Profile in Courage: Arthur MacArthur: A Bold Legacy

With no less than 620,000 deaths recorded over four years of intense fighting between Confederate and Union forces, the American Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict in American history.

Playing host to battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg, the Civil War holds tales of unprecedented violence, ferocious bravery, and unparalleled heroism.

Among these many tales is that of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr. whose bravery at the most critical moment inspired his regiment during the Battle of Missionary Ridge.

MacArthur Jr. was born in the Chicopee Falls area of Springfield, Massachusetts on June 2, 1845. His mother Aurelia was the daughter of Benjamin B. Belcher, a wealthy industrialist. She would die at the age of 45, leaving behind Arthur and his brother, Frank.

MacArthur's father, Arthur MacArthur Sr., was a prominent judge and the fourth governor of Wisconsin. With his father's influence, MacArthur enrolled in the United States Military Academy. Thus began his journey as a Soldier.

MacArthur was in Wisconsin when the Civil War broke out. He promptly received a commission as a first lieutenant and joined the 24th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

He participated in some of the deadliest hostilities of the war such as Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, and Franklin.

The event that brought him into the limelight occurred during the Chattanooga Campaign in the Battle of Missionary Ridge, which took place on November 25, 1863, just after the Battle of Lookout Mountain.

While the battle raged on, the 24th Wisconsin found themselves under intense fire from the Confederates as the former moved up Missionary Ridge.

Despite that, the Union troops kept surging forward behind their roaring guns, yelling "Chickamauga! Chickamauga!" as Confederate General Braxton Bragg's men unleashed their volleys from above, making men fall on all sides.

The top of the ridge was the goal for the 24th Wisconsin, and they raced upwards, determined to knock the Confederates off the top. But with such heavy resistance from Bragg's men, the assault was soon in complete tatters.

At that moment, the flag bearer of the 24th Wisconsin was killed. He hit the ground as the Confederate gunfire struck him and rolled down the ridge in his death fall. His grip on the flag was broken, and it fell from his hands into the dirt.

A comrade charged forth and reached for the flag, but the guns of the enemy were quick to knock him to the ground as well.

Amidst the roars of surging warriors, the voice of the 18-year-old MacArthur tore through the damp air. His weary legs were quickened by the sight of the battle flag lying on the ground beside his fallen comrades, and he dashed on ahead of the others.

The sounds of cannons and rifles did not terrify him. His will was stronger than the fear he felt. He reached for the flag, raised it from the dirt, and waved it passionately in the air.

Like a man chasing his own death, he raced up the ridge with the regimental flag dancing in the winds. His voice rang through the tumultuous atmosphere as he yelled "On, Wisconsin!"

His comrades from the 24th Wisconsin surged after him, fueled by his energy. More Union troops joined in the revitalized onslaught. And by the coming of dusk, the center of the Confederates' line was broken.

The Confederates fled the ridge, and by the end of the battle, the 24th Wisconsin's regimental flag was waving with its pole firmly mounted on the crest of Missionary Ridge.

For such an extraordinary display of bravery, MacArthur received the Medal of Honor.

The following year, only at 19 years old, he became a Brevet Colonel, which is why he was called "The Boy Colonel."

November 30, 1964, was the day of the Battle of Franklin. During this event, the 24th Wisconsin found themselves in a desperate engagement with Confederate forces. MacArthur was severely injured by gunshots to his chest and leg. But, somehow, he survived his wounds - and ultimately, the war.

Following the end of the Civil War, he left the Army and went to study law. But a few months of studying law left him yearning for fulfillment, and it was clear that the only thing that would fill the void for him was the military.

Thus, MacArthur returned to the Army. In 1885, he participated in the campaign against Geronimo. In 1898 he led the 1st Brigade of the 2nd Division, a subset of the Eighth Army Corps, to victory during the Battle of Manila in the Spanish-American War.

He also played a role in the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo, and the effective end of the Philippine-American War.

MacArthur retired from the Army as a Lieutenant General on June 2, 1909, at the mandatory retirement age of sixty-four.

Having married Mary Pinkney Hardy in 1875, he had three children: Arthur MacArthur III, Malcolm MacArthur, and Douglas MacArthur.

On September 5, 1912, during a reunion ceremony of the 24th Wisconsin in Milwaukee, MacArthur collapsed from the dais while trying to give a speech.

He died at the spot, aged 67.

He was first buried in Milwaukee, but in 1926 he was relocated to Section 2, Gravesite 845-A of Arlington National Cemetery.

While MacArthur Jr. lived on in memories, his son Douglas continued where he left off.

Douglas MacArthur Jr. would earn the Medal of Honor during the First World War and would thus make history with his father. They became the first-ever father-son duo to earn America's most prestigious honor.

Battlefield Chronicles: Berlin Airlift

After World War II, the Allies partitioned Germany into a Soviet-occupied zone, an American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone, and a French-occupied zone. Berlin, the German capital city, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but it was also divided into four sections.

In June 1948, the Russians–who wanted Berlin all for themselves–closed all highways, railroads, and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed, would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France, and the U.S. out of the city for good.

Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the "Berlin Airlift," lasted for more than a year and carried more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin.

The Berlin Airlift: The Partitioning of Berlin
As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories. The agreements split the defeated nation into four "allied occupation zones." They gave the eastern part of the country to the Soviet Union and the Western part to the U.S. and Great Britain. In turn, those nations agreed to cede a small part of their territories to France.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements likewise split the German capital into Allied sectors: The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This occupation of Berlin, governed by a multipower agency called the Kommandatura, began in June 1945.

The Soviets were dissatisfied with this arrangement. Twice in recent memory, they had been invaded by Germany, and they had no interest in promoting that country’s reunification–yet it seemed that was exactly what the United States, Great Britain, and France had in mind. For example, in 1946, the Americans and the British combined their two sectors into a single "Bizonia," and the French were preparing to join as well. In 1948, the three western Allies created a single new currency (the Deutsche Mark) for all of their occupation zones - a move that the Soviets feared would fatally devalue the already hyperinflated Reichsmarks that they used in the east. For the Soviets, it was the last straw.

The Berlin Airlift: The Berlin Blockade
The Russians were also concerned about a unified West Berlin: a capitalist city located right in the middle of their occupation zone that would likely be powerfully and aggressively anti-Soviet. They decided that something needed to be done to stop this creeping Unificationism. They withdrew from the Kommandatura and began a blockade of West Berlin, a maneuver that they hoped would effectively starve the western powers out of Berlin. If West Germany was to become its own country, they argued, then Berlin, located more than 100 miles from its border, could no longer be its capital.

On June 15, 1948, the Soviet authorities announced that the Autobahn, the highway connecting western Germany to Berlin, would be closed indefinitely "for repairs." Then, they halted all road traffic from west to east and barred all barge and rail traffic from entering West Berlin. Thus, began the blockade of Berlin.

As far as the western Allies were concerned, withdrawal from the city was not an option. "If we withdraw," said the American military commander, "our position in Europe is threatened, and Communism will run rampant." President Harry Truman echoed this sentiment: "We shall stay," he declared, "period." Using military force to strike back against the Soviet blockade seemed equally unwise: The risk of turning the Cold War into an actual war - even worse, a nuclear war - was just too great. Finding another way to re-provision the city seemed to the Allies to be the only reasonable response.

The Berlin Airlift: "Operation VITTLES" Begins
It was quickly settled: The Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes would use open-air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food, fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. This project, code-named "Operation VITTLES" by the American military, was known as the "Berlin airlift." (West Berliners called it the "Air Bridge.")

The Berlin airlift was supposed to be a short-term measure, but it settled in for the long haul as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade. For more than a year, hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried provisions from Western Europe to the Tempelhof (in the American sector), Gatow (in the British sector) and Tegel (in the French sector) airfields in West Berlin. At the beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5,000 tons of supplies to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8,000 tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2.3 million tons of cargo in all over the course of the airlift.

Life in West Berlin during the blockade was not easy. Fuel and electricity were rationed, and the black market was the only place to obtain many goods. Still, most West Berliners supported the airlift and their western allies. "It’s cold in Berlin," one airlift-era saying went, "but colder in Siberia."

The Berlin Airlift: The End of the Blockade
By spring 1949, it was clear that the Soviet blockade of West Berlin had failed. It had not persuaded West Berliners to reject their allies in the West, nor had it prevented the creation of a unified West German state. (The Federal Republic of Germany was established in May 1949.)

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade and reopened the roads, canals and railway routes into the western half of the city. The Allies continued the airlift until September, however, because they wanted to stockpile supplies in Berlin just in case the blockade was reinstated.

Most historians agree that the blockade was a failure in other ways, too. It amped up Cold War tensions and made the USSR look to the rest of the world like a cruel and capricious enemy. It hastened the creation of West Germany, and, by demonstrating that the U.S. and Western European nations had common interests (and a common foe), it motivated the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance that still exists today.

Military Myths and Legends: The Tootsie Roll Marines

On November 26, 1950, 10,000 men of the First Marine Division, along with elements of two Army regimental combat teams, a detachment of British Royal Marine commandos and some South Korean policemen were completely surrounded by over ten divisions of Chinese troops in rugged mountains near the Chosin Reservoir. Chairman Mao himself had ordered the Marines annihilated, and Chinese General Song Shi-Lun gave it his best shot, throwing human waves of his 120,000 soldiers against the heavily outnumbered Allied forces.

A massive cold front blew in from Siberia, and with it, the coldest winter in recorded Korean history. For the encircled allies at the Chosin Reservoir, daytime temperatures averaged five degrees below zero, while nights plunged to minus 35 and lower.

Jeep batteries froze and split. C-rations ran dangerously low and the cans were frozen solid. Fuel could not be spared to thaw them. If truck engines stopped, their fuel lines froze. Automatic weapons wouldn't cycle. Morphine syrettes had to be thawed in a medical corpsman's mouth before they could be injected. Precious bottles of blood plasma were frozen and useless. Resupply could only come by air, and that was spotty and erratic because of the foul weather.

High Command virtually wrote them off, believing their situation was hopeless. Washington braced for imminent news of slaughter and defeat. Retreat was hardly an option; not through that wall of Chinese troops. If the Marines defended, they would be wiped out. Instead, they formed a 12-mile long column and attacked.

There were 78 miles of narrow, crumbling, steeply-angled road and 100,000 Chinese soldiers between the Marines and the sea at Hungnam. Both sides fought savagely for every inch of it. The march out became one monstrous, moving battle.

The Chinese used the ravines between ridges, protected from rifle fire, to marshal their forces between attacks. The Marines' 60-millimeter mortars, capable of delivering high, arcing fire over the ridgelines, breaking up those human waves, became perhaps the most valuable weapon the Marines had. But their supply of mortar rounds was quickly depleted. Emergency requests for resupply were sent by radio, using code words for specific items. The code for 60mm mortar ammo was "Tootsie Rolls" but the radio operator receiving that urgent request didn't have the Marines' code sheets. All he knew was that the request came from command authority, it was extremely urgent and there were tons of Tootsie Rolls at supply bases in Japan.

Tootsie Rolls had been issued with other rations to U.S. troops since World War I, earning preferred status because they held up so well to heat, cold and rough handling compared to other candies.

Tearing through the clouds and fog, parachutes bearing pallet-loads of Tootsie Rolls descended on the Marines. After initial shocked reactions, the freezing, starving troops rejoiced. Frozen Tootsies were thawed in armpits, popped in mouths, and their sugar provided instant energy. For many, Tootsie Rolls were their only nourishment for days. The troops also learned they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes in fuel drums, gas tanks, cans, and radiators, where they would freeze solid again, sealing the leaks.

Over two weeks of unspeakable misery, movement, and murderous fighting, the 15,000-man column suffered 3,000 killed in action, 6,000 wounded and thousands of severe frostbite cases. But they reached the sea, demolishing several Chinese divisions in the process. Hundreds credited their very survival to Tootsie Rolls. Surviving Marines called themselves "The Chosin Few," and among themselves, another name: The Tootsie Roll Marines.

Wearing the Purple Heart

I grew up in New York City during the 1950s, in the projects of Queens. Every household had made some contribution to the defense of the Republic. It was unusual to find someone who had not served. I had friends who had fathers with parts missing. I had friends who had no fathers because those fathers had made a sacrifice to save the world. Now it's exactly the opposite; most Americans do not know anyone in uniform. In an environment in which very few people serve, it becomes something of a movie to most people. It looks like fiction because you haven't had that experience.

And our views about what service and sacrifice are have been skewed by a lack of knowledge.

My father was drafted into the Army in the Second World War and was not very pleased about being pulled out of the University of Minnesota just before he finished to go fight in the South Pacific. And yet when he was my age, all he talked about was how proud he was to have served the country. The same thing is true of people of my generation - about 40-45 percent of the people who served in Vietnam were drafted, many of them dragged kicking and screaming into uniform. Go talk to them now that they're 70 or 75 years old: There is nothing that they are prouder of than having served.

That experience of having been young and in uniform is transformative. Which war you served in is irrelevant. It's a bond that is impossible to break, and I think it becomes stronger over time. You're away from home, burdened with large authority and responsibility. You know the mission itself is important, but you're in miserable circumstances - too cold, too hot, too hungry, too thirsty, too tired. I think the experience is generally unpleasant, but the people you go through it with, make it bearable. Different weapons different tactics, different intensity, but the experience of being in combat, being in fear for your life, having to perform missions that were important, taking care of each other, remained the same.

I don't think you can judge valor with any kind of regularity or equitability. It's a subjective evaluation, despite that the services have tried to judge it in absolute or relative terms. Is this worth a Medal of Honor or a Distinguished Service Cross? A Service Cross or a Silver Star? And I think military people have grappled with this for a long time which is why there was originally only the Purple Heart. You either did something valorous or you did not. It makes it more equitable but also more inequitable once you start instituting gradations of valor.

Lots of people received Purple Hearts who are not around to talk about their experience because it killed them. And those of us who are still here, when asked about the circumstances of our award, often give it short shrift, preferring instead to remember a buddy who did not survive, perhaps killed in the same incident. We know that it was originally an award for military merit, but that it was transformed into an award that signifies sacrifice. It's about more than our own sacrifice, it's about those who sacrificed but didn't survive to wear the medal. There's some survivor's guilt there, obviously.

As for my own action, the enemy had spies in the province headquarters. They knew we were coming; they had three days to set up an ambush, and we walked right into it. We lost a large number of killed and wounded in the first seconds of the battle, including me. There were a lot of other soldiers who were out in the open. I was badly wounded too, but I was the only person who was able to do something. I thought it was my obligation to do what I could to get them out of there. So I went out and dragged some of them back. The Viet Cong were coming out of their bunkers with supporting cover, taking the weapons from our dead and shooting the wounded. I did that until I ran out of gas; I sat down to catch my breath and I couldn't get up again because I'd lost too much blood.

A citation is like a photograph; it's a snapshot in time and doesn't tell the whole story. Mine doesn't mention how scared I was. But it's interesting about fear. A great calm comes over you in a circumstance in which you not only might not survive but in which you are likely not to survive. And you are much more relaxed about it all. It's not that you aren't scared anymore, but that it doesn't matter anymore. The other thing about fear is that it gets you to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. There's a lot of adrenaline that is attendant to being scared and that gives you the strength you otherwise wouldn't have. I talk to cadets often about fear in combat and I tell them I rarely saw fear immobilize people; fear usually did exactly the opposite: it motivated people to take care of each other and do positive, valiant things they otherwise wouldn't do.

Jack Jacobs Medal of Honor citation:
http://www.pbs.org/weta/americanvalor/stories/jacobs.html

The Military Taught Me to Die for My Country

Like the majority of Team Rubicon's 90,000-plus volunteers, I am a military veteran. I retired from the Coast Guard in April of 2016 after a 27-year career, which included 16 years of sea time on a variety of Coast Guard vessels up and down the East Coast. My desire to join the military wasn't born from a desire for action or service, but rather from necessity. After my service, I found an option to utilize my skills and education through a disaster relief organization called Team Rubicon.

Long before Team Rubicon came into existence, I joined the service in 1989. Up to that point, there was very little stability in my life. I was the firstborn of my mother and father's marriage, but not their first. All total, I am one of 8 combined siblings between my parents and their previous relationships. My younger siblings and I grew up in foster homes before relocating to Maine in 1977, where we continued to reside in the foster care system. At the age of 16, I became an emancipated minor and thus began my journey into adulthood, college, work, life, and finally, parenthood at 22. At this point, I had no choice but to join military service if I were going to provide properly for my new and unexpected family.

Prior to this phase, I had several friends who joined the military and tried to encourage me to do the same. I had no desire to join the Marines or Army, as I didn't care to go to war on foreign soil. I certainly had no desire to join the Navy and be away from home for months or even years. The Air Force never appealed to me as I didn't care about aviation. That left the Coast Guard. I grew up in coastal Maine and recalled seeing Coast Guard stations and buoy tenders in Rockland and other communities for years. My future father in law had recently retired from the Coast Guard, so he encouraged me to investigate the service and see what they offered. I was enticed by the humanitarian aspect of the service but also wanted to join the front lines of the war on drugs. In February 1989, I signed on the dotted line in a Portland ME Coast Guard recruiting office and began my journey into law enforcement and humanitarian shortly after completing boot camp in Cape May, NJ, with my first assignment to a 270-ft Coast Guard cutter out of Portsmouth VA.

Over the next 27 years I would serve on several other ships, help rescue Cuban, Haitian and Dominican migrants at sea, respond to natural disasters, including hurricanes, witnessed 9-11 first hand, tow disabled vessels back into port, enforce fisheries and natural resources laws, inspect merchant ships, publish navigational information for mariners, fight fires at sea, coordinate search and rescue cases, inspect recreational, commercial, and fishing vessels, train junior members, and finally perform maintenance work on hundreds of aids to navigation in the New England area. I always felt a sense of accomplishment that what I did helped make our coasts and oceans safer, enriched the lives saved so they could go home to their loved ones, left the world a better place than what I found, and helped others succeed in their careers.

I did all this knowing that I took an oath to defend our country, uphold our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and die if necessary while serving alongside the very same sailors and shipmates who took the same oath and believed in the same ideals and goals. It was a very satisfying and rewarding experience, one which I never thought could be replicated ever again. I was fortunate to live through some of these harrowing experiences, but never forgot those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our service performing those duties. Many of these sailors, shipmates, and airmen lost their lives knowing the inherent risks involved in performing these missions, yet they went forth without hesitation, not knowing if they'd ever come back home, and sadly, never did.

Even though I maintained many friendships throughout my career and beyond with many of my Coast Guard shipmates, I still fell into a severe depression and state of loneliness after I retired. I missed the calling, the dependency on being there for those less fortunate, and missed the work hard, play hard mentality on patrol and during our port call visits and experiences with other shipmates. I tried to make the best use of my new downtime by going back to school, taking online and on-campus classes, and in the process earned my associate's and bachelor's degrees. However, my personal life faltered with relationships and family. I was truly going through post-deployment depression, to put it mildly. My health struggled and I found myself hating to face each day because I really felt like there wasn't much to look forward to.

In the meantime, I found out a former co-worker, who was now out of the Coast Guard and herself getting her college degree, joined Team Rubicon. I had heard of them briefly and saw one of their vehicles rolling down the highway in New Hampshire one day, but I had no real idea of what they did or who they were. At the time, I had a keen interest in getting an emergency management degree but wanted a more real life experience to go with that pursuit. Nonetheless, I signed up for Team Rubicon and then forgot about them, like many others probably have done, figuring I was too busy for it.

Life moved on. My stepdaughter graduated high school, my girlfriend and I sold our home in Maine and we relocated to a new home in Florida. We volunteered in animal rescue and discovered a passion for helping others through disaster, deploying to Panama City and Bainbridge GA in the wake of Hurricane Michael. On our first trip we brought over 200 cats and dogs to Atlanta, animals who would have otherwise been euthanized had we not gotten to the rescue site in time. It was then I started to feel the calling return to help those less fortunate, and so I looked into Team Rubicon once more. I went back through my Coast Guard career, updated all of my training and lateraled it over to Team Rubicon, took all of the training offered by FEMA, and started to make myself available for various Team Rubicon ops and training sessions.

After completing Core Ops in Atlanta, my first opportunity to serve came when I volunteered for remote ops in the wake of Hurricane Michael. It was during this time I received phone calls from people desperate for help. I took the information down and plugged data into a computer, but more importantly, I listened to every single person who needed help, and heard the despair and pleading in their voices for something, anything, anyone, to come help them from the hurricane damage. Several times I was left in tears after these phone calls. I began dreading the calls after the first couple of days because it was so depressing to hear the sadness and trembling in some of the voices, particularly from the elderly or families with young children. Yet here I was in the comfort of my own home, drinking hot coffee and working in an air conditioned office, feeling bad about myself. And then I'd go on Facebook and read the posts from those already deployed or engaged in remote ops, read their experiences and what they were dealing with, and finally realized what I was dealing with wasn't really that bad. It was more important to be there for those less fortunate. Giving to others who need help, those who need others who are capable of giving and can be there at a moment's notice when the call goes out is what really matters. My thinking was significantly altered at that point.

Later I received the opportunity to deploy to Panama City in December 2018. The area was still gravely decimated by Hurricane Michael, and cleanup moved along at a snail's pace. I found myself completely humbled by what I saw and who I met. I discovered many of us were still fighting battles no one could see, and that the only way to get through some of these issues was to head into these arenas with others who knew exactly what we were going through, then share our experiences whenever possible so we didn't have to keep everything inside and bottled up. It was extremely gratifying to be surrounded by so many grey shirts who needed that calling to feel a sense of purpose again, and to work for an organization which goes far above and beyond to make sure we are cared for while we are caring for those who truly need us, and to be there for other Grey Shirts going through those invisible battles.

In other words, we were all learning to live. Team Rubicon was teaching us just that, and more. Instead of being willing to die for what we used to do, we were now learning to live for what we could do. We were helping not only those who experienced traumatic events and felt hopeless or lost, but we were also helping others who needed to see their true worth in making themselves available for others, every single day. In a sense, much like many of the muck-outs we were performing for homeowners, we were learning to muck ourselves down to our foundations and walls, so we could learn how to rebuild ourselves again. We all learned to see ourselves as humans, not robots, and to see ourselves worthy of contributing to society again while being given the opportunity to experience camaraderie and fellowship the military once gave us.

Since my first deployment to Panama City, I've volunteered for four more Houston rebuild deployments and also deployed to Collier County, FL. It was during my July Houston deployment I heard the words which headlined this writing. One of the Clay Hunt Fellowship cohorts spoke, after we all shared our experiences, and said what we all needed to hear - that while we were taught by the military to die for our country, Team Rubicon helped us live for it. What a significant and profound statement.

In all of my Team Rubicon experiences, I walked into a room full of strangers, then left knowing I have family, brothers, sisters, all Grey Shirt comrades for life, and friends and family to truly live for. I made lifelong friends with a young Minnesota politician, a Marine vet from Virginia, a former cop from Buffalo, another cop from Greensboro NC, a young college grad on her very first deployment, and discovered other Grey shirts who served in the Coast Guard or lived near my home in Maine. I even met a Grey Shirt who had the same passion for cat rescue as my girlfriend and I did. We shared our struggles and realized we didn't have to be ashamed of our feelings. Every grey shirt in those rooms listened to us, hugged us, shook our hands, helped build our self-esteem up, and let us know we weren't alone. We no longer needed to die for a cause. We could now live for one and be there for others who need us just as badly as we need them.

Team Rubicon helped us, and continues to help us, see our value and true worth by giving us opportunities to help those who are at, or were near, one of the lowest moments of their lives. People lost more than their homes. They lost their livelihoods, their memories, their cherished possessions, and possibly even family and friends. We were, and are here, to help them get back on their feet, to restore their lives, to live again, and to restore their faith in humanity. In those moments, Team Rubicon is helping me and other fellow grey shirts learn we don't need to die for our country to ensure others can live freely. We are here today, tomorrow, and in the future, ready for the call, living a life of purpose so that we help others stay alive and healthy. Team Rubicon truly is helping us live for our country and others so that no one has to die for it. I know this to be true because every one of us leaves here completely changed with a burning desire to come back again, to continue helping those devastated by disaster to resume normalcy in their lives. That is a cause truly worth living for.

Airman Who Fell 18,000 Feet Without A Parachute & Lived

Aerial combat, like naval combat, has many risks attached to it, many of which arise from the fact that the human beings involved in such battles are far removed from their natural element: land.

Whether a few thousand miles out to sea, or a few thousand feet up in the air, when you're fighting so far out of your natural element, you risk death not only from your enemy's weaponry but also from the inherent danger of falling from the skies or into the unforgiving ocean.

While we have invented means to mitigate these dangers, such as lifeboats and parachutes if these last resorts fail, death is usually a certainty.

Indeed, plummeting to the earth without a parachute from 18,000 feet in the air is pretty much guaranteed to end only one way for the unfortunate person involved - but, as history has often taught us there are always exceptions to the rules, and one man who miraculously survived a parachute-less jump from his burning airplane was World War II RAF airman Nicholas Alkemade.

Nicholas Alkemade was born in 1922 in Norfolk, England, and was a gardener before signing up with the Royal Air Force when WWII broke out. He was trained as an air gunner, and after completing his training, he served as a tail gunner with RAF 115 Squadron.

Alkemade was part of a crew that flew an Avro Lancaster MK II bomber, which was capable of carrying the largest bombs used by the RAF during the Second World War. These bombers often flew night missions, and, as such, the bomber that Alkemade's crew manned was christened Werewolf.

Alkemade flew fourteen successful missions with the crew of Werewolf, and on the night of March 24, 1944, they were part of a bombing raid targeting Berlin. They successfully delivered their payload, but on the return journey, heavy winds took them off course. They ended up flying over the Ruhr region, which had a high concentration of anti-aircraft defenses.

Werewolf was attacked from below by a German night-fighter aircraft, and the resulting damage tore up Werewolf's wing and fuselage and set the plane on fire. It was obvious that Werewolf was beyond salvation, and the pilot ordered the crew to grab their parachutes in preparation for an emergency exit from the burning aircraft.

Alkemade, alone in his turret at the back of the plane, was already being scorched by the flames, with his rubber oxygen mask beginning to melt on his face, and his arms seared by the fire. Scrambling for his parachute in a panic, he was hit with a moment of pure dread when he finally located it - for his parachute, like everything else around him, was on fire.

Faced with a terrible choice - that of burning to death or falling to his death, Alkemade chose the latter option. Better to suffer the brief terror of the fall and have a swift, merciful end than suffer through the torment of fire. He jumped from the burning plane without his parachute, and, falling at almost 120mph and looking up at the starry sky and the burning airplane from which he had just jumped, he lost consciousness.

Amazingly he woke up three hours later, lying in deep snow in a pine forest. It seemed that the flexible young pines had slowed his descent enough that the snow was able to cushion his fall. He had not broken any bones but had managed to sprain his knee after his 18,000-foot fall from the sky. In addition, he had suffered burn wounds from the fire and had pieces of perspex from his flak-shattered screen embedded in his skin.

While he had survived the fall, surviving the rest of the night was not a guarantee. His knee was in too much pain for him to walk, and the cold was beginning to take its toll.

He began blowing his distress whistle, which eventually attracted the attention of some German civilians. He was taken to Meschede Hospital where his wounds were treated, and when he was well enough to talk, he several by the Gestapo.

He told them his story, but they refused to believe that he could have survived such a fall without a parachute. They insisted that he had buried his parachute somewhere and that he was a spy - but when they sent men to investigate the landing site, as well as the wreckage of Werewolf, they were amazed to find that the remains of Alkemade's parachute were indeed still in the wreckage of the plane.

Alkemade then became something of a celebrity and met a number of Luftwaffe officers who wanted to hear about his miraculous jump. However, this did not earn him any special treatment, and like any other captured Allied airman, he was sent to the notorious prison camp Stalag Luft III.

Alkemade's luck remained with him, though. When the camp's 10,000 inmates were forced to trek hundreds of miles across northern Germany, through a blizzard, with temperatures dropping as low as -22 degrees C, he survived and was eventually liberated.

After the war, Alkemade worked in the chemical industry in the UK and lived to the age of 64. He passed away in June 1987.

Book Review: With the Old Breed

Sledge's memoir gives a firsthand and unapologetically honest perspective on the Pacific Theater of World War II. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain, the filth and malaise, the fear of potential "banzai attacks," and the hopelessness and loss of humanity that so uniquely characterized the campaign in the Pacific. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by Japanese soldiers during the battles and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands."

Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered and with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses, as well as other macabre trophy-taking. He details the process and mechanisms that slowly strip away a soldier's humanity and compassion, making the thought process accessible to those who have never served in combat.

Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand-in-hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa.

One of the themes of "With the Old Breed," regardless of which battle Sledge is recounting, is the near impossibility of communicating the experience of combat to those who have not experienced it.

It's time to move this book to a higher shelf, to that of nonfiction that is outstanding literature.

Readers Reviews
"In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge's. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it was it like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals' safe accounts of - not the 'good war' - but the worst war ever."
~Ken Burns

"Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, 'With The Old Breed.' He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific - the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary - into terms we mortals can grasp."
~Tom Hanks

This is the best first-person book on the Pacific war in World War Two that I have ever read. To be fair, I have many more books on the ETO, but this book stands out as a moving account of the miseries of the common soldier who fought eyeball to eyeball with his Japanese counterparts in the steamy jungles.

Eugene Sledge is an example of American manhood that I fear is lost. A young man from a good family who was anxious to defend his country, he and his fellow Marines willingly suffered for their country in a way I doubt many young people today would. I hope I'm wrong.

I've found the most moving stories of WWII don't come from historians, but from the common fighting man. This is one of the best.
~1History Buff

No doubt, the greatest book I have ever read. Leaving no emotion untouched, Sledge strips away any notion of glory in battle. I understand war is brutal and senseless, but I now have a new outlook that reinforces that opinion. Should be read by students and anyone who wants to join the military. Praise those who were forced to endure battle. No one can fully grasp the experience, without being there. I do know that I would be very reluctant to.
~Mr. Krinkle

About the Author
E. B. "Sledgehammer" Sledge was born and grew up in Mobile. In late 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. After basic training, he was sent to the Pacific Theater where he fought at Peleliu and Okinawa, two of the fiercest battles of World War II. Following the Japanese surrender, Sledge served in China as part of the occupation force. Upon his return home, he obtained a Ph.D. in biology and joined the faculty of Alabama College (later the University of Montevallo), where he taught until retirement. Sledge initially wrote about his war experiences to explain them to his family, but he was persuaded by his wife to seek publication. Sledge died on March 3, 2001.

Much of what E.B. Sledge wrote in his book was a major part of HBO's "The Pacific."

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