple times, changing my email address, sending dozens of apologies, and dealing with indignant messages asking why I could send such a thing. Finally, it appeared the attack was over.

Then, yesterday morning, it started over again. I deactivated the account, but while I was driving around in my patrol car dealing with a multitude of police issues, I thought about it.

Facebook is just too much trouble. Yeah, I got a lot of encouraging messages to "hang in there" or "don't worry, it's happened to me" and others.

Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to constantly watch my back on Facebook since Facebook obviously doesn't do a very good job of watching my back for me. So I decided to close my pages out.

I'm still dealing with bad junk on my computer and may have to pay someone to fix it. Okay, there are a lot of nice people on Facebook. I will miss the exchanges and the good stuff. But enough is enough.

I hope my friends will still continue to check in with the blog here at American Ranger, as well as the website for my book at www.MyLastWar.com. But as far as Facebook, until that organization cleans up its act, I won't be there.

Thanks to all and may God continue to bless America...

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Veteran's Day: Thanking America's Warriors for Their Service

Another Veteran's Day dawns with America's warriors still fighting the good fight. In the streets and deserts of Iraq, in the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, and in many other lesser known battlefields throughout the world, our troops are engaged in battle with those who would destroy our way of life.

With the recent "Lone Wolf" terrorist attack at Fort Hood, we are reminded that our troops are in danger wherever they are. With strength of heart, goodness of soul, and the determination of warriors, they continue to stand between us and those who would hurt us.

On this very special day, American Ranger remembers all of those courageous men and women who have served in uniform throughout America's history, as well as those brave warriors who have died on our behalf.

Today, I hope that you will take time to remember them as well.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com