Poetrooper’s Inaugural Post

To Jonn and all of you thanks for the warm welcome to TAH. While I have continued to post at American Thinker since our buddy and webmaster of Old War Dogs, Bill Faith, passed away, the readers at AT are a different audience. Many have never worn the uniform and therefore have failed to gain that subtly different perspective on life, events, politics and even humor that seems to come to those who have served. That difference can be readily discerned by the comments readers leave, and believe me, I do read the comments, and frequently learn from them. Just as no two witnesses to a crime see the same events, no two readers see the same words or interpret them in the same way.

What I write is what I think to be the correct take on a subject and it takes a pretty insightful comment to convince me otherwise, being the cranky old fart that I am. “Russ, you’re fulla crap,” won’t cut it; but I sometimes read a comment and say to myself, “Sumbitch! Why didn’t I think of that? That could have really nailed my point for me.” That was a fairly frequent occurrence at Old War Dogs because the participants there, were, for the most part, experienced old war dogs, and some were cantankerous old war dogs to boot, myself and Zero Ponsdorf, included. Good to be in touch again, Zero.

So I’m the new guy here and haven’t read much, but so far it appears, with the exception of Zero, and a few others, you’re a bit of a different demographic, veterans of Middle Eastern rather than Southeast Asian campaigns; and of course, for any among you who are or were special operators, little-known-to-the-public campaigns in such places as the Philippines, Latin America, Africa, etc. Please keep in mind then when you are critiquing my pieces, that my combat experience is almost a half-century past and while certain elements of combat are universal, much of the weaponry and technology are light-years advanced from what I knew. However, I had the good fortune to spend much of my civilian career in military medical marketing, in, on and around military installations all over the country and to a lesser extent overseas. That frequent contact for almost thirty years has allowed me to stay a bit more current than some other vets of my era, with the operative word there being “bit.”

Couple of quick points here from comments to Jonn’s kind post: Beretverde is correct that there was no 327th P.I.R. During WWII, when Airborne units used the regimental designation, the 327th was a glider infantry unit, G.I.R.. During my service, from 1959 to 1967, regimental designations were not applied to Airborne units, although they existed for purposes of lineages and honors. My units were 1st Bn, 1st ABG (Airborne Battle Group) 327th Infantry, then later, after the Pentomic concept was shelved, 2nd Bn (Airborne) 506th Infantry and in Vietnam, 2d Bn (Airborne) 327th Infantry. Regimental designations were retained although not applied. When I first began writing, many civilian readers confused Airborne with Air Force. No offense to any blue-suits reading this, but those who jump out of airplanes are inordinately proud of that fact and take pains to make that distinction. I decided to use the P.I.R. designation as a means of clarifying the issue for non-military readers. So Beretverde’s sharpshooting is right on target: while the 327th Infantry Regiment was actually a parachute regiment it was never so designated officially.

And finally, yes, Tactical Trunk Monkey, it was indeed the work of LTC Dave Grossman who inspired the poem, The Sheepdogs. The colonel is a very wise and insightful man.

I have a request for all of you. Most of the writing I’ve done since OWD has been political and now that I’m no longer calling on military installations my military contacts and references are limited. If you have a topic which you would like to see expanded upon and don’t have time to do so yourself, give me a heads up and I’ll see what I can do. No promises, but I’ll look at it, OK?
Thanks again to everyone of you for the warm welcome.

Category: Politics