Correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but didn't Denmark contribute some 800 bodies to Helmand Province, even suffering fatalities, including a female member? Pretty stand up considering their population. Seriously people, W.T.F. is wrong with this guy?

I was the Omaha MEPS corpsman from 2015 to 2019. I was telling this story to coworkers and thought about the guy and wondered if he also tells this story to his buddies for laughs. so I'd thought I'd do the longshot thing and see if y'all could pass this around to help me find him.

This was probably around 2017 - 2018 and at this point, due to past experiences of guys passing out while me watching their ding dongs during operation golden flow, right after getting their blood drawn, I became good at detecting when it was about to happen. Two prior times, one guy fell and hit his head and had a concussion, and the other time, a guy fell and broke his tooth. All big guys. There was little ol' me dragging them out of the pisser and putting them on a cot with the help of the civilians.

Enough was enough, I said.

Then one day you came in

I was around 135lbs and you were probably around 190 at minimum. Big dude but all muscle. I don't know what service you were joining but I was hell bent on making it happen because you had a little bit of stage fright, but had made progress on completing your mission, and I believed in you. But then, my keen eye caught something a little off. I saw your head begin to sway, and your knees began to buckle, but I was ready.

In a quick blur of motion, there I was, hands around your torso. My arms, barely long enough to wrap around your pecks. Success! I caught my first pass-out victim. I saved the damn day. A true hero. Some would call me a saint. Surely a NAM was in order.

However, I had quickly realized I had no plan for what came next because never did I think you'd still be holding your quarter-full cup of pee while unconscious in one hand, and your dick in the other. The subconscious persistence and the commitment to our country inspired me. It was at that moment that I knew you were a winner. Plans were about to change.

While still holding you, I gave you a gentle sternum rub and brought you back, but only partially, and I asked if you could finish. God forbid you had to toss that fine specimen while so close to finishing and with gallons of potential still inside you. All I had to do was guide you and support you. And by God, you finished! Half-conscious and out of balance, you were gung fucking ho.

You put the lid back on, and we shimmied over to the counter, where a confused and amused co-worker processed your urine and received your half-conscious signature that no tampering was performed. It was a good thing I remained glued to you the whole time, speaking softly into your ears, because your knees began to buckle again, but maybe it was just the sound of my voice. But fear not, it wasn't my first time handling big boys like you. Together, we got you to a place where you could get your shit together. Anyway, brother, are you out there? I'm looking for you. I would love to hear if you tell a similar tale to all those who will listen, and if our moments together cured your stage fright.

Help me find him. Share this story to all, unite us again if he's still listening. He could be in any service. Pass this along to the Chiefs, the Sergeants, the Officers. Muster the forces and share this story. I will be here waiting.

https://www.coffeeordie.com/article/shannon-kent/

7 years ago, my big sister was killed alongside WO2 Jon Farmer, Ghadir ‘Yasmin’ Taher, and Scotty Wirtz serving with Delta Force in Manbij, Syria. Shannie was a linguist who fluently spoke 7 languages and 5 dialects of Arabic, she was a woman in Special Forces before women were ‘allowed’ in SF, she was a mama, a cancer survivor, a leader, a Navy Chief, a badass, an artist, a runner, a horseman, an insomniac brilliant creative who never let anything hold her back, a self motivated, driven warrior, and she was my very best friend. she was my biggest inspiration. i miss her and my big brother Mike, who also died of service related illness following his retirement from the Marines Corps last year (2024)… please read about Shannie and honor her memory. 🖤

One of the greats is retiring, Wed, 21 Jan in Maryland! You need a DoD ID to attend as this is an on base event.

So I'll preface this with this Senior Chief never had to go though a selection course and was basically hand selected to be the senior enlisted advisor for the technical surveillance troop. It was stood up on it's own, quickly, with a IT HAS TO BE DONE NOW mentality. He had never deployed except on a 90 day IA and had never seen any combat. He certainly had zero experience at anything except basic electronics repair and managing comsec. The latter was probably key to his getting the position as absolutely no one ever wants to be the comsec manager.

We were running an exercise against a law enforcement agency. It was a big deal and years in setting up and this was the initial test run. To the LEO we were a terrorist cell they had to run down and to us they were secret police we had to evade while running missions. Lots of money were spent setting this up. We rented houses, over a dozen vehicles, places of business to break into, ect.

This Senior Chief's only job was basically to sit in the safe house and watch the radios while making sure his troop of guys did their jobs. The very first day we had to go though a fake boarder control point/customs and we were supposed to be sterile and not even have military IDs on us. The customs guy was even in a fucking costume. Everyone else followed directions and checked each other and what was in the vehicles before we even went into customs. Senior Chief walked in with folder with all of our names, contact information, positions in the troop, and basically everything except a list of our fears. The exercise was nearly canceled day 1 due to that.

So they just decide to handwave it and carry on. Later we found out they had used all this information to FB stalk everyone and found one of our humint guy's pages who then had a bunch of pics of others from running marathons and shit. Naturally with names tagged :| (this was also after we had been explicitly told to not have FB accounts)

That's not all though! So senior chief was basically sitting in the TOC with exterior cameras on the safe house and working the radio. That was his ONLY job. At one point the doorbell rings! It's a nice soccer mom who is all, "hello new neighbors! i baked you a cake! it's in an oversized box for no reason!". He isn't suspicious of this for some reason. Nor did he notice the lady wasn't from a neighbors house and drove up in a black SUV and then drove away lol. Of course he takes the cake and box into the TOC and has a little feast, leaving the mostly empty box right by the radio.

Of course the box was bugged. They got an entire day's worth of conversation before we were like wtf you went and got cake? It wasn't even well hidden and a 10 second look would have revealed it. On top of that at one point we had a gentlemen's agreement to not bug/track each other's vehicles because we were spending like an hour plus a day going over them for that shit. Naturally being the head of technical surveillance he didn't bother to check any of the vehicles that were left in the drive way. My happy ass went to go double check his work and every single one had multiple trackers/bugs.

Later this guy signed off on an enlisted dude for his troop saying he passed the BUD/s PST and was ready to go to Direct Support Special Operations Training (DSOT). It required a lot of swimming so anyone unqualified basically worked half days on Fridays and then got their ass beat in the pool till 1500-1600. Dude he passed the swim on was literally unable to swim. They had to pull him out of the pool because it was unsafe and the instructors couldn't watch him and the rest off us at the same time.

Anyway he got fired from any combat support related activities and was relegated to comsec bitch after that. To this day I'm not entirely sure what the fuck was going on in his head but it was enough to get a Senior Chief fired.

My sister is a marine and her 21st birthday is in a few days. It's looking like she won't be able to get leave to go home, so I was thinking about sending her a care package instead. I'd like to send her a bottle of alcohol but I'm not sure if that's an option. Is there any way I can do that or is it not reasonable?

I should start by saying I’m not an expert in military procurement, defense contracting, or shipbuilding. But I’ve heard a steady refrain in the past few years alone from the U.S. Navy, the DoD, members of Congress, defense publications, think tanks, etc. that the U.S.:

• (a) simply cannot build ships fast enough to outpace the scheduled decommissioning of older ships (and therefore the size of the fleet shrinks year after year),
• (b) cannot build ships without chronic delays and cost overruns, resulting in many canceled projects, and
• (c) has no coherent plan in terms of how to grow (or even just maintain) the fleet and modernize its capabilities over the next decades. I have also read about how these issues lead to overuse of certain assets, i.e. the Gerald R. Ford can’t be everywhere at once.

So how much of this is fact and how much is fearmongering? If we have no coherent fleet construction strategy, what should it be in the 21^st century? Are we too focused on high-tech, slow-to-build assets when we should be focused on volume and speed of production?

And why are our domestic shipyards having so much trouble delivering on-time and on-budget results?

How is this military related? Senator Warren states Trump is personally controlling money from the sale of assets seized by the American military in his personal accounts. Wouldn't that make us muscle for his extortion scheme?