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Valor Friday

| April 11, 2025 | 11 Comments
Valor Friday

I spent all day yesterday doing various doctor appointments for myself and kids, so I didn’t get to sit down and write like I usually like to do. Therefore, this week’s VF will be copied cribbed benchmarked from the US Army itself. If we talked about Command Sergeant Major Matthew Williams when he got the […]

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Valor Friday

| April 4, 2025 | 11 Comments
Valor Friday

Harold Bascom Durham Jr was born 12 October 1942 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The city of his birth is deep in cotton and tobacco country, and was the site of a 1962 Martin Luther King Jr. speech where he used his “I have a dream” line a year before he delivered it on the […]

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Valor Friday

| March 28, 2025 | 8 Comments
Valor Friday

The humble looking enlisted man you see before you with a CIB has a distinctive little ribbon just below that among his fruit salad. Even without the photo being in color, the brilliant light blue ribbon with its five white stars stands out among the other awards on display. Bill Crawford was a young private […]

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Valor Friday

| March 21, 2025 | 3 Comments
Valor Friday

Ralph Talbot was born in 1897 in Massachusettes, and would use natural gifts for both academics and athletics to eventually attend Yale. There he received some basic military officer training as part of the school’s artillery corps. These programs to train Ivy League men in the ways of military officership were the immediate predecessor to […]

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Valor Friday

| February 14, 2025 | 5 Comments
Valor Friday

Earlier this week, SecDef Hegseth re-renamed Fort Bragg. Instead of naming it after the legendarily bad Confederate General Braxton Bragg, the sprawling facility (one of the world’s largest by population with more than 52,000 military assigned) is now named for a WWII hero of the Battle of the Bulge. Private First Class Roland Bragg earned […]

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Valor Friday

| January 24, 2025 | 7 Comments
Valor Friday

Today’s Valor Friday piece is going to be cribbed from Navy Times. During the Korean War, Lt. j.g. John Koelsch, equipped with a promising new helicopter, dedicated his service to rescuing downed pilots. Koelsch’s most notable sortie ultimately cost him his life, but through his actions, the pilot he risked his life to save survived. […]

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Valor Friday

| January 17, 2025 | 15 Comments
Valor Friday

Last week, as we wrapped up the dramatic rescue of Bat 21, I discussed the Medal of Honor earning heroics of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Thomas Norris. Norris received the Medal of Honor from President Ford in 1976, after having initially refused the award. He was presented with the medal at a White House ceremony where […]

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Valor Friday

| January 10, 2025 | 11 Comments
Valor Friday

Where last we left Lieutenant Colonel Iceal “Gene” Hambleton and 1st Lieutenant Mark Clark they were trapped in South Vietnam, amidst the largest North Vietnamese Army (NVA) combined arms offensive of the war. It was April 5, 1972, and Hambleton had been alone on the ground for three days after being the lone survivor from […]

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