THE FRIDAY FOTO (July 28, 2023)

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE COBRA.

(U.S. Army photo by Sergeant Nicholas Ramshaw) Click on photo to enlarge image.

Sergeant Major 1st Class Boworn Pompang, a Special Warfare School Instructor with the Royal Thai Army, teaches — with what appears to be a King Cobra — snake familiarization to U.S. and Thai soldiers during exercise Hanuman Guardian 2023 at the Special Warfare School in Lop Buri, Thailand on July 12, 2023.

Hanuman Guardian is an annual, bilateral army-to-army exercise hosted by the Royal Thai Army with elements from U.S. Army Pacific. The exercise is designed to improve humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities and enhance mission readiness and interoperability between the two armies. At the same time exercise participants work to improve the quality of life in rural areas.

For a short video about the jungle warfare training and a brief interview with the Sergeant Major, click here.

ROBOTS, DROIDS and DRONES: Air Commando Drone Makes History

DEFENSE.

An Air Force MQ-9 Reaper lands for the first time ever on a dirt landing zone during an Air Force Special Operations Command exercise near Fort Stockton, Texas, June 15, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo Airman 1st Class Alysa Calvarese )

Air Commando Drone Making History.

At a remote air strip just south of Fort Stockton in West Texas on June 15, 2023, airmen from five U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command units conducted the first ever MQ-9 Reaper drone landing on a dirt landing zone.

“This team of aircrew, maintainers, and special tactics Airmen have proven the Reaper can operate anywhere in the world and is no longer beholden to the ‘leash’ of perfectly paved runways or line-of-sight antennas traditionally used to take off and land the aircraft,” said Lieutenant Colonel Brian Flanigan, operations director of the 2nd Special Operations Squadron.

Historically, the MQ-9 Reaper, a large drone (or remotely piloted aircraft, as the Air Force prefers) has taken off and landed via line of sight of antennas, with aircrew members manually flying the aircraft. Now the MQ-9 can literally take off and land from anywhere in the world.

Flanigan noted this new concept meets the Air Force Reserve Command’s priorities of ‘Ready Now’ and transforming for the future.

“This capability will be critical in ‘tomorrow’s fight’ and nests perfectly with the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept that focuses on smaller footprints, distributed operations and increased survivability while generating combat power,” said Flanigan. “We are demonstrating what is possible when you leverage Citizen Air Commandos and our diverse backgrounds to take an existing capability like [Satellite Launch and Recovery] and apply it to the future fight.”

In addition to the 2nd Special Operations Squadron, the 727th Special Operations Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and 311th Special Operations Intelligence Squadron teamed up with Airmen from 26th Special Tactics Squadron out of Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico to make history.

The 12th Aircraft Maintenance Unit from the 727th Special Operations Aircraft Maintenance Squadron supported the effort with a very small footprint in an austere location using (ACE) techniques, tactics and procedures it developed. Read more here.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (June 9, 2023)

PLEASED TO MEET YOUR HIGHNESS.

(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sergeant Rodney Roldan)

At 6-foot-6, Spain’s King Felipe VI towers over U.S. soldiers at San Gregorio, Spain on May 18, 2023. Assigned to the 159th General Support Aviation Brigade of the Army Reserve Aviation Command, these troops are in Spain for exercise Swift Response 23.

Swift Response is the first of three major exercises linked to DEFENDER 23, a U.S. Army Europe and Africa-led exercise focused on the strategic deployment of U.S. forces and the ability to conduct large-scale operations at the battalion and brigade levels. Swift Response 23 features the Spanish airborne brigade, Brigada Paracaidista, leading three near-simultaneous airborne operations in Estonia, Greece and Spain.

Having received training (1985–88) at each of Spain’s armed service academies, Felipe was commissioned as an officer in the army, navy, and air force and was certified as a helicopter pilot.  After earning a law degree in 1993 from Madrid’s Autonomous University, he received a master’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University in 1995.

Felipe succeeded his father Juan Carlos as king in 2014.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (April 7, 2023)

FLY ME TO THE MOON

(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff SERGEANT Nicholas Ross) Click on photo to enlarge image.

U.S. Air Force Captain Lindsay “MAD” Johnson  flies her A-10C Thunderbolt II jet with a heavenly backdrop over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona on March 26, 2023.

Johnson was certified the new A-10C Thunderbolt II Demonstration Team’s pilot and commander, by Air Combat Command chief General Mark Kelly just 13 days earlier on March 3, 2023.

As the Demonstration Team pilot, Johnson is responsible for showcasing the A-10 Thunderbolt II at over 20 airshows annually around the country and internationally. As commander, she is also responsible for leadership of a 10-person team that includes maintenance and public affairs Airmen.

During her performance on March 26, Johnson — a veteran instructor pilot, who has amassed over 1,250 flight hours, including 431 combat flight hours in support of both Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and the Resolute Support Mission — showcased different aerial maneuvers, including simulated gun runs,  highlighting the A-10’s capabilities as the Air Force’s close air support fighter.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (March 31, 2023)

DOING IT BACKWARDS, AND IN … SKIS.

(U.S. Army National Guard photo by Staff Sergeant Max Archambault) Please click on the photo to enlarge the image.

U.S. Army Sergeant Hunter Johnson conducts a mountain rappel during training for the Edelweiss Raid, on February 26, 2023 at Training Area Lizum, Innsbruck, Austria.

The Edelweiss Raid is an international, military competition sponsored by Austria’s bundesheer [national army] designed to test the alpine skills of mountain soldiers. Competitors must be able to quickly transition from skis to technical mountaineering and back into skis to overcome obstacles on the course.

The Edelweiss Raid covers 40 kilometers with an overall rise in elevation of 4,000 meters. The competition includes up to 12 stations with required military tasks, including high-angle shooting, call for fire, and mountain casualty evacuation. The event intends to challenge soldiers, foster camaraderie, and build relations between mountain warfighters across the world.

Sergeant Hunter is an instructor at the Army Mountain Warfare School, operated by the Vermont Army National Guard at Camp Ethan Allen Training Site, Jericho, Vermont.

For the record, of the 22 participating teams, 18 finished the grueling two-day competition. According to the event’s Facebook page, Germany’s  Mountain Battalion 233 from Mittenwald took the winner’s trophy and a gold medal. A team of the Hochgebirgsjägerbataillon 26 (High Mountain Rifle Battalion 26) from Spittal an der Drau, Austria won the silver medal and a team of the 53rd Mountain Combined Arms Brigade from the People’s Republic of China earned the third place bronze medal. No word on how the U.S. team fared. Other teams came from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Switzerland.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (March 23, 2023)

NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Matthew Dickinson) Click on photo to enlarge image.

Navy SEALS can do a lot of  amazing things but walking on water isn’t one of them.

What this February 27, 2023 photo does show is U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operators (SEALs) and NATO special operations forces landing a combatant rubber raiding craft (CRRC) aboard Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Florida somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea.

According to the Defense Department, operations like this demonstrate U.S. European Command’s ability to rapidly deploy Special Operations Forces throughout the region “at a time and place of our choosing,” while also demonstrating U.S. commitment to train with Allies and partners to deploy and fight as multinational forces.

SHAKO: Long Wait For A Hero Is Over

NO MAN LEFT BEHIND

President Joe Biden congratulates Medal of Honor recipient, retired U.S. Army Colonel Paris D. Davis on March 3, 2023, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

Almost fifty-eight years after a young Army Special Forces captain braved exploding mortar rounds and hand grenades as well as rifle and machine gun fire to rescue three other wounded Green Berets, the world now knows what the soldiers who survived that deadly ambush and two-day battle in Vietnam know — Paris Davis deserves the United States’ highest award for military valor — for his staggering bravery and incredible selflessness under fire.

At a White House ceremony on March 3, 2022, President Joe Biden presented the now 83-year-old retired Army colonel with the Medal of Honor for his actions in the vicinity of Bong Son, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) on June17-18, 1965. “This … may be the most consequential day since I’ve been President. This is an incredible man,” Biden said at the opening of the ceremony.

Then-Captain Davis led a Special Forces team and some 80 inexperienced South Vietnamese soldiers in a nigh time attack on a Viet Cong camp. At first the element of surprise worked but then the V.C. counterattacked. Davis’ unit was vastly outnumbered, but he captain rallied the troops, took the fight to the enemy and rescued his men who were cut off and wounded. Once support arrived, he was ordered to leave, but despite his wounds, he opted to stay to ensure that no man was left behind.

Capt. Paris Davis, Vietnam, 1965. (Photo by Ron Deis)

Over the course of two days, Davis selflessly led a charge to neutralize enemy emplacements, called for precision artillery fire, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and prevented the capture of three American soldiers (Robert Brown, John Reinberg, and Billy Waugh) while saving their lives with a medical extraction. Davis sustained multiple gunshot and grenade fragment wounds during the 19-hour battle and refused to leave the battlefield until his men were safely removed.

Davis, who was among the first African American officers in the Green Berets, was awarded the Silver Star medal (the nation’s third highest decoration for bravery in combat) but those who were there that day. Those whom he saved, said Davis should get the Medal of Honor and they put it in writing.

“I wish I could say that this story of Paris’s sacrifice on that day in 1965 was fully recognized and rewarded immediately. But sadly, we know they weren’t,” Biden told the audience at the White House ceremony.

“At the time Captain Davis returned from war, the country still battling segregation. He returned from Vietnam to experience some of his fellow soldiers crossing to the other side of the street when they saw him in America. And although the men who were with him on that June day immediately nominated Captain Davis to receive the Medal of Honor, somehow the paper- — the paperwork was never processed not just once, but twice,” Biden said.

“But you know what Colonel Davis said after learning he would finally receive the Medal of Honor?  Quote, ‘America was behind me. America was behind me.’  He never lost faith, which I find astounding,” Biden added.

For more on this remarkable soldier, commando, officer and leader, click here and here  (reading of the Medal of Honor citation) and here.

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SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

SHAKO: Women’s History Month — Harriet Tubman. Union Army Scout, Spy, Nurse and Cook

THE WOMAN THEY CALLED “MOSES”

Harriet Tubman, photographed by Harvey Lindsley. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

CHURCH CREEK, Maryland — If you’ve heard about the Underground Railroad, then you’ve probably heard of Harriet Tubman.

Despite its name, the Underground Railroad wasn’t a real railroad of iron tracks and engines, but a network of people, white and black, providing shelter and other assistance to people escaping enslavement in the South before the American Civil War.

According to Pulitzer Prize winning historian Eric Foner, “the individual most closely associated with the underground railroad is Harriet Tubman.” Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1822, “this remarkable woman,” Foner notes, escaped enslavement in 1849 and during the following decade made at least 13 forays back to Maryland leading some 70 men, women and children — including members of her own family — out of bondage.

Her fame spread widely and by the late 1850s she became known as “Moses,” to fugitive slaves and those still held in bondage. After the Civil War, the great abolitionist,  orator and statesman, Frederick Douglass — himself an escaped slave from Maryland — wrote of Tubman: “Excepting John Brown–of sacred memory–I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people,” according to Foner in Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad..

But here at 4GWAR blog we’re celebrating Harriet Tubman during Women’s History month – and International Women’s Day — for her service as a scout and spy, as well as a nurse and cook, for the Union Army during the Civil War — and her battle with government bureaucracy to get paid for her service.

The Next Thing to Hell

According to Maryland’s Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park & Visitor Center,  Tubman rose above the “horrific childhood adversity” of a Maryland plantation. Three of her sisters were sold to distant plantations in the Deep South. Harriet was taken from her mother at the age of 6 and hired out to other enslavers. She was nearly killed when hit in the head by a heavy iron weight thrown by an angry storekeeper at another slave. She suffered debilitating seizures for the rest of her life. Married to a free black man, John Tubman, she fled bondage after learning she could be sold away from her family to settle her deceased master’s debts. “Slavery,” she said, “is the next thing to hell.” The state park museum is located in Church Creek, Maryland amid wetlands and woods where Tubman and other escaping slaves may have fled.

Portrayal of Harriet Tubman’s rescue of fugitive slaves at the Tubman Underground Railroad State Park & Visitor Center. (4GWAR photo by Deborah Zabarenko, Copyright Sonoma Road Strategies)

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, empowering slave owners to track down runaway slaves even in free states and carry them back to enslavement. The law required U.S. Marshals and local law enforcement officers to assist in the recovery of runaways and made it a crime to hinder those efforts. No escaped slave, like Tubman, still somebody’s property in the eyes of the law, could rely on the safety of living in a northern state. That same year Tubman made her first journey back to Maryland to aid the escape of an enslaved niece and her two children north to Canada.

Over the next 10 years, Tubman used numerous methods to help the escape of other slaves. She relied on trustworthy people to hide her and fugitives. She used disguises. She bribed people. She walked, rode horses and wagons and traveled on boats and trains to make her way North with her “passengers.”. Often guided by the stars, she worked her way along rivers and through forests and swamps where she had labored as a slave. Tubman made her last rescue trek in 1860.

Warnings to escaped slaves in the North after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. (4GWAR photo by Deborah Zabarenko, copyright Sonoma Road Strategies)

New Use for Underground Skills

When the Civil War broke out, she spent the early years assisting with the care and feeding of the massive numbers of slaves who fled areas controlled by the Union Army. By the spring of 1863, however, Union officials found a more active role for Tubman. Union troops in South Carolina needed information on the strength of Confederate forces, the locations of their encampments and the designs of fortifications. They thought the needed intelligence could be acquired by short-term spying operations behind enemy lines, and that Tubman — with the skills she acquired in her underground railroad days — was the person organize and lead the effort.

Tubman started her spy organization with a selected few former slaves knowledgeable about the area to be scouted. Often disguised as a field hand or poor farm wife, she led several spy missions herself, while directing others from Union lines. She reported her intelligence findings to Colonel James Montgomery, a Union officer commanding the Second South Carolina Volunteers, a black unit involved in irregular warfare, according to intelligence professional P.K. Rose, wrote about Black Americans intelligence efforts for the Union Army in Studies in Intelligence, a journal published by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence.

“The tactical intelligence Tubman provided to Union forces during the war was frequent, abundant, and used effectively in military operations,” Rose noted.

Raid of the Second South Carolina Volunteers, Harpers Weekly July 4 1863 edition. Click on the photo to enlarge image.

In one operation, at the behest of Union General David Hunter, Tubman guided two Union gunboats carrying Montgomery and 150 of his Black soldiers up the Combahee River in South Carolina to raid Confederate supply lines. The Rebels were taken by surprise and Union forces destroyed houses, barns and rice at nearby plantations, and liberated between 700 and 800 enslaved people.

Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War, according to Kate Clifford Larson. a Tubman biographer. When Tubman sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress denied her claim. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her.

She eventually was awarded a pension but only as the widow of a Civil War soldier, her second husband Nelson Davis, whom she married after John Tubman died in 1867.

Long overdue recognition is finally catching up with Harriet Tubman’s accomplishments, according to Larson. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. And in June 2021, Tubman was accepted into the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work.

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SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (February 24, 2022)

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH IN … ITALY

Italian(U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo)

Italian Army and U.S. Army paratroopers conduct an airborne operation from an Italian Air Force C-27J Spartan transport aircraft onto Alpe di Siusi in Bolzano, Italy on February 16, 2023. It turns out Alpe di Siusi is the largest high-alpine pasture in Europe.

The C-27J belongs to Italy’s 46th Air Brigade. The Italian troops are assigned to 4th Alpini Regiment of the Folgore Brigade. The  American soldiers are from the 173rd Airborne Brigade,  The 173rd Airborne Brigade is the Army’s Contingency Response Force in Europe, capable of projecting ready forces anywhere in the U.S. European, Africa or Central Commands’ areas of responsibility.

SHAKO: Black History Month, Fighting to Serve – Part I

TWO FIRSTS:

Andrea Motley Crabtree: The Army’s First Female Deep-Sea Diver

Andrea Motley Crabtree was the only Black person — and the only woman — among eight Soldiers and more than 20 others on Day One of her 1982 class at the U.S. Navy Deep Sea Diving and Salvage School at Panama Beach, Florida. Yes, the Army has divers , too.

The three-month program of instruction awarded the Corps of Engineers’ military occupational specialty  (MOS) 00B (short video), to soldiers, who go on to use their training to support underwater maintenance and construction projects among other missions.

To graduate, students were required to pass a health and fitness assessment that disqualified many. Other requirements included being able to rise from a seated position wearing the 198-pound Mark V deep sea dive suit, walking to a ladder, descending into the water and climbing back up. In the end, Crabtree was one of only two Soldiers and nine Sailors to earn the coveted diver badge, according to the Army.

Then-Specialist 5 Andrea Motley Crabtree in the Mark V deep sea dive suit at Fort Rucker, Alabama in 1985. (photo courtesy of retired Master Sgt. Andrea Motley Crabtree/via U.S. Army).

However, the all male Army diver contingent were far from welcoming at her first assignment at Fort Belvoir., Virginia. She was subjected to pranks such as a dead snake in the unit’s freezer, male divers walking around naked in front of her after PT sessions and more dangerous hazing like turning off Crabtree’s air supply underwater.

“For the most part, I could put up with it because I was a diver, I was diving, I was doing what I loved and I was learning,” said Crabtree, the guest speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. observance on January 19, 2023 at Fort Lee in Virginia.

But Crabtree was shipped off to South Korea after only eight months at Fort Belvoir. There she encountered Sergeant 1st Class James P. “Frenchy” Leveille, a renowned master diver. While he could have brought pressure on Crabtree to force her out of diving, Leveille treated her like everyone else, she said.

“As far as I was concerned, she was going to get the same treatment and same opportunity as everybody else,” said Leveille, now a retired sergeant major, “and she did very well for herself. She was a good diver, and she was a good Soldier. That’s the way I rated her.”

However, Crabtree said, higher authorities blocked her rise to attaining the Master Diver Badge. Her orders for advanced schooling in California following the Korea assignment were cancelled; her 300-point Army Physical Fitness Tests were rescored as a male’s; and she later received notice her MOS would be closed to women due to changes in policy.

When she questioned why she was accommodated prior to training and less so afterward, one officer said, “We didn’t think you’d make it.”

Retired Master Sergeant Andrea Motley Crabtree reflects on her struggles as the Army’s first female deep sea diver a soldier at Fort Lee, Virginia onJanuary19, 2023. (Photo by T. Anthony Bell)

Crabtree filed discrimination complaints with her chain of command, the post inspector general, the specialized training branch sergeant major and the Department of the Army inspector general. “They all said there was nothing they could do. I told my command they had won and requested to be relieved from dive duty. I’ve been angry every day since then,” she said.

Crabtree transferred to the Signal Corps and finished out her career as a master sergeant. Click here to see her whole story.

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Cathay Williams: The First and Only Female Buffalo Soldier

In October 1868, Private William Cathay reported for sick call for the second time in three months at Fort Bayard near Silver City, New Mexico. Cathay was nearly two years into his service with the 38th Infantry Regiment, an all black unit formed largely with emancipated slaves in 1866.

However, this time the post surgeon made an astounding discovery. Private Cathay was a woman.The official Army paperwork made no mention of Cathay’s real gender. He was given a disability discharge, citing his “feeble habit. He is continually on sick report…”

Artist’s rendering of Cathay Williams by William Jennings

Cathay’s real name was Cathy Williams. Born into slavery in Missouri, she served as a laundress with the Union Army during the Civil War, according to National Park Service historians. Following the war, she returned to the Saint Louis area and enlisted in the United States Army as a man at Jefferson Barracks on November 15, 1866. Under the pseudonym William Cathay, she served for nearly two years in the 38th Infantry, Company A. Her duty stations included Fort Riley and Fort Hacker, Kansas., Fort Union, New Mexico Territory and Fort Cummings, Colorado Territory. During that time she marched hundreds of miles across prairies and deserts, suffered severe skin rashes, caught smallpox and endured a cholera epidemic.

It is uncertain why she masqueraded as a man to join the Army. She left no diaries or letters. Nor are there any known photographs of her. In an 1876 interview with a St. Louis newspaper, she said, “I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends.”

In 1869, the year after Cathay’s discharge, the 38th Infantry Regiment stationed in Kansas and New Mexico, transferred to Fort McKavett, Texas to merge with another all African-American regiment, the 41st Infantry. Together they formed the new 24th Infantry Regiment. The all-black (only the officers were white) 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments and the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments served for decades on the Western frontier, from the Dakotas the Mexican border. They were called Buffalo Soldiers by Native American tribes. The term eventually became synonymous with all of the African-American regiments formed in 1866. Her service in a legacy 24th Infantry unit is why she is considered the only woman Buffalo Soldier.

After her discharge from the Army, Cathay Williams continued to have numerous medical issues. She married and worked as a cook and laundress. Her last known location was in Trinidad, Colorado, in 1892, when she would have been about 48. Her exact date of death and burial location are unknown, according to the Park Service.