Russia warned Finland and Sweden on Thursday (April 14) that if they join NATO, Moscow will reinforce the Baltic Sea region, including with nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported.
Posts filed under ‘Unconventional Warfare’
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 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.
SHAKO: Black History Month, Fighting to Serve – Part II
The Protest Ride of Colonel Charles Young.
Brigadier General Charles Young was one of the earliest African-American graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The third graduate, in fact, class of 1889. And like his predecessors, Young suffered the same racial insults and social isolation from instructors and other cadets on a daily basis.
Col. Charles Young autographed photo: “Yours for Race and Country, Charles Young. 22 Feby., 1919.” (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)
Despite the rampant racism in the military and the United States as a whole at that time, Young managed a successful career, serving in nearly all of America’s military conflicts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries including the closing days of the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. He commanded units of the all black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments — the Buffalo Soldiers — in the Philippine Insurrection (now known as the Philippine-American War 1899-1902) and the 1916 Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico.
During his distinguished career, Young also served as a diplomat and educator. He was posted as military attaché to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and later, military advisor to the President of Liberia. He also served as a professor at Wilberforce University and supervisor of a National Park. In the summer of 1917, a few months after the United States entered the First World War, Charles Young became the first African American to reach the rank of Colonel.
Captain Charles Young (seated, 5th from left, front row) with his 9th Cavalry troopers while in the Philippines, circa 1902. (Photo courtesy of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio)
Despite an impressive leadership record, the Army refused Young’s request to command American troops in Europe. Military leaders told Young, then 53, he was not healthy enough to serve overseas. An examining board, convened on July 7, 1917 to consider Young’s fate, still found him medically unfit for duty, citing hypertension and other pulmonary issues. However they recommended “in view of the present war conditions the physical condition of this officer be waived and that he be promoted to the next higher grade.” The board forwarded their recommendation onto Adjutant General of the Army for a final decision.
In the Summer of 1918, Young tried one more time to prove to the Army that he was fit for duty. On June 6, 1918, Young saddled his black mare named Blacksmith and headed east to Washington D.C. on what became known as his ‘Protest Ride.’ At the time, Army officers were required to demonstrate their fitness to serve in the cavalry by riding 90 miles in three days on horseback. To prove his fitness, Young, then 54, rode from his home in Wilberforce, Ohio to the nation’s capital, a total of 497 miles — nearly six times the distance of the cavalry fitness ride — in 17 days.
“I rode on horseback from Wilberforce to Washington, walking on foot fifteen minutes in each hour, the distance of 497 miles to show, if possible, my physical fitness for command of troops. I there offered my services gladly at the risk of life, which has no value to me if I cannot give it for the great ends for which the United States is striving,” Young wrote later.
Major Charles Young during the Mexican Punitive Expedition. (Photo courtesy of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio)
His gallant effort failed to persuade Secretary of War Newton Baker, however, and Colonel Young did not get to lead American soldiers in Europe.
The War Department sent him back to Ohio to help muster and train African-American recruits. Days before the November 11th armistice ended the war, Young was assigned to Camp Grant, Illinois to train black servicemen. Shortly thereafter, at the request of the State Department, Colonel Young was sent once more to serve as military attaché to Liberia, arriving at Monrovia, the capital, in February 1920. While on a visit to Nigeria in late 1921 he became gravely ill and died at the British hospital in Lagos on January 8, 1922. He was 57. Due to British law, Young’s body was buried in Lagos, Nigeria for one year before it could be repatriated to the United States for final interment.
Young’s body was exhumed and transported back to the United States, arriving in New York City in late May 1923 to a hero’s welcome. Thousands turned out as Young’s coffin proceeded to Washington. On June 1, 1923, Colonel Charles Young became the fourth soldier honored with a funeral service at Arlington Memorial Amphitheater before burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
Nearly 100 years later, November 1, 2021, Young was posthumously promoted to Brigadier General.
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One more thing before the end of Black History Month.
Two years ago we posted a two-part series on the portrayal of African-Americans in the U.S. military by Hollywood in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s.
If you missed it last time or want to see it again …
You can revisit Part One here.
And Part Two 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 (December 5, 2022)
THEY KEPT ‘EM FLYING DURING FRAUGHT EVACUATION
Fifty-one members of the U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, for their actions in Operation Allies Refuge — the 2021 airlift of thousands of civilians from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Distinguished Flying Crosses are lined up prior to an award ceremony at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, where 51 Airmen received medals for heroism during the 17-day evacuation of tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sergeant Alex Fox Echols III) Click on photo to enlarge image.
The November 21, 2022 ceremony was the largest of its kind in decades. Among the honorees, Captain Rhea McFarland, a 14th Airlift Squadron C-17 cargo plane pilot, and Captain Leslie Green, a 375th Air Expeditionary Squadron flight nurse, became the first female African Americans to be awarded the DFC in the 96-year history of the award, according to officials of the Distinguished Flying Cross Society.
During Operation Allies Refuge — the largest non-combatant evacuation in American history — each of the 51 Airmen flew into a dangerous environment to evacuate tens of thousands of refugees in just 17 days.
The DFC recipients included pilots, loadmasters, flying crew chiefs, and a flight nurse, according to the Air Force. Most of the 51 recipients were aircrew from the 437th Airlift Wing, who participated in the final U.S. flights in and out of Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. As they entered the airspace surrounding Hamid Karzai International Airport, air crews faced air defense artillery, flares, and heavy machine gun fire, as well as reports of rooftop snipers in the area.
Despite the dangerous conditions, crews successfully landed their aircraft without runway lighting and minimized time on the ground while loading passengers. A compromised airfield meant a risky departure, but they took off in formation with all remaining U.S. military forces accounted for and safely on board, the Air Force said.
Distinguished Flying Cross recipients pose for a photo in front of a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft after receiving their medals. With a total of 51 recipients, the Nov. DFC ceremony was the largest of its kind in decades. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sergeant Alex Fox Echols III). Click on the photo to enlarge image.
During the ceremony, General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, also presented DFCs to a 315th Air Wing crew for successfully delivering a baby while in flight. With limited medical equipment and only one trained medic on board, the team delivered the baby and cared for the mother and child while also evacuating 456 other vulnerable Afghans.
The DFC, authorized by congress on July 2, 1926, is the fourth highest award for extraordinary achievement, after the Silver Star Medal and before the Bronze Star Medal. It is also the highest award for heroism while participating in aerial flight.
A list of the 51 airmen receiving the DFC at the November 21 ceremony Joint Base Charleston can be found here.
The awards presented by Minihan are among 96 DFCs and 12 Bronze Stars approved in a September awards board held by U.S. Air Forces Central Command for actions during the chaotic evacuation of non-combatants as Kabul fell to the Taliban last summer. Thirteen American service members — 11 Marines, one Navy ((medical) Corpsman and one Soldier — were killed by a suicide bomber at the airport’s Abbey Gate. Forty-five others were injured and 170 Afghans died in the blast as well.
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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 in the photo.
FRIDAY FOTO (October 21, 2022)
ALL FALL DOWN.
(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Tyler W. Abbott) Click on photo to enlarge image.
No, they’re not practicing the gentle art of Tai Chi. These Marine Corps recruits of the 1st Recruit Training Battalion, are executing a left break fall during the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP) at the Marines’ Recruit Depot San Diego on October 3, 2022.
According to the Marines, MCMAP is “an integrated, weapons-based system that incorporates the full spectrum of the force continuum on the battlefield, and contributes to the mental, character and physical development of Marines.” We think that means Marines are trained to handle themselves from gun to thumb — and everything lethal in between.
“The mental, moral, and physical resiliency of the Marine Corps’ warfighters will be of utmost importance to … winning battles in future conflicts,” according to the 54-page document from Marine Corps headquarters explaining MCMAP, which aims to strengthen the individual Marine’s resiliency “through realistic combative training, warrior ethos studies, and physical hardening.”
So, learning how to fall is important. When your 4GWAR editor visited an U.S. Army basic training base in the Midwest 10 years ago, we were shocked to see how many recruits were using crutches, or wearing casts or support boots as they limped behind the rest of their unit on the way to PT at 0-dark-30.
Notice the recruits in the photo above are all wearing mouth guards and knuckle protectors on their hands. In these days of fewer recruits, military leaders don’t want to damage them before they begin their active service.
“While each of the services has been facing recruitment challenges ― which service leaders attribute among other things to the COVID-19 pandemic ― a low interest in military service and a declining eligible population, the Marine Corps managed to overcome its enlistment obstacles,” this year, according to Marine Corps Times. The Corps met its recruitment goals for fiscal year 2022, making it one of the only branches to fully reach its target numbers this year, the paper added.
FRIDAY FOTO (October 14, 2022)
GOING DEEP IN THE MOUNTAINS.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Alex Perlman (click on the photo to enlarge image)
Sailors assigned to various Naval Special Warfare (NSW) commands operate a battery-operated Diver Propulsion Device (DPD) during high-altitude dive training in northern California on September 5, 2022. The DPDs allow combat divers to travel faster and considerably farther under water, emerging less fatigued than when moving under their own power.
There are deepwater lakes in the mountains of California, Colorado and New Mexico, and other places on earth, like South America’s Lake Titicaca. But at such high altitudes, thousands of feet above sea level, decompression requirements for divers can change. The dive plan to maintain proper decompression limits must be adjusted for safety based on the dive’s altitude.
The pressure a diver normally faces is a combination of the weight of the water and atmosphere. At high altitude, the weight of the water is the same as at sea level, but the atmospheric pressure is less and that can pose problems for divers returning to the surface — especially for technical divers who are going deep in the water. As divers reach the surface, they have to ascend more slowly and take a longer safety stop.
Naval Special Warfare Command is a component of U.S. Special Operations Command and includes Navy SEALS (Special Warfare Operators) and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (Special Warfare Boat Operators).
For another view of diver propulsion devices click here.
FRIDAY FOTO (August 19, 2022)
OUT OF THE DARK.
(U.S. Air National Guard photo by Technical Sergeant Brigette Waltermire) Click on the photo to enlarge image.
U.S. Air Force pilots conduct nighttime training operations aboard an MC-130J Commando II aircraft, flying over the United Kingdom (Britain) on August 3, 2022.
As you might surmise from its name, the Commando II flies clandestine, or low visibility missions that include low-level flights to infiltrate special operators/commandos in, or out (exfiltrate) of politically sensitive or hostile territories. Other MC-130J capabilities include resupplying special operations forces by airdrop or air landing, and air refueling of special ops helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft.
The aircraft shown above is part of the 352d Special Operations Wing. Based at RAF Mildenhall, England, the 352nd SOW includes — not only special aircraft like the MC-130Js and pilots — but special operators with tasks like Pararescue, Special Reconnaissance and Tactical Air Control. They have can-do mottoes like “
nighttime training mission shown in the photo included three airdrops, an emergency recovery simulation, air-to-air refueling and low-visibility special tactics.
FRIDAY FOTO (June 17, 2022)
LET IT SNOW — INDOORS.
(U.S. Air Force photo by William Higdon)
The U.S. Air Force can make it snow, indoors, in May — in Florida!
Team members at the McKinley Climatic Laboratory (MCL) at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, use machines to create snow in the MCL Main Chamber on May 26, 2022 to prepare for environmental testing. The MCL recently celebrated its 75th anniversary.
The first tests at the MCL occurred in May 1947. In the 75 years since, the unique capabilities available at the MCL have allowed a variety of climatic testing for the Defense Department, other government agencies and private industry. From arctic freeze to blazing heat and desert sand to jungle humidity, any climatic environment in the world can be simulated in the facility.
When it first began operations, the MCL was part of the U.S. Army Air Forces. This component was soon separated from the Army and became its own military branch when the Air Force was founded on September 18, 1947.
Before the MCL was created, there was the Cold Weather Test Detachment stationed at Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Army Air Force designated that site as a cold-weather testing facility in 1940.
The MCL is operated by the 717th Test Squadron, 804th Test Group, Arnold Engineering Development Complex.
FRIDAY FOTO (April 29, 2022)
Desert Water Hazard.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Blake Wiles)
OK, hold on tight. This one will make your head spin.
This week’s photo shows U.S. troops with the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) performing a swimming obstacle course during a French Desert Commando Course (FDCC) pre-assessment — that’s right a Desert Commando Course — in the East African nation of Djibouti on April 19, 2022.
During the FDCC, participants are evaluated on mountain confidence, knot tying, night obstacle courses, aquatic obstacle courses, and battle maneuver tactics as well as physical challenges like timed pushups. Since 2015, the French Forces stationed in Djibouti, a former French colony, have invited U.S. service members at Camp Lemonnier (the only U.S. base on the African continent) to participate in the course at the 5th Overseas Interarms Regiment base in Dijbouti.
The 5th OIR is a troupes de marine regiment, and has been the Djibouti garrison since November 1969. Despite its name, the Marine troops are part of the French Army, not the Navy.
BALTIC-2-BLACK: Sweden, Finland Move Closer to NATO Membership; Russia Blusters and Threatens
Sweden, Finland and NATO.
The Nordic nations of Sweden and Finland, neutral during the Cold War, have been moving closer to NATO — participating in multi-national exercises with the forces of the western alliance — since Russia seized Crimea and grew increasingly belligerent in its military moves both on and above the Baltic Sea.
Russia’s February 24 invasion of non-NATO member Ukraine alarmed the Eastern members of NATO who used to be under the sway of Moscow — like Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic — to spend more on their defense forces and participate in more NATO exercises.Several are also supplying arms, medical equipment and technology to embattled Ukraine.
Finnish Troops participate in Exercise Cold Response 2022, a multinational Arctic weather military exercise hosted by Norway between March 14 and March 31. (Maavoimat – Armén – The Finnish Army, photo via Facebook)
The war in Ukraine pushed leaders in Sweden and Finland to publicly announce plans to consider joining the 30-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization — where an attack on one means an attack on all.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused Finland to review our security strategy,” Prime Minister Sanna Marin said at a joint press conference in Stockholm on April 13 hosted by Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. “I won’t offer any kind of timetable as to when we will make our decision, but I think it will happen quite fast. Within weeks, not within months. The security landscape has completely changed.”
Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, is “highly likely” to join NATO despite the Russian government’s threats to deploy nuclear weapons, Finnish Minister for European Affairs Tytti Tuppurainen said in an interview with Sky News Friday.
“The people of Finland, they seem to have already made up their mind,” Tuppurainen told Sky News, noting that polls show overwhelming support for joining NATO.
The Finnish government is expected to submit a report to parliament on the changed security environment by the end of this month, kicking off a debate and eventually a recommendation on applying for NATO membership, according to Axios.
Meanwhile, Sweden has decided to examine a range of security-related options, including deepening Nordic defense cooperation and urging the European Union to develop enhanced defense policies to offer greater military protection to EU member states that border the highly sensitive Baltic Sea and High North regions, Defense News reports.
The Swedish government is expected to deliver its National Security Report to the Riksdag, the country’s legislature, before May 31.
“What we need to do is to carefully think through what is in the best long-term interests of Sweden, and what we need to do to guarantee our national security, our sovereignty and secure peace in this new heightened tension and situation,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
“Russia’s invasion has dramatically changed the political discourse in Sweden and Finland and also crucially public opinion,” Alistair Shepherd, senior lecturer for European security at Aberystwyth University, told Al Jazeera.
There are indications both Finland and Sweden are heading towards a genuinely historic change of course in their respective security policies. During the Cold War, Sweden and Finland were essentially considered neutral states, although for different reasons.
“Sweden’s neutrality was much more part of their national identity, whereas Finland’s neutrality was more pragmatic and virtually forced upon them by the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance signed between Finland and the USSR in 1948,” said Shepherd.
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Moscow Reacts with Threats
The threat came just a day after Finnish officials suggested their country could request to join NATO within weeks, while Sweden mulled making a similar move.
Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that NATO expansion would lead Moscow to strengthen air, land and naval forces to “balance” military capability in the region.
“If Sweden and Finland join NATO, the length of the land borders of the alliance with the Russian Federation will more than double. Naturally, these boundaries will have to be strengthened,” he wrote on Telegram. “There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic — the balance must be restored,” Medvedev added.
Even before his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Sweden and Finland of “retaliation” should they join NATO.
The New York Times notes that “if his invasion of Ukraine has succeeded at anything so far, it has been to drive the militarily nonaligned Nordic countries into the arms of NATO, as Russian threats and aggression heighten security concerns and force them to choose sides.
Finland and Sweden’s shift to NATO membership “would be another example of the counterproductive results of Mr. Putin’s war. Instead of crushing Ukrainian nationalism, he has enhanced it. Instead of weakening the trans-Atlantic alliance, he has solidified it. Instead of dividing NATO and blocking its growth, he has united it,” the Times observed April 13.
More that 1,600 Swedish troops and civilian personnel participated in Exercise Cold Response 2022, Norway’s multi-national Arctic military training exercise. (Swedish Armed Forces photo by Mats Carlsson/Försvarsmakten)
FRIDAY FOTO (April 15, 2022)
Under the Wire.
(U.S. Army photo by Army Specialist Kelvin Johnson Jr)
1st Lieutenant Joseph Martin from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), keeps his head above water (barely) as he low crawls under barbed wire in the Annual Best Ranger Competition in Fort Benning, Georgia on April 8th 2022.
Low crawling under the wire is one of the obstacles in the Malvesti obstacle course, one one of Ranger School’s toughest gut busting obstacle courses, as this brief video explains.
To learn who won the competition, click here.
Army Colonel Richard J. Malvesti served his country for 23 years – in Vietnam, Grenada and Panama. He served with infantry, ranger, airborne and Green Beret units and was awarded the Legion of Merit, twice earned the Bronze Star Medal, once for valor, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. A master parachutist who earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge in Vietnam.
Malvesti was 44-years-old when he died in July 1990. His parachute malfunctioned in a jump at Fort Bragg’s Holland Drop Zone.
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