Fort Jackson’s 51st Commanding General marks 100 years of family service

This general’s family: From segregation to command in 100 years

The Associated Press
By: Christina L. Myers
March 17, 2019

"That was one thing I did reflect on. Somebody at some point in time said your particular race can't do that," Beagle said. "At some point our ancestors fought so we could be in those front-line units and those combat units."

Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr., commander of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, speaks to the president of the Sgt. Isaac Woodard Historical Marker Association following the dedication ceremony in Batesburg-Leesville, S.C., last month. The general is descended from a soldier who served at Camp Jackson in a segregated Army more than a century ago. (Christina Myers/AP)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Pvt. Walter Beagles arrived at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, in 1918, an African American draftee in a segregated Army that relegated black soldiers to labor battalions out of a prejudiced notion that they couldn’t fight.

More than 100 years later, his great-grandson now serves as Fort Jackson’s 51st commanding general.

Brig. Gen. Milford Beagle Jr., a combat veteran who took command last June, admits that it gets to him, knowing he’s serving where his ancestor served but under vastly different circumstances.

"It does become pretty surreal to know that the gates my great-grandfather came through are the same gates I come through," Beagle said. "You always reflect back to you're standing on somebody's shoulders. Somebody put that stair in place so you can move one more rung up."

Beagle hails from the same town where his great-grandfather came from: Enoree, South Carolina. The family dropped the "s'' from the end of its name during his grandfather's lifetime.

He says he felt compelled to enter the infantry as a young man at least partly because African Americans once were largely shunted aside — considered inferior and unsuited to combat.
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Fire Dept Captain saved "brother" and US Navy veteran

Firefighter honored for saving colleague from suicide

EastIdahoNews.com
Nate Eaton
East Idaho Real Heroes
March 14, 2019

POCATELLO — Dustin Hale was ready to end it all.

The Pocatello firefighter had decided life wasn’t worth it and didn’t care to live anymore.

“I had reached a point where I couldn’t see a way out,” Hale says.

Hale served ten years in the U.S. Navy before joining the department where he worked for five and a half years.

He was a paramedic and dealt with traumatic, life and death situations nearly every day.

“You take those images home and you see all that pain and suffering and some people are ok with it,” Hale tells EastIdahoNews.com. “I seem to absorb all that and take it with me all the time.”

The PTSD from his job led to insomnia and Hale would sometimes go two or three days without sleeping. He turned to alcohol and it got to the point where he could no longer do his job.

“I knew that I wasn’t the person I would want showing up to take care of me,” Hale says.

Hale’s behavior was so bad the department needed to let him go but on the day he was supposed to meet with administrators, he never showed up.

“I reached out to try and contact him and was unable to get a hold of him,” recalls Pocatello Fire Captain Andy Moldenhauer.

Moldenhauer didn’t feel right about Hale’s absence so he met up with Hale’s sister and went to his house.

“The fire department is a brotherhood and I relayed to him that even if he was no longer an employee of the fire department, he was still a brother,” Moldenhauer says.

Those work brothers spoke for four hours with Hale initially refusing to even think about getting help.

“He admitted to having a gun in his mouth earlier that day and that was the point when I tried to turn his experience as a paramedic on him and say, ‘You’ve now obligated me to stay here,'” Moldenhauer says.

Eventually, Hale agreed to go the VA Salt Lake City Center and Moldenhauer, along with a battalion chief, drove him to Utah.
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Two hotel employees fired over double crossing military and veterans

Colorado Springs hotel apologizes after employees refuse to serve military

KOAA
Tom Kackley
March 15, 2019

COLORADO SPRINGS – The DoubleTree by Hilton in Colorado Springs posted an apology to its Facebook page Friday afternoon for refusing to serve members of the military at the hotel’s bar Thursday night.

Hundreds of Facebook users shared a photo of a sign at the bar that read “NO LONGER SERVING MILITARY PERSONNEL and THEIR GUEST(S)” posted by Aimee Osbourne this morning.

The woman who posted the photo with commentary about the sign has since removed the post due to all of the negative commentary.

News5 spoke with Osbourne about her post and the reaction by staff. The number one thing Osbourne wants everyone to know is there is no ill will towards Doubletree Colorado Springs. She says she did not write the post with the intent of starting problems.

“I’m regretful that anyone had to lose their livelihood,” Osbourne said.

Daniel Kammerer, General Manager of the hotel, said two employees “acted without the proper authority” to exclude service members from the bar. According to the post, both employees are “no longer employed at the property.”
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Hate denied by love defined at Christchurch

Time a time again, someone decides to act out of hate against people who have nothing to do with what is a boiling rage against them. 

Yet, time and time again, we see that one act followed by hundreds of acts based on love.

All too often, when something like this shatters the "normal" life experience, we ask "Where was God" but if you look, you can see Him everywhere.

You see him when someone else puts their own life on the line, sacrificing themselves to save another. You see it when, with every reason to fear another attack, people show up in case they can help someone else.

You see it when a Father saves his son from bullets, so he may live on. When police officers rush to help, not knowing if they will ever return to their own homes. Other first responders run toward the wounded, not knowing if they will be next to need rescuing.

When you go to the link, there is a video and a young woman, crying, says "This is not who we are. This will not define us." And it won't because in return for the one action of a person filled with hate, love responded.

New Zealand Attacks: Quick Action, Near Miss and Courage in Christchurch

The New York Times
By Damien Cave
March 17, 2019

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Abdul Aziz was praying with his four sons in the Linwood Mosque when he heard the gunshots. Rather than run from the noise, he ran toward it, grabbed the first thing he could find — a credit card machine — and flung it at the attacker.

The man dropped a shotgun, and Mr. Aziz picked it up. “I pulled the trigger, and there was nothing,” he recalled. The gunman ran to his car, where he had other weapons, and Mr. Aziz followed, throwing the shotgun at the vehicle and shattering a window.

Mr. Aziz’s actions, which he and others described in interviews, may have prompted the gunman to speed away rather than return to kill more people. Minutes later, two police officers from another town who were in the area rammed the suspect’s car into a curb and took him into custody, ending the worst mass murder in New Zealand’s modern history.

But interviews with dozens of survivors, and an analysis of a video recorded by the attacker as well as one made of his arrest by a bystander, suggest that the violence ended after a near miss by the police at the first mosque — and acts of courage during and after the attack on the second.

If not for the two police officers, who have not been publicly identified, and Mr. Aziz, 48, a ponytailed furniture shop owner who fled Afghanistan a quarter-century ago, the slaughter might have continued. The suspect had two other guns in his car, the police said, as well as two homemade explosives
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Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Peoria

'The Wall That Heals': Hundreds visit traveling replica of Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Peoria

Arizona Republic
Nathan J. Fish
March 16, 2019

Ballman walked over to another section of the wall, getting down on his knees and pointing to another name near the bottom, Alton L Staples III. Ballman knew him as Tony.

Staples and Ballman were in the Boy Scouts together before Staples dropped out of high school to join the military at age 17.

George Ballman looks at the name of his fallen friend at a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Pleasant Harbor at Lake Pleasant in Peoria on March 16, 2019. Nathan J. Fish/The Republic

As hundreds of visitors walked along the traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Peoria to search for the names of their family and loved ones, George Ballman, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, held back tears as he remembered his fallen friends.

"You stand back and you walk through and you look at all these names," Ballman said. "They had a life, they had a family, they were real people. They played baseball, they played golf, they were kids."

Ballman gestured to one name in a sea of thousands on the wall, Harvey M. Reynolds — Mike, he called him.

"He got killed in a chopper accident, he was a mechanic … he went up in the chopper to help the pilot troubleshoot the problem," Ballman said. "He didn't make it back."

Ballman, a snowbird from Missouri, decided to volunteer at the park to help set up, but after experiencing multiple emotional moments, he decided to keep volunteering throughout the weekend.
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U.S. Air Force couldn't stop the Mighty Missouri River

'It was a lost cause': Air Force gives up fight to stop water at Offutt; one-third of base is flooded

Omaha World Herald
Steve Liewer
March 17, 2019

"The water came in and overtook us." Lt. Col. Vance Goodfellow

Even the U.S. Air Force couldn't stop the Mighty Missouri River from flooding Offutt Air Force Base.

Between Saturday night and early Sunday, the 55th Wing called off a 30-hour, round-the-clock sandbagging effort because the floodwaters were rising too fast.

"It was a lost cause. We gave up," said Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake, a 55th Wing spokeswoman.

By Sunday morning, one-third of the base was underwater, she said. About 60 structures have been damaged, mostly on the south end of the base.

Of the base's 200 buildings, 30 are completely inundated with as much as 8 feet of water, including the 55th Wing headquarters building, the E-4B Nightwatch hangar and the Bennie Davis Maintenance Facility. About 3,000 feet of the base's 11,700-foot runway are submerged.
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Would you help them if they needed you?

Who are you driving away? 

PTSD Patrol
Kathie Costos
March 17, 2019

Today is St. Patrick's Day. Tradition says that he drove snakes out of Ireland. That got me thinking about driving other things away, like the people in your life. 

So who are you driving away? Are you pushing people away so they do not see you as being vulnerable? Weaker than they thought you were? 

What is it that keeps you from seeing that you would feel terrible if someone needed you, but pushed you away instead.

St. Patrick

St. Patrick, (flourished 5th century, Britain and Ireland; feast day March 17), patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians.

Healing takes a triple play like the trinity. Mind-body and spirit. Leave one out and you will not heal as well as you would by taking care of all the things that make you...you.

Before the end of the 7th century, Patrick had become a legendary figure, and the legends have continued to grow. One of these would have it that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction. Patrick himself wrote that he raised people from the dead, and a 12th-century hagiography places this number at 33 men, some of whom are said to have been deceased for many years. He also reportedly prayed for the provision of food for hungry sailors traveling by land through a desolate area, and a herd of swine miraculously appeared. Another legend, probably the most popular, is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk. Traditionally, Irishmen have worn shamrocks, the national flower of Ireland, in their lapels on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

St. Patrick took care of poor sailors..what if they were too proud to accept his help? 

Well, that happens all the time...especially when you were the one who made it your job to save other people. Bet you didn't stop to see that it was the same career choice everyone you serve with made too. 

Would you help them if they needed you? Then what's stopping you from asking them for help to stay instead of pushing them away?

Don't give me the stigma crap. If you spent a fraction of the time you use to cover up the pain, on learning what is causing it, the stigma would be proven to be a grim fairy tale. It would not even exist.
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Vietnam veteran Neil Schaffer, lived on skid row, honored at City Hall

Vietnam Veteran Who Died in Skid Row Honored Outside City Hall

NBC 4 News
By City News Service
Published Mar 14, 2019

Neil Schaffer died of cancer last year in room at the Madison Hotel.

Friends of a homeless Vietnam veteran who died last year after living for decades in the Skid Row neighborhood organized a brief military memorial for him Thursday on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall.

Vietnam Veteran Neil Schaffer was remembered at Los Angeles City Hall.

Neil Schaffer, whose friends said he fell through the cracks of society but lived a quiet, peaceful life, died of cancer last Aug. 19 in a room at the Madison Hotel.

Some Skid Row residents raised the funds for Schaffer's cremation, and the ceremony included the release of a dove.

Retired U.S. Air Force Chaplain Doc Cohen, who oversaw the ceremony, said Schaffer served in the military as a carpenter from 1971 to 1973 before being honorably discharged.

"And then it all went downhill. And he struggled. He tried, he got a job, he lost a job, whatever he could do, it wasn't enough, and he died on the streets right here in L.A.," Cohen said.

Another ceremony will be held at Los Angeles National Cemetery on March 31, Cohen said.

The Los Angeles National Cemetery has been closed to new interments of servicemen for decades, but Schaffer's ashes will among the first interred in a columbarium that is opening up there this summer, Cohen said.

Eriq Moreno was one of the friends of Schaffer who helped organize the City Hall service. Although he has a home and career now, Moreno said he met Schaffer about 17 years ago in Skid Row when he was homeless.

"He offered me shelter, and he became a really close friend and a father figure mostly, because I never had one," Moreno said. "When his situation with his health got worse, I knew I had to be there all the way, and I was, and he kind of left me in charge of his arrangements. He made a good change in the world and I just wanted someone to acknowledge that."
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Alive Day 50 years later Vietnam Veteran met Medic

50 years later, Orlando Vietnam veteran meets medic who saved him: 'Thank you! Thank you!'

Orlando Sentinel
Kate Santich
March 15, 2019

“All this time, we were living just a couple of counties apart,” said Joyner, shaking his head at the man across the table. “All this time, I just wanted to thank him for saving my life.”

Longwood’s Dennis Joyner had to wait 50 years to thank the man who saved his life in Vietnam.

Joyner, now 70, was a 20-year-old infantryman with a wife and newborn son on June 26, 1969, when he tripped a landmine while on patrol. The explosion blew off one of his legs and shredded the other so badly it had to be amputated. It took off his left arm below the elbow.

He might easily have bled to death or died of shock or infection. But a young medic with a Tennessee accent sprinted to his side, helping to tie a series of tourniquets around his limbs, administering morphine and ferrying him to a medevac helicopter.

On Friday, at the Old Florida Grill and Oyster House near Cocoa, one of Dewey “Doc” Hayes’ favorite haunts, Joyner finally got the chance he’d wanted for half a century.

The words rushed out in a torrent.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he said, his body shaking with emotion as Hayes, now 70 too, embraced him.

“I’ve been trying to find you for so damn long,” Joyner said. “You been hiding?”

After five surgeries and five months in various hospitals, Joyner had gone back to college before working as a court administrator in Pennsylvania and as a volunteer for the Disabled American Veterans, the organization created by Congress to help wounded vets and their families. In 1977, he was named the nation's “Handicapped American of the Year,” and he served as national commander of the DAV in 1983 and ’84, work he continues to this day.
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Audit finds links to preventing suicides missing in Marine Corps

A Navy audit says the Marine Corps could do better at suicide prevention

Marine Corps Times
By: Shawn Snow
March 14, 2019

The Marine Corps wasn't adequately providing links on its websites to the Veterans Crisis Line, a Navy audit found. (Sgt. Priscilla Sneden/Marine Corps)

A Navy audit concluded in 2018 found that the Corps was not complying with guidance and instructions required by the secretary of the Navy that aids in suicide prevention. Specifically, the Marine Corps was not adequately providing links on its webpages to the Veterans Crisis Line.

The audit, obtained by Marine Corps Times via a Freedom of Information Act request, found that none of the 43 reviewed Marine Corps command websites included a link to the crisis line.

A previous 2012 audit found that 54 percent of the Marine websites it searched did not have a suicide crisis link or phone number, and recommendations from that report were still in an “open status” as of March 2018. The 2018 audit was published in June 2018.

Suicide prevention is a serious issue in the Corps as the force faces suicide levels at a 10-year high.

In 2018, 75 Marines ended their lives, the majority of those Marines were under the age of 25 and had no overseas deployment experience.

“When suicide crisis links and phone numbers are not prominently advertised on Marine Corps Web sites, there is a missed opportunity to facilitate and encourage Marines to seek assistance in a critical time of need,” the audit reads.
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*******

I was at an event last year, when a veteran Marine said that their suicide numbers were down. Knowing they were not, I asked where he heard that. He said from the DOD report. Since I track the reports available to the public, I knew he was wrong. I still find it very interesting that too many people will hear a rumor on social media, believe it is true, claim it was from the Department of Defense...and discover they do not even check that.