Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Matthew McClintock Posthumously Received the Silver Star.

Green Berets honored with Silver Star and eight other valor awards
Army Times
Michelle Tan
May 6, 2016

“These men are heroes, plain and simple,” said Maj. Gen. Bret Daugherty, adjutant general of the Washington National Guard, during the ceremony, according to information released by the Army. “They don’t boast. They don’t draw undue attention to themselves. They just get the job done.”

Sgt. 1st Class Matthew McClintock posthumously received the Silver Star.

(Photo: Courtesy Alexandra McClintock)

As the bullets rained down around him, Staff Sgt. Michael Sargent dragged a fallen Afghan soldier to safety.

Then, without hesitation or concern about his own safety, the Green Beret entered the courtyard in southern Afghanistan again to recover the body of a second fallen Afghan soldier and help a wounded teammate get to cover.

For his actions on that day in December, Sargent was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor.

Sargent and several other members of A Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group were honored last Friday for their actions during their recent deployment to Afghanistan.

In all, the soldiers earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V device, six Army Commendation Medals with V device, and one Purple Heart.In all, the soldiers earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V device, six Army Commendation Medals with V device, and one Purple Heart. read more here

Researchers Forget Emotions Tied To Memories

When will researchers understand there is a lot more going on in the human mind than just remembering? I keep hoping they will do a study involving everything that makes us, us. Our minds hold emotions tied to the memories they want us to just forget.

Memory study shows how people can intentionally forget past experiences
News Medical Life Sciences and Medicine
Published on May 6, 2016

Context plays a big role in our memories, both good and bad. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" on the car radio, for example, may remind you of your first love -- or your first speeding ticket. But a Dartmouth- and Princeton-led brain scanning study shows that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories.

The findings have a range of potential applications centered on enhancing desired memories, such as developing new educational tools, or diminishing harmful memories, including treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The study appears in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. A PDF is available on request.

Since Ancient Greece, memory theorists have known that we use context -- or the situation we're in, including sights, sounds, smells, where we are, who we are with -- to organize and retrieve our memories. But the Dartmouth- and Princeton-led team wanted to know whether and how people can intentionally forget past experiences. They designed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to specifically track thoughts related to memories' contexts, and put a new twist on a centuries-old psychological research technique of having subjects memorize and recall a list of unrelated words. In the new study, researchers showed participants images of outdoor scenes, such as forests, mountains and beaches, as they studied two lists of random words, manipulating whether they were told to forget or remember the first list prior to studying the second list.
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There is a long list of times when I almost died and a few others when it was not a matter of I could have died, but I should have died according to doctors treating me. The first time I heard those words I was only five after a series of things going wrong. Long story short, another kid pushed me off a slide. Not down it, but over the side of it at a drive-in movie. When my older brother found me, he thought I was dead but I was just knocked out. At the hospital, the doctor read the X-ray wrong and missed the crack in my scull and she also missed the signs of a concussion. She told my parents to take me home and let me get a good night sleep. Worst thing to do with a concussion and head trauma. The next day I was rushed to another hospital because my eyelid was swollen and I had a hard time talking. Turned out the doctor couldn't figure out why I was still alive.

The next time it was eight months after my daughter was born. I walked around with an infection that was not treated properly and my system turned septic. My doctor said he had never seen a bacteria count that high on a live patient and he was not sure why I was still alive.

Other times when stuff tried to end me included a violent alcoholic Dad up until I was thirteen and an ex-husband who tried to kill me, car accident and other health problems and then the usual bad memories of losing people I loved.

Every memory is tied to my soul/spirit but none of them have control over my life simply because I made peace with all of them while they are still a part of who I am today. The only way to make peace with the things that I survived was to forgive when someone did it to me and view the rest of the things as surviving them.

Making peace with each time was not easy but it was harder to go through them than to deal with them.

Even after all these years, going to a hospital will bring back memories of being a patient in them. Seeing a movie with a drive-in movie as a location brings back the memory of the night going from being a family night out to one of the worst nights of my life. It set off a chain of events including my Dad going from drinking some beers into a full-blown rage filled alcoholic blaming everyone including himself for my close call with death. He especially blamed my older brother for letting me get away from him. A very heavy burden to place on a twelve year old.

My Mom and my brothers never forgave him for the way he was during all those years even when he went to AA and got sober. They hung onto all the negative memories and it ate at their souls robbing them from all the good feelings that could have replaced the bad ones.

Until researchers stop thinking about our brains as if they are simply a super computer with files they can delete, they will never figure out a way to properly treat us with all that comes with that is tied to our memories.

Invictus Games Competitor Lauren Montoya Still Fit For Duty

Invictus Games competitor Lauren Montoya says adaptive sports 're-lit that fire in me to find myself again'
ESPN
Tom Friend
Senior Writer
May 7, 2016

"The injury wasn't the hardest part; it was being taken away from Afghanistan before she was supposed to. There wasn't the transition time of, 'OK, I'm going home now, I'm ready, I've finished my job.' Now her job was just to lay in a bed. She's a go-getter. She can't just lay there. That's just not how she lives."

THE EARTH MOVED under her feet. That is Lauren Montoya's memory of war -- a constant rumble from the ground on up. Every sound, human or otherwise, was guttural, and she always had this sixth and seventh sense that someone was watching her, trying to kill her. For most of her stay in Afghanistan, she was a gunner stationed in an armored truck, her finger on the trigger of a 50-caliber machine gun, her job to have four eyes in the back of her head. There was no mental break allowed. The stress of it all was supposed to be trained out of her at boot camp, but that's only in theory. The reality was that Montoya's insides were always rumbling along with the earth. Until nighttime came.

Gunners get to shut their eyes, too. Montoya would slip into her sleeping bag each night at 3 a.m., in the middle of a Kandahar desert, and stare up at the stars. The sky seemed wider, brighter and more 3D in Afghanistan, almost mystical. The air felt fresher. She says maybe it was the juxtaposition between beauty and hate. But for whatever reason, the ground stopped moving for her at night. "We were in a war zone,'' she says. "There are enemy dudes watching us, and we can hear them over the radio. But it was probably one of the most peaceful and tranquil moments that I've ever had.''

All these months later, in San Antonio, Texas, that is the vision that keeps coming back to Lauren Montoya. Safe in her apartment, along with her wife, her daughter and her prosthetic, she lives for those Afghanistan nights. They are in her dreams and daydreams. They fuel her.

It is why she runs.

Soon enough, she received the news: The Army deemed her fit for duty. In other words, she was as qualified as any other able-bodied person to defend her country.
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Yarnell Hotshot Firefighter Remembers 19 Brothers Lost That Day

The Yarnell Hill Fire killed 19 firefighters — The lone survivor shares his story KPCC Staff
May 06, 2016

He said that he'll be battling survivor's guilt for the rest of his life and continues to struggle with PTSD.

"The things that I saw and the things that I've been through have just been branded into my mind," McDonough said.

A photo from Brendan McDonough's book, "My Lost Brothers." MCCARTIN/DANIELS PR

On June 30, 2013, the Granite Mountain Hotshots responded to a wildfire in Yarnell, Arizona. The specially-trained wildland firefighters were met by a 3,000-degree firestorm that eventually took the lives of 19 firefighters from Prescott, Arizona within minutes, leaving a sole survivor: Brendan McDonough.

Four of those firefighters had Southern California roots. McDonough reflects on his life and the fire which burned 8,000 acres in his new book, "My Lost Brothers: The Untold Story by the Yarnell Hill Fire's Lone Survivor," and he spoke with KPCC.

McDonough said that he wanted to be a firefighter since he was 13 or 14. He was advised to become a "hotshot" — the firefighters who are sent to fight wildfires in remote spots — because it meant the opportunity to travel and see the country.

McDonough said that he was going down a bad path and that joining the Granite Mountain Hotshots when he was 19 saved his life.

"The journey I was headed down before I got hired was not a good one. I was a drug addict. Six months before I got hired, I was just released out of jail," McDonough said. He'd been using heroin.

McDonough credits the Granite Mountain hotshots with turning him from who he was into who he is today.

"The guys that I worked with were just humble, caring, passionate, just amazing men that weren't only training me to be a firefighter, but to be a good dad," McDonough said. He has a young daughter.
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Stolen Valor Airborne, Navy Seal, Pilot Colonel with the CIA?

STOLEN VALOR ALERT ! WALMART IN MARGATE FLORIDA

The Militaria Collecting Channel
Newest stolen valor in Margate, Florida! 

In a Walmart! Guy says he is a Colonel, CIA, Airborne, and a Navy SEAL! He has over 20 ribbons and random pins. This video was first posted by Jonathan Borrero on Facebook, this is a republication and is not being stolen. 

Thank you for viewing and let's find this man!!!

The guys also has a CIA Badge! Proves you can buy just about anything you want without having to actually pay for it!