In the old days…..
Defense was considered cowardly, and grapple was expected. Bare knuckled fighting didn’t generally punch the head.
Army Helmets
When I joined the US Army it was 1982. The standard helmet at the time was the “Steel Pot” which was just that. It had a fiberglass liner with a replaceable headband, used for guard duty and such. Not great but it was all there was.
During my time I transferred to the Kevlar helmet. It had better coverage and didn’t weigh as much. Without a liner it wasn’t the best for using to shave in.
Today’s military is into second or third generation helmets. That’s why this story interested me.
Staff Sgt. Bryan McQueen was nearing the end of his tour in Afghanistan with the 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade on Sept. 3, 2018. He, his fellow soldiers and nearly 50 Afghans were headed to a security meeting, as routine as any other daily assignment.
Machine gun fire erupted.
McQueen felt what he could later only describe as a horse kick to the back of his head and he fell flat to the ground, landing on his face.
But in seconds he was on his feet with a simple question.
“Did these (expletive deleted) really just shoot me in the head?” he said.
The 7.62x54mmR round from the truck-mounted machine gun struck the back of McQueen’s helmet, shredding some of the materials but not penetrating the shell.
It’s true that soldiers have a morbid sense of humor. Keeping the bullet that was removed from them, a shell fragment that just missed them, and the helmet that saved them
This week that same helmet, bisected and mounted on a plaque with McQueen’s name and the appropriate unit coinage, was presented to him here at a Personal Protective Equipment soldier return ceremony.
For many years defense researchers and protective equipment programs have retrieved items such as body armor and helmets damaged by enemy fire on the battlefield for forensic analysis to improve current and future gear.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Potts, head of Program Executive Office Soldier, called the ceremony a chance to see the effect of the work that equipment programs do.
God bless SSG McQueen and his family. Equipment has made big strides in gear.
I got a weird kid
I got a weird kid. There is no hair on this story, I swear. This just happened this morning
IHOP has unlimited pancakes, so here we go. Mama puts on her headphones (she has been getting into K Movies)
Halfway there, Mercy (listening to Diamonte) asks “Dad, is Paranoid the most famous Black Sabbath song?”
uh…I suppose. “Why?”
Followed by a conversation about riffs and hooks, song structure, how you can build a song on a bass line or a riff, keep up the tempo and as long as the lyrics sound right with the melody it can be very recognizable. And that’s how it can become popular.
You can also come up with a simple riff, start slow, build up and add instruments into a huge solo and outro even if the lyrics make no sense but sound right.
”who did that?”
Siri…..
we got to the parking lot, mama takes off her headphones and says. “Mercy, your listening to Stairway to Heaven?”
”I like the guitar but the lyrics don’t make any sense. They should have gone with Ozzy”
Then we went on to dinosaurs
this kid is weird
105 mm recoiless rifle
I really, really want one of these.
Just for groundhogs you understand
Green Stars and aircraft markings
As usual. The military has to standardize the markings on their aircraft.
Cool video