From: MarineCorpsTimes

BY DAN LAMOTHE – STAFF WRITER | POSTED : FRIDAY JUN 10, 2011 5:33:47 EDT

MARINE BARRACKS WASHINGTON – With the passing of a sword, Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent retired Thursday night and stepped aside after a distinguished career of more than 35 years.

Kent, the 16th sergeant major of the Marine Corps, was replaced by Sgt. Maj. Mike Barrett in a relief and appointment ceremony attended by some of the service’s highest ranking officers and enlisted personnel. He served as the Corps’ top enlisted adviser beginning April 25, 2007, and filled the position during a tumultuous period in which combat in Iraq transitioned to operations in Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 Marines are deployed.

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LOS ANGELES — “It is a 387-acre campus of green fields and low-lying buildings in a prosperous neighborhood, donated to the federal government more than 100 years ago for use as a Pacific Coast home for wounded veterans.

But over the last 20 years, as Los Angeles has become inundated with homeless veterans, advocates for the homeless say the campus has become a symbol of a system gone wrong: as veterans sleep on the streets, many of its buildings lie abandoned and one-third of the land has been leased for commercial use.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/us/09veterans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

From: Baltimore Sun

Baltimore veteran to receive France’s highest honor for WWII service
Harold Shapiro fought in Battle of the Bulge, will receive French medal on 67th anniversary of D-Day

June 05, 2011|By Childs Walker, The Baltimore Sun
The American troops had been stalled for a month, waiting for fuel outside Montcourt in northern France. When Harold Shapiro and his division mates finally advanced on the tree line, they had to cross foxholes booby-trapped with German explosives. Artillery rained down on their position.

The morning after the ferocious assault, Shapiro walked to the center of the American line, where his former platoon had been stationed. He saw a private named Clarence sitting all by himself.
“Where are the rest of the guys?” Shapiro asked.
“I’m it,” said Clarence, who had ascended from private to sergeant simply by surviving the night intact. Everyone else had been killed or wounded

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By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/05/30/us/wiedorfer-obit/wiedorfer-obit-articleInline.jpg

“Paul J. Wiedorfer, who earned the Medal of Honor for charging across an icy field in Belgium in 1944 and eliminating two German machine-gun nests that had pinned down his platoon, died on Wednesday in Baltimore. He was 90.

During the Battle of the Bulge, Mr. Wiedorfer’s platoon was crossing a clearing around noon on Christmas Day when camouflaged machine gunners supported by riflemen opened fire.

The Americans dove behind a small ridge about 40 yards from the German emplacements. Mr. Wiedorfer, a private, ran at the first machine gun, sliding on three inches of fresh snow and ice. He made it to within 10 yards of the fortification and hurled a grenade. After it exploded, he shot the remaining soldiers, then turned and attacked the second emplacement. He wounded one German, and the other six surrendered.

“Suddenly something popped into my mind,” Mr. Wiedorfer told The Baltimore Sun in 2008. “Something had to be done and someone had to do it. And I just did it. I can’t tell you why.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30wiedorfer.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“It was a family mystery. Everyone knew that Milton Rein had served in the United States Army during World War II. Everyone suspected that he had seen combat.

But Mr. Rein, a former auto shop owner who grew up in the New York area and who now lives in South Florida, was loath to share the details of that experience — not even with his brother, a business partner for more than 30 years, or his wife, whom he married in 1958.

… As it turned out, Mr. Rein, 85, had fought on the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge, one of the bloodiest, most pivotal battles of the war.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/nyregion/war-veteran-is-honored-for-service-67-years-later.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“… Already more than 255,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and nearly 150 have been killed in those wars.

And while women may not be SEALs, or members of the Army’s prestigious Delta Force, they are increasingly serving with special operations teams in supporting jobs such as intelligence analysts, legal specialists, builders and administrative assistants.

So, while the SEALs who stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound early this month were all men, women have been deploying to the warfront with Naval Special Warfare Command squadrons for several years. Since 2007, 10 to 15 women have deployed with each NSW squadron, and more than 400 female sailors serve with the Navy’s special operations forces in supporting jobs.”

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/05/30/6748070-women-breaking-barriers-in-navy-not-seals-yet

“… Everybody in the car was killed except Sgt. Bobby Henline, who stumbled out of the wreck, a human torch. “The man I had replaced in the Humvee came running with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames,” he says. “But my skull was burned to the bone.”

Bobby began turning horror into humor at tiny comedy clubs near Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, speaking for all those disfigured veterans who endure whispers and stares.

“You know about skin grafts? I’m a patchwork quilt. Doctors took good skin from my stomach to replace the burnt skin on my head. Now I have to pick lint out of my ear.”

… Bobby dreaded what they would think … But daughter Brittany, just 15 at the time, saw past the scars. “You can look in his eyes and tell — that’s your dad,” she says. “He might look a little different, but he jokes about it, so we’re OK with it. It means so much to me that my dad can still laugh.”

“I went into a drugstore and filled a basket full of scar remover,” Bobby tells them. “The checker says, ‘Think you’ve got enough?’ ”

They roar. They stomp. They love him. On a neon-lit evening in Las Vegas, Bobby’s great tragedy becomes a triumph.”

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/05/30/6748412-wounded-warrior-comic-mines-hilarity-from-horror

by Gloria Hillard

Courtesy of Darrell Griffin Sr. Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Griffin Jr. was killed in March 2007 in Iraq by a sniper.

“It’s been more than four years since Army Staff Sgt. Darrell Griffin Jr. was killed while serving in Iraq. When he died, he had been collaborating with his father on a book about the war.

The book is titled Last Journey, A Father and Son in Wartime. It is a compilation of hundreds of emails, letters — and his son’s journal.

“This is where he started his journal: ‘I am attempting to create an account of two tours of combat in Iraq as an infantryman. I’m trying to make sense of a world that I’d never known until the first time I had to kill a man.'”

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/28/136690878/a-last-gift-father-finishes-book-after-sons-death