This week, the New York Times announced the recent death of Major General Jeanne Holm. Major General Holm’s contributions on behalf of women in the U.S. Air Force as well as women in all our U.S. Armed Forces are well documented. Her biography has a permanent place on the Official U.S. Air Force website. She is also a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. I won’t attempt to offer you a biography or an obituary of General Holm because they have both been done. What I would like to offer you is how General Holm, though never a personal acquaintance of mine, had a significant impact on my life.

When I joined the U.S. Air Force in 1991, I had every intention of becoming a linguist. I had the ASVAB & DLAB scores and the written job guarantee to prove it. As so often happens, the needs of the Air Force superseded my desire to travel the world as a brilliant linguist and I was given a career that needed bodies. It had only been six years since women had been allowed into the U.S.A.F. Security Police. They had been doing Law Enforcement duties prior to that but the Security Police (now Security Forces) were the infantry of the Air Force. They needed bodies and it didn’t matter what sex they were so I found myself in the Security Police. A “tread” or a “droid” as our Law Enforcement brothers and sisters preferred to call us but they always called us when the job was too big and they needed backup.

General Holm raised the female numbers in the Air Force. She also made it possible for women to be more than nurses. Security Police was one of the few holdouts when it came to women joining because of the combat nature of the job. We were trained in what was politely called “Air Base Ground Defense”. Over the years, the fluff has been removed from the title of our training and it is now simply called “Ground Combat Skills”.

It was because of General Holm’s work that I was able to do the many things I did to distinguish myself in the Air Force. I was a dead-on shot with an M-60 and frighteningly accurate with the Mark-19 and M-203 grenade launchers. I was also handy as a Fire Team Leader and Security Controller. I worked every facet of nuclear security during my eight years in the U.S.A.F.

I hardly think General Holm even considered me when she joined the Army Air Corps but the fact is that my personal history would be far less interesting had she not gone before me to pave the way for women in the U.S. Air Force. She will always have my undying respect and gratitude.

General Holm, I salute you.

I know what it says at the beginning of the book. All the characters and events are purely fiction, blah, blah, blah.

As I was tweeting with an ex Navy friend the other day, we realized we both had the same problem:

Nobody believes the true stories and we have no choice but to fictionalize them!

Let me let you in on a little secret: I’ve met so many characters in my nineteen years (eight active duty and eleven as a military wife) that I just have to put some of them into books.

How can I not?

There was that corporal in the Royal Air Force, that Buck Sergeant from South Carolina, the good old boy from Virginia, the trust fund baby from Texas, the Fratalian from Maine, the farm boy from Kansas, the cowboy from South Dakota…and that’s just the first four years!

The fact is, we’ve met more characters than we can count – and likely had just as many adventures with those characters.

When we put the characters and adventures on the page with a plot, a few hooks and some tension, they make for great fiction but we can never share the truth.

My story “The Path to Freedom” was reviewed once by a reviewer who found only one aspect of the story completely unbelievable – the idea of a good looking woman getting a free drink from a Las Vegas bartender just to sit at the bar. The premise of the overweight cop being sent to a top secret CIA training camp in the Nevada desert wasn’t questionable at all. It was that free margarita that made the reviewer call “bulls***”.

They also had a bit of a problem with so many good looking guys in the story but I chalk that up to their never being posted on a fire team with three Air Force cops with good haircuts who run with forty plus pounds of gear and guns all day.

This is why I have to write fiction – nobody believes the truth.

Besides, who wouldn’t want to romance the characters I’ve met?

Not everyone has heard yet the story of the three Navy SEALs being court marshaled for allegedly “hitting” a terrorist in Iraq. Here is their story:
“It makes me happy when hearing about a terrorist detainee getting a split lip, courtesy of a Navy SEAL who captured him. Especially when the detainee is the accused brains behind the grisly ambush of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah in 2004, their bodies burned inside their vehicle, dragged through the streets by a chanting mob, then hanged from a Euphrates River bridge. The cruel episode was photographed and posted online as a warning to the Big Bad West: Thus to our enemies. If, as the government claims, Ahmed Hashim Abed is the guy behind the horror, he should thank Allah he has survived long enough to be able to accuse one of his captors of punching him in the stomach. Or the face.” (courtesy of reader Rhonda Ringstad)
Petty Officer 1st class Julio Huertas, 28, pleaded not guilty to charges of dereliction, impeding an investigation and lying to investigators. Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, 25, is charged with dereliction and lying. These two SEALs will face the man they “hit” in a trial now set in Camp Victory, Iraq on April 5th.
A third SEAL, Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe, 24, deferred a plea on charges of hitting a detainee, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators.
The SEALs are attracting much support in the form of 350,000 members on a Facebook pages and protestors at the court house. The mother of one of the slain contractors drove from Ohio to offer the men “everything I can give them.”
I personally feel that this situation is ridiculous. From now on, every captured terrorist will cry that he has been “mistreated.” Do terrorists have that kind of consideration for their victims? Hell, no. Let’s stop wasting government money taking our warriors to court for doing their job and rounding up the scum of the earth. Please show your support for these three Navy SEALs by signing a petition online and/or writing your congressman and senator.
My thanks,
Marliss Melton
Navy SEALs Series Team Twelve

As veterans there is one thing in common we carry with us throughout our lives and that is our time in service. Whether it was just a few years or an entire career, it gives us a common language and a common bond. We were and always shall be brothers and sisters in arms.

Although our service rarely comes up in cocktail conversation I find it really is something I enjoy knowing about people.
I recently watched the much anticipated premiere of Human Target on Fox, starring Mark Valley. Being a major action/adventure fan (as well as an action/adventure writer) I was anxious to find out more about the series after thoroughly enjoying the pilot.

As it happens I saw an interview with Mark Valley and McG, the executive producer, that was quite enlightening. They were old Army buddies from Desert Storm. I liked that. I researched a little further and discovered that Mark Valley is a West Point graduate with a degree in mathematics.

I didn’t intend this to be a commercial for Fox or the show, Human Target. My point is, Mark Valley is one of us. I would like him even if he weren’t – his writers are writing great script, he’s easy on the eyes and he plays a great alpha hero. I hope that someday actors who are veterans will play the action heroes that I write but, until then, I hope we can help a brother out and keep Mark Valley working on a great show.

Check it out: http://fox.com/humantarget

Lisa Pietsch is a freelance writer and novelist. Her interests include terrorists and terrorism, the small arms trade, human trafficking and drug trafficking. All of these topics are represented in the Task Force 125 books which are stories of espionage and paramilitary operations centered around the character of Sarah Stevens who is recruited into the CIA’s Special Activities Division. You can find more information on Lisa’s service and her books at www.LisaPietsch.com.

I’ve lived in 14 states and two other countries. The “14” doesn’t count moves, just locations. When it came time to pick a retirement location, I knew the background of nearly every region in the U.S. I knew where I wanted to go and hubby was with me. We chose an area where the Defense Department is the major employer. But that’s not what this blog is about.

This is about making friends during all those freakin’ moves.

Settling down is a lot harder work than I thought. In the military, your friends are your co-workers. But if you’re the spouse who follows or the kids who change schools, you don’t have co-workers. You have to make friends. Fortunately, most learn how to do this, and it’s a skill you use for the rest of your life.

I’m on the other side of the fence now. I don’t have to make new friends because I’ve lived in the same place for—wait for it!—four whole years! I’m the person who the military has to make friends with. Yay!

I’m going to tell you a dirty little secret now: Some civilians are wary of making friends with military families. Why? Because they move! As hard as it is for military families to pick up and move every two or three years, it’s just as hard to watch your friends leave. One of my civilian friends confessed that when her then-first grade daughter’s best friend moved away, it devastated her child, to the point she was wary of close friendships with military families after that.

There is a key word in that last sentence: close. In my adult life, I can count best friends on one hand, and two of those friends are where I live now. I would be willing to bet that even full-time civilians don’t have more than a couple of best friends, but loads of just friends.

As any military person will tell you, we have loads of friends too. We exchange cards with them every year; sometimes we track them on Facebook; and sometimes we move to the same location again. Even if we lose touch, we’re still friends. These are the friends that come over in the middle of the night to sleep on your couch while you run your sick dog to an emergency vet. They tell you about people they know in the area you’re moving to, so you’ll know someone when you get there. They offer to watch your newborn because your maternity leave is up and your baby is too young for childcare.

So maybe I am on the other side of the fence now, and maybe we’ll never be best friends. But if you come to my hometown, I got your back. Because military people aren’t just friends, they’re family. And I’ll do whatever I have to for my family.

Call me. I’m here for you. ~ AJ

www.AJBrower.com

Look what I found in Dad's gear!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a military spouse, mom of four military brats - and I also write military romances for Berkley and steamy romances for Silhouette Desire. I’m so thrilled Jess invited me to chime in with some of my thoughts on military life!

After 9 moves in 21 years, we’ve settled in Florida, which feels like home to me since I’m a S.C beach girl. (I’m still thawing out after our years in North Dakota, Michigan and Ohio!) We’re planning on retiring here and hope our children will think of this place as home… But then after the transitory lifestyle of a military brat, who knows?!

And speaking of military brats, of course we military families know straight away “brat” isn’t a derogatory term, but rather just what we call a kid who knows the roller coaster life of being an active duty dependent. Sure, many aspects of the lifestyle can be fun and enriching. My four children have lived coast to coast. They have friends from around the world. (How many seven year olds have played Barbies with the daughter of a Mongolian fighter pilot?)

And some aspects can be heart breaking.

Reporting for diaper duty!

When our youngest – Maggie – was in preschool, my husband Rob was tasked to deploy to Europe as a part of the Kosovo Conflict. He gathered all of our children to explain about the war and the role he would play in helping supply food to boys and girls overseas. He pulled out a globe and pointed to where he would stay. The older three kids had lots of questions, but our youngest only had one.

“How will you find your way home again from so very far away?”

My heart broke for her as I thought about how even a few blocks seemed a world away to a four year old. But a whole ocean away? No wonder she worried.

My husband calmly explained, “I’m a navigator. I can always find my way home.”

Satisfied that we’d done all we could, we moved forward with our farewells.

The day after Rob left, Maggie’s preschool teacher stopped me in the carpool line. She had a rather puzzled look on her face. She told me that Maggie had shared a confusing story at show and tell that day.

Maggie had told everyone that her father had gone to war. But not to worry, he would be able to swim home because he was an “alligator.”

Of course I laughed, but I also had a tear in my eye. Little Maggie was too young to know the word navigator, so she’d settled on a similar sounding word to help her understand as best she could. That made me think of all the big worries military children face on a regular basis, concerns far larger than their young minds are ready to wrap around. But they search inside themselves with an inner strength for an understanding that all will be well….

Even if that means picturing their parent morphing into a uniformed alligator.

RENEGADE - on sale now!

There’s a fabulous documentary about the “culture” of being a military brat: BRATS: OUR JOURNEY HOME . Well worth viewing! I hope you’ll also consider donating a copy to your local base/post library so other military families can benefit from the insights.

Thanks bunches for the invitation to join in!! Check out my website FMI on my adventures in military life – as well as the scoop on my current release RENEGADE, book 3 in my “Dark Ops” series from Berkley Sensation. Also, I hope you’ll keep an eye out for my other January release, BOSSMAN’S BABY SCANDAL from Silhouette Desire.

Aim High!
Cathy
Catherine Mann

****

Catherine Mann and family - Our brats know that having the whole family together at Christmas is a gift to treasure!

When you hear the label “military brat” – what comes to mind? What ways have you found to give your military brats a sense of roots even when on the move?

I’m tired of cops, FBI agents and special ops heroes getting all the fun jobs in novels. I mean, how much effort does it take to make one of these career fields sexy, dangerous and appealing? None. Today I start on my campaign to make other military career fields prime for heroic action! Let’s start with public affairs.

I’ve been in public affairs for 25 years. I know special ops career fields tend to be a favorite of authors, but really, what do those guys do? Rescue a few people? Secret squirrel stuff we never hear about? But in PA, our affairs are all public. Seriously public, but in a funny way.

When I was a young 23-year-old Air Force second lieutenant, I got my first hint of what this career would be like. I had to write a fact sheet on a space mission that was to fly on the first polar shuttle launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. (This isn’t secret squirrel stuff. It never happened because Challenger blew up into a billion tiny pieces and NASA needed to focus on getting the shuttle back in the air.) I opened Aviation Week and Space Technology and read an article they’d written on the program, which was called Teal Ruby. With help from the program office, I crafted a brilliant, two-page fact sheet on this stationary system that would sit in the shuttle’s bay and monitor the aurora borealis, among other things. Then I got approval from the project office, and sent the information off for security review from our higher headquarters.

The fact sheet came back classified.

That’s when I learned many engineers call my magazine source for information Aviation Leak and Spy Technology. Oh, and that you shouldn’t believe everything in print. Give me a break! I was 23.

I write romantic suspense, and I admit, I like to leave a few bodies lying around in my novels. Not serial killer type, I can’t think like that. More, how the he** did that happen? This may have been influenced during a court-martial for the death penalty in Britain. A technical sergeant had stabbed a master sergeant several times over the senior ranking man’s flirtation with the other man’s wife. For those internationally savvy folks out there, the U.K. doesn’t have the death penalty, so the media were all over us. And as the ranking PA officer on base (by now I was a first lieutenant), it was my job to keep things orderly.

The court room sat 12 audience members, outside the legal teams, the judge and the jury. No room for reporters, so we’d take them into the courtroom before and after sessions and let them film it empty. I took a television crew in one day and the sound man picked up a photo off the prosecutor’s desk to do a camera lighting check. The white on the back of the photo was perfect for this task. But as he held up the photo, I saw what was on the other side: the bloody body of the master sergeant.

“Please don’t turn the photo over,” I tried to say as off-handedly as possible. “If you do, I’ll have to confiscate your film.” The sound man raised his eyebrows when he saw the photo and fortunately did not turn the picture over. I haven’t a clue how to confiscate film. But I imagine it would involve calling in armed security forces and really big headlines in the news.

Then there was the time I was offered black market goods in Moscow. Operation PROVIDE HOPE was public relations move to get European nations to help send food and medicine to agencies that lost their government support when the Soviet Union broke up. We PA folks were supposed to be taking media on flights with our humanitarian cargo. My AP reporter backed out on me while we were on a stop in Moscow, on our way to Ulan Ude, Siberia. In February. It was snowing in Moscow and as I turned around from the pay phone I’d just used, a man approached me, his hand holding his coat closed. He said in English as he opened his coat, “Would you like to buy a ham?”

Yes. In a large pocket inside his coat was the highly coveted canned ham of Moscow. I fought off laughing, even as I realized how desperate things must have been there at the time.

The life of public affairs officer is filled with unique experiences that many special ops men would question participating in. I fought off dozens of international media when the Yugoslavs got lucky and took out an F-117 stealth fighter jet during the Kosovo war. It was my job to keep the information out of the news while those search and rescue guys (yes, special ops) did their job of rescuing the pilot. For six hours we answered, “I have no information I can give you on that.” (That’s secret PA code for “I have information on that, but I can’t give it to you.” Not a lie, but also not what the media wants to hear.) More recently, it was reporters trying to find out information after CNN reported a C-17 cargo jet had crashed in Texas. It hadn’t, and it takes a while to find the whereabouts of nearly 200 planes to make sure we weren’t missing one.

There’s also the time the water in India attacked me. Believe me, when the flight surgeon says don’t drink the water, don’t even brush your teeth in it! I’d like to see anyone do their job horizontal on KC-10 flying over the Burma Hump. (Okay, so even PA can’t work with dysentery.) And then there was the community group we took to Berlin to see U.S. operations there. Five hours after we left, the Berlin Wall came down. We’re good. Real good.

I’d like to see those special ops guys do that. Or better: let’s make them talk to a reporter. You know, that secret squirrel stuff makes it hard for them to answer questions. Yes, that’s right. You would need a public affairs trained professional to do that.

1.  How did you know you wanted to be a writer?  And at what age?
I never really sat down and decided I wanted to be a writer.  I was a reader.  As a kid I read everything.  I lived in the library.  I used to make up stories in my head.  When I moved to the Orient after getting off active duty in the army to study martial arts, I had some time on my hands and the original 512K Mac.  So I just started writing.

2.  When you started writing how long was it before you sold your first novel?
I didn’t even think of selling my first manuscript.  I was well into my second when someone read my first and said “Hey, this is like a real book.”  The light bulb went on, I peddled my bike down to the local US Army post and got an old copy of the Writers Market in the library.  I then proceeded to do everything wrong.  Also, submitting from the Far East is a little difficult.  It took three years.  And breaking the rules.  I didn’t even know agents existed.  I got so frustrated I sent my query to everyone and got a call from an editor about my novel—except he worked at a non-fiction publisher.  But he liked it and he knew an agent and yada yada yada.

This steep learning curve I’ve experienced as an author over 20 years is a big reason I’m doing my Warrior Writer workshops.  I want to teach writers how to be authors, using the strategies and tactics of the Special Forces and my experiences.  I really see a big gap in the publishing paradigm, where publishers and agents expect a new author to somehow ‘absorb’ what it takes to be successful and Warrior Writer fills that gap.  It also focuses on those psychological and practical blocks that may keep you from being the best writer you could be.  In essence, I focus on the writer during this workshop, not the writing.

3.  Are you a Plotter or a Pantser?
I used to be a plotter. Working with Jennifer Crusie really helped me a lot.  Elizabeth George has been beating me up for years about character—just got an email from her this morning reference that.  And she lives two miles away.  Now, I’m a bit of both, but I think the key to a great book is intriguing characters.  I’m rewriting a manuscript right now and my mantra is to go from “Big plot/little characters” to “Big characters/little plot”.  I’m cutting the hell out of my favorite parts of the book—ie info-dump—and focusing on the characters.  Scaling back the plot tremendously.

4.  What genre do you write?   How did you choose it?  Is there only one you write in? I’ve written in a lot of genres.  Started in military thriller.  Slid into science thriller.  Then science fiction.  Then my own invented genre of techno-myth, mixing technology and mythology.  Non-fiction with Novel Writers Toolkit, Hunting Al Qaeda and Who Dares Wins.  Romantic Suspense with Jennifer.  I’m back to thriller now.

5.  I’m assuming you were an avid reader too.  Is that correct?  What did you like to read?   Was there an author who inspired you?
I think to be a decent writer you have to be a voracious reader.  I remember being very young and finding this hardcover, tattered book in the library titled The Hobbit.  I was so thrilled when I went back and saw there were three more books by the same author.  I read about 50-50 fiction/non-fiction now.  I tend not to read in the genres I write in to avoid subconscious problems.  Off the top of my head:  Richard Russo, Dennis Lehane, Larry McMurtry, Pat Conroy come to mind.  I love watching some TV series and following the writing:  Battlestar Gallactica was brilliant; as was Rome, Deadwood, Sopranos.  The Wire was great over seven seasons.  I search for the subtle stuff—the character development and foreshadowing that most viewers don’t consciously see.

6.  Did you ever start a book – then abandoned it or never finished it?  Why?
I’ve got a completed manuscript sitting in a drawer that I think is great, but it isn’t the right time.  I only stopped halfway through once—Random House wanted a big hardcover to follow my Area 51 series and I started a book titled I, JUDAS.  An Armageddon type story with Judas still alive in the Amazon.  It got rejected on the half-finished version, and well, it’s half-finished.  I will finish it some day.

And just today the work in progress I mentioned above– I took the trusty .45 and shot it.  I wrote it over the course of two years of great grief and the inconsistency of my emotions showed up in the writing.  So that’s another 116,000 words stuffed in a drawer, but you have to put out the best possible material, especially in today’s market.

7.  Do any events or instants from your real life show up in your books?  I mean it may have started that way – but then you’d fictionalize them?
My first manuscript, Dragon Sim-13 was based on a real mission my Special Forces A-Team had conducted.    Because I knew the story, I could focus on writing the book.  A lot of my heroes tend to be ex-Special Forces guys for some reason.  Then there were all the times I was abducted by aliens and was on the mothership– that showed up in my Area 51 series.

8.  What kind of writing schedule do you have?   If you have a set number of pages or words a day – have there been any days you’ve missed the set number? What happened? No.  Elizabeth George does five pages a day.  Every day.  That’s her routine.  Nora Roberts does 8 hours a day, every day.  I used to be  a burst writer.  But I’ve decided that the discipline those writers show is something I am going to emulate.  I think you have to sit down every day and force yourself to do it no matter what you feel.

9.  What advice would you give a beginning writer? Learn the craft.  Too many people want to be artists before they learn the craft.  Be open-minded to learning and to changing what you’re doing.  It isn’t going to write itself.

10.  How long have you been an RWA member? How has the association helped you?  That’s the other piece of advice I would give:  I’ve been in RWA for about six years now and it’s the most professional writing organization out there and I’ve been a member of most.  I didn’t network enough early in my career.  I actually used to boast I’d never my agent or any of my editors face to face.  That’s incredibly stupid looking back on it.  It is a people business.  I’ve been through three agents and am on my fourth.  It’s an emotional relationship as well as a business one.

11.    Tell us something about yourself that would surprise your readers?
I’m not as bad as people think I am.  I’m only drawn that way.

12.    Can you share with us an inspiring story or event that’s helped make you the successful Author you are today?
I think persistence counts a lot.  Many talented people quit and go home.  When my A-Team would be making an overland movement, carrying rucksacks weighing well over a hundred pounds along with our weapons and other gear, I would want to just keep going forever.  My team sergeant had to force me to stop and take five-minute breaks every hour for the rest of the guys.  That determination has defined my writing career and that of many successful authors in RWA:  they’ve failed, picked themselves up, re-invented themselves, and kept going.

And as always: Some Cool Gus.  Except this is studious Gus.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear..
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..

To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue… an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall..”

” So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

PLEASE, would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many
people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our
U.S service men and women for our being able to celebrate these
festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people
stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq