Lately, Weltanschauung has been posting lots of bad news from Downrangeland.
Although it’s been a rough couple weeks personally, all is not lost! Here is the Airpower Summary. Strong! Here’s some Army news, too! Not to mention CENTCOM.
Never forget, in this war, like Vietnam, we’re winning every battle. Don’t let the media lose it for us again.
I was passing along the bad news about Travis Patriquin to a mutual friend, and he told me another of our mutual friends, Capt Jason West, had also been killed in Ramadi. This happened on 24 July this year. Somehow I missed hearing about it, probably because I was on the way home from Okinawa from a TDY.
Jason was the S1A, the personnel adjutant, if I remember my office symbols correctly. Our paths crossed fairly regularly. He was always busy, but never too busy to at least say "Hi," and was always in a good mood. We went on countless exercises together, and like Travis, I can’t remember how many meals at the chow hall we shared.
Related posts can be found here, here, and here.
Rest in peace, my brother.
I was reading one of my friend Jim’s posts (did I mention Jim is the guy who provides me with this blog? Thanks, Jim!), something he wrote reminded me of something. Back in the day when we were in junior high school together and would have voted for Ronald Reagan (pbuh) had we been old enough, we noted that Reagan had carried the blue states. As I thought and thought, I could have sworn he carried the blue states in 1980 and in 1984; and that Bush 41 had carried the blue states in 1988, but not enough states were blue in 1992. So why in the world in 2000, 2004, and 2006 were we looking at Republicans carrying red states?
Jim found the probable answer here. Way to go, ol’ buddy! How’d you do that, though? Google?
I just finished reading Cox & Forkums’ third book of their editorial cartoons, Black & White World III. As usual, it’s great stuff! I say that because it makes me think about things that I enjoy contemplating, and they usually agree with my viewpoints, though not always, especially when it comes to the role of religion with regard to politics.
You can check out their work on their website at http://www.coxandforkum.com/. If you like what you see and you want to buy for yourself, you can find it on Amazon -dot – com. I recommend any of their three books.
I first found them through my friend Matt Hoy‘s website about four or five years ago, and I’ve been checking in with them ever since.
SPC Vincent Pomante was the driver of the HMMWV that was hit by the IED that killed Maj Megan McClung and CPT Travis Patriquin. I caught the video memorial to Maj McClung on Hot Air, and when a picture of SPC Pomante, I recognized him as one of the guys who always helped out around the TOC. He could always be counted on to get you what you needed and always seemed to be in a fairly good mood, no matter what was going on around him, which made life easy for the rest of us.
I dealt with Travis on a pretty regular basis, including some social settings, and I knew him fairly well. SPC Pomante was from among the bigger list of people I didn’t know well, but contributed more to the physical aspects of making a headquarters function than any of the officers.
One more brother in arms we miss. Rest well, soldier!
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19 Dec 2006 Update: DefenseLink. Patriot Guard Riders, thanks again, thanks always! Columbus Dispatch, again here.
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Most of my attention this past week has been dominated by the news of Travis Patriquin’s death, and more importantly, what many of us are doing about it.
I was contacted by one of Travis’ friends, Matthew, and we discussed the need to make sure there was a trust set up for Amy Patriquin and the kids. It looks like the Patriquin family may be taking care of that themselves. I plan to make sure we get the word out how everyone else can help as soon as Matthew and I find out.
Tonight was the 14 FS Christmas Party at the Co-located Club. Lt Col T gave a benediction that was rather more patriotic and warlike than I normally hear, which is exactly what we need to hear these days. The dinner was superb! Afterward, we then got down to the business of ‘Bad Santa’ passing out ‘gifts,’ and it rather seemed to pay to have been naughty! Following that was the combat gift exchange, where you take turns picking a gift, with the twist being the next person in line has the option to take the gift you just received! I’ve become convinced that combat gift exchanges are best suited for crowds of under 30 people. We easily had twice that number, and everyone started losing interest (meaning going to the bar instead of paying attention to the exchange) within about 15 minutes. The rest of the time was drinking, dancing, and chatting.
I’ve missed these things. . . the last one that was this good was Spangdahlem 2001. Fighter Pilot Christmas Party re-hack accomplished!
The Misawa AB Chapter of the Air Force Association is officially back in business. If anyone from Misawa AB reads this blog, I’d like to encourage you to join AFA and start helping us out with our service to the force! You don’t have to be in the Air Force, you just have to have an interest in educating everyone about what the Air Force does for them, and also a dedication to making the quality of life better for America’s Airmen.
This has been a rough couple of weeks. A week ago Tuesday, we got word that an F-16CG had crashed in Iraq, and the pilot, Maj Troy Gilbert, was officially listed as "Duty Status – Whereabouts Unknown." As I checked the news this morning, I saw that they’d finally listed him as KIA. I didn’t know Troy very well, I only ran into him a handful of times this past summer at Luke AFB when I was in the TX course. He was Gen Rand’s executive officer or director of staff, something like that. I had to coordinate with him the one time I flew with the General. He was a decent guy and a brother Viper driver, and for those reasons alone we in the F-16 community will miss him. He is survived by his wife and five children.
The big, bad surprise was when I phoned home this morning and my Mom asked "Did you know CPT Travis Patriquin?" I immediately knew what had to have happened. Travis was killed a day and a half ago fighting in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, he was in a HMMWV that was hit by an IED. He is survived by his wife and three children. I confirmed the news via a friend who was close to the scene.
Travis and I were stationed in Friedberg, Germany together, he was S-3 (Operations Plans) and I was the Air Liaison Officer for the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division. Travis had just left Special Forces, and had participated in Operation ANACONDA in Afghanistan in 2002. When I found that out, I mentioned a couple of my buddies had flown missions there; he told me that if I pointed them out to him, they’d never buy drinks as long as he was around.
Travis and I went through several pre-deployment exercises together, including at least one at Hohenfels and one at Grafenwoehr. After talking with him for awhile, we learned that we grew up about two miles away from one another, so there we were in the middle of the training areas in Germany, 5,000 miles from St Louis, talking about our adjoining school districts’ rivalries. He moved over from the S-3 shop before the Hohenfels rotation to take over S-5 (Civil Affairs) from my other buddy Paul M. He stuck with that job downrange. I’ll include some links to various articles about him at the end of the post.
I don’t meet very many people who impress me very much anymore. Travis was one of those few.
Shortly before the brigade departed for Iraq, Travis and I spoke to one another for awhile. The thing I’ll remember most is when he explained that having been special forces, he could ‘Stare down’ almost any other Army officer, especially in an armored unit. He apparently was making it a point to size up everyone else around him when he arrived in Friedberg. He wouldn’t tell everyone what he’d been doing before arriving in Germany, he just liked to keep it his own private secret that he had been special forces, while all the other folks around him were ordinary "Ground-pounders." He said he remembered introducing himself to my deputy "Tank" and me, and asking what we did. He said his ego quickly deflated when he found out Tank and I were fighter pilots!
Travis may not have been a fighter pilot, but he was a warrior of another sort. He may not have had the eyes of a hawk and the reflexes of a cat. But like a fighter pilot, he had the moxie to look for a career path that would intentionally put him into harms’ way a long way from home with only a handful of his buddies to fight their way in and fight their way out, the guts to do it, and the patriotism to love doing it.
Rest well, brothers! You’ve done everything you could for us. I hope to carry the torch as well as you did.
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Links to relevant articles: An Army of Run (by Benjamin Cheever in Runners’ World), Return to Ramadi (by Michael Fumento in The Weekly Standard), and Kuwaittimes.net.
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11 Dec 2006 Update: I deleted a link to a news clip from the Chicago Sun and replaced it with one from Stars & Stripes. For any visitors after this date, it will be transparent. New Links: STLtoday.com, good writeup, interview with the family. KSDK, shorter writeup. Randuwa, superb words, thanks! Chicago Tribune, decent writeup.
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13 Dec 2006 Update: More for Travis: BLACKFIVE (recommend you scroll down and check out Travis’ PowerPoint show about Ramadi). Michael Fumento (contains some detail of the IED attack). Michelle Malkin (quick photo of Travis’ Desk) See the comments section for this entry, too. Thanks, Daniel and Matthew; you have company in your grief, from Ramadi to Germany to Japan to St Louis; the Good Lord only knows where else!
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14 Dec 2006 Update: More on Travis: Cop The Truth, thanks! Shreveport Times (Great city, a bunch of us went there after flying into Barksdale on our T-37 cross-country flight). Patterico’s Pontifications, great stuff, with links to other good milblogs. American Heroes’ Memorial post. DefenseLink. USA Today.
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16 Dec 2006 Update: Still more on Travis, it looks like his PowerPoint presentation is catching on in the Blogosphere. There are a lot of track-backs to Patterico and Fumento. One of the sources I read suggested Travis’ vehicle was escorting Lt C
ol (ret) Olliver North and a FoxNews crew. ON Point Blog. MilitaryCity.com. There’s a thread going for him on Lightfighter.net.
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16 Dec 2006, 2nd Update: Finally, the MSM takes notice! Thanks go out to ABC’s Martha Raddatz and David Kerley (great entries here and here)!
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17 Dec 2006 Update: The arrival in St Louis. Washington Post. I’m trying to upload the now-famous PowerPoint presentation on this page. More from Michelle Malkin‘s blog, plus Hot Air (mostly a tribute to Maj McClung, but contains some footage of SPC Pomante and Travis.
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19 Dec 2006 Update: Patriot Guard Riders: Thanks, true Americans! Never Yet Melted, thanks! Iraq/Afghanistan War Heroes. COL Peter Mansoor (Ready 6 "Ancient") just weighed in on BLACKFIVE, his comment says everything you need to know, and praise from him is indeed high praise.
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It was nearly impossible to get any work today. The LAN was down at the office. I didn’t have an IEEE cable to connect to my printer, so I couldn’t even print documents. I managed to get around to reading some of my office’s instructions, a quarterly award submission, and a little grad school. Not a bad day at the office after all!
That was, until one of my Airmen sneaked a cat into the office. . . !
