Posted by admin! / Under Frogman
To have participated in Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, now that’s something. To have waded ashore through a deathly brew of bullets, blood and floating bodies, well, that’s a feat of a totally different stripe. But to have been a Navy frogman, the first to touch beach the morning of June 6, 1944, that’s the stuff legends are made of. A forerunner to the Navy special operations force known as the SEALs, Naval Combat Demolition Units cleared the way for the initial invasion force on that historic day. "There was stuff blowing up all...
Published on Thursday 9th of September 2010 04:48:56 AM
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Posted by admin! / Under Frogman
I definitely lost my ability to be bothered, shocked or amazed by the depth at which some of the greatest Western news agencies and media outlets are prepared to sink in their support to the enemies of their own civilization, last year almost to the day, when Reuters and its stringers cast smoke on Lebanon, and produced some of Hezbollywood's greatest blockbusters.
Published on Thursday 9th of September 2010 04:48:56 AM
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Posted by admin! / Under Frogman
For those who have been there, Hell Week is a sleepless, bitter cold, gritty, soaking wet, hell on earth where exhausted candidates – pumped full of antibiotics to ward off a variety of infections – survive on sheer heart, tenacity, seemingly incomprehensible physical courage, and about 5,000-7,000 calories per day (given they can muster enough strength to consume them). Hell Week is a short span of eternity at Coronado, California where the SEAL hopeful comes to a reckoning of the soul. Here, he “realizes,” according to Commander Richard Marcinko (USN, ret.), “the body is only tissue and the mind/brain can...
Published on Thursday 9th of September 2010 04:48:56 AM
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Posted by admin! / Under Frogman
Reviewing AMERICA’S FIRST FROGMAN, The Draper Kauffman Story, by Elizabeth K. Bush. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2004. 220 pages, photos, appendices, index. Elizabeth K. Bush, sister-in-law of former president George H.W. Bush (who wrote the Foreward), has delivered an overdue biography of her brother, Rear Admiral Draper L. Kauffman. She tells the story well, spicing it with anecdotes, excerpts from Kauffman’s letters, while making full use of the admiral’s oral history. Here was a man who packed several adventurous lifetimes into his 66 years. Son of career naval officer James L. Kauffman, Draper dutifully entered Annapolis. Denied a commission...
Published on Thursday 9th of September 2010 04:48:56 AM
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