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From Our Home Page Archive
Home
Page as originally published in September 2016
— This Month —
So How Are We Doing?
The State Of The American Veteran
And...
Let's Call It What It Is: Treason
If Our Government &
Military Leaders Are Going To Lie To Us, Hang The
S.O.B.s
- - - - -
MISSION STATEMENT
Our Association is a not-for-profit fraternal
organization. Its purpose is a) to foster camaraderie among the
graduates of Signal Corps Officer Candidate School classes of the
World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War eras, b) to organize and
offer scholarships and other assistance for the families of Officer
and Enlisted OCS cadre who are in need, and c) to archive for
posterity the stories and history of all of the Signal Corps OCS
Officers who served this great country. We are open to ALL
former Army Signal Corps OCS graduates,
their families and
friends, as well as other officers, enlisted men, those interested
in military history, and the general public.
Please, come join us. For more information about our Association, to
see a list of our Officers and Directors, or for contact details,
click on the OCS Association link at left.
Please note: The views
and opinions expressed on this website are offered in order to
stimulate interest in those who visit it. They are solely the views
and expressions of the authors and/or contributors to this website
and do not necessarily represent the views of the Army Signal Corps
Officer Candidate School Association, its Officers, Directors,
members, volunteers, staff, or any other party associated with the
Association. If you have any suggestions for improvements
to this site,
please send them to
WebMaster@ArmySignalOCS.com.
We are here to serve you.
September... and the summer is finally over. Too
much heat. Too many family outings. Too much
free time. Finally, a chance to get back to
work... and a chance to start complaining about
the state the world is in!
This month we have for you a couple of
interesting articles... presented in our normal
confrontational way... intended to make you
think, and hopefully develop an opinion or two,
whether they match ours or not.
In the first one we take stock of how we are
doing... us Vets, that is. As an Army Vet, how's
your life going these days? Got enough money?
Making ends meet? Health holding up?
No matter how badly your life is, we bet your
glad your not homeless.. as in a homeless Vet.
Read our article below on the state of us Vets, and you'll see what
we mean.
Our second story goes for the jugular. It
takes a stand on the matter of our government
leaders lying to us, our political parties lying
to us and our military too. What's happened to
America, we ask, when we
the people can't trust our own
government—and military—to tell us the truth.
What's that got to do with the Signal Corps, you
ask? Once again, read the article and you'll see.
Moving on... last April (this year) we posted an article on
our Home Page that talked about how far in front
of us the Chinese were in terms of cryptographic
communications. It was entitled It's
All
About Communication, and dealt with quantum
entanglement based
cryptography. Our point was that no one in our
government is even thinking about developing a
workable form of quantum
communications, never mind our military.
We posited that
the Signal Corps
should step
forward and do
something about
this sorry state
of affairs, for
if things are
left as they
are, we said, it wouldn't be long before the
Chinese can read every enciphered message we send, by any
and all means, while we won't be able to read a
single one of theirs, never mind decipher them.
Well, our warning has come full circle... the Chinese are now
live testing a a satellite
based quantum communication
system able to do just that. Interested in what
China's latest advances are? Click
here
to go back and read the original article, or if
you want to just read the Update to it click
here.
We say again, it's about time someone on our
side of the fence get busy developing a usable
form of quantum entanglement driven crypto
communication... and since the work the Chinese
is doing is being driven by their military via
the equivalent of
their Signal Corps, ours Signal Corps should
lead this charge too. Or put
another way: Hey DOD... wake up for God's sake
and do something about this.
Finally, back in September 2015 we wrote an article entitled
Just Who The Hell is DASPO Anyway? With so
many Signal Corps Officers in it, most people
thought that DASPO was a part of the Signal
Corps. It wasn't. The article explained about
how the Signal Corps stood up this organization,
and how it came to be that people thought DASPO
was a Signal Corps agency.
In the middle of
August (last
month) we got an eMail
from one of the NCOs that spent his time in the
military in
DASPO, and
chronicled its
history. He
corrected our
article on many
points. We've
added the eMail
he sent us to the end of
our original article, and recommend you go back and read
both. We think you'll find it interesting.
Click on the link above to jump to the original
article, and follow it to its conclusion to read
his eMail.
Our thanks to Bryan K.
Grigsby for his corrections. BTW, in Bryan's eMail he said "I
was with Capt. Richard M. "Rick" Griffith the
day he earned his Purple Heart and Bronze Star
in May of 1968." Rick Griffith was a graduate of OCS
Class 12-66, and you can read his own mini-bio
here. It too is worth reading!
We hope you enjoy our postings this month... and
don't forget, this being September with school
starting up again, this is a good time for
you to send a donation to our Scholarship Fund.
You can find a link to do just that on the
graphic at the
bottom of this column.
Managing Editor
So How Are We Doing?
The State Of The
American Veteran
Listening to the candidates for
President talk of how they are going to start taking better
care of “our Vets,” it makes one wonder, just how are our
Vets are doing these days?
Me? I’m a Vietnam War Vet,
and—relatively speaking—I’m doing fine. If you are a regular
reader of this website you know that we and the Association
behind us track the status of Vets from three key wartime
periods: WWII and the Korean and Vietnam War eras. Among
this group, our interest is in those who graduated from Army
Signal Corps OCS, of which there are over 27,000 of us.
For this group we try to track where
they are and whether they are alive or not... and if they
are we reach out to them and try to bring them into our
group... to foster camaraderie with those they served with,
as well as to help them form social contacts and networks
that they can turn to if they find themselves in need.
We also provide scholarships to the
children of this group, as well as try to capture their life
story for posterity. Interestingly though, we don't track
whether any of them are homeless or not.
Veteran homelessness is a problem in
America.
All told, the U.S. Department of
Veteran Affairs recognizes six official “war period”
Veterans groups:
• Mexican Border Period (May 9,
1916 – April 5, 1917 for Veterans who served in Mexico, on
its borders or adjacent waters)
•
World War I (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918)
•
World War II (December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946)
•
Korean conflict (June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955)
•
Vietnam era (February 28, 1961 – May 7, 1975, for Veterans
who served in the Republic of Vietnam during that period;
otherwise August 5, 1964 – May 7, 1975)
•
Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – through a future date to be set
by law or Presidential Proclamation)
As of 2014, there were 21.8
million Veterans still living, of which approximately 10
percent are women. All told, this means that roughly 7 out
of every 100 people one passes on the street is a Vet.
But how are we doing? How are all of
us who fought for America really doing?
Surprisingly, while in the recent past
the answer was horrible, within the past few years—with the
exception of the provision of timely health care—things have
begun to turn around and the answer today is not so bad.
This page last updated 1 September 2016.
New content is constantly being added. Please check back
frequently.
Update
7 August
– 234 years ago today,
George Washington created the Purple Heart. Not a badge of
distinction for being wounded in action, as many think it
is, the
Purple Heart is a Badge of Merit.
Update
1 August
–
As you browse our site
you may be finding that some of our animations are not
animating, and our music and video players aren't playing.
Or at least that's what you think. The truth is, everything
is working just fine... provided that you are using a 4 year
or older PC and browser, and running an equally as old
Operating System.
If on the other hand you
are using a Tablet or SmartPhone, or using a PC with Windows
10 or later, then the chances are that what you think is
happening is in fact happening. What's the reason, you ask?
It's because of a very strange
thing that happens with technology: over time it changes,
and the stuff that depends on it to work stops working until
changes are made to it too.
That's what's going on with our animations and
audio and video players. Most of them were coded years ago,
using a software known as "Flash", owned by a company known
as Adobe. As little as 3 years ago, using Flash on your
website was the way to go. Then along came Google and Apple,
who decided that Adobe's Flash was prone to malware. To make
sure that web viewers didn't have their PCs infected by
poorly written Flash code, Google and Apple disabled Flash
programs from running in their browsers. This caused Flash
based animations, audio and video players to stop working
entirely.
By itself this wasn't a big problem, as users
could bypass this restriction by downloading and installing
a "plug-in" for their PC. The plug-in would allow Flash
programs to run properly again.
And so everything was fine for a while, until
Tablets and SmartPhones came along. With these devices
another problem popped up. In their case new code had to be
written so that the webpages that worked on PCs would now
work on Tablets and SmartPhones. Essentially, what was
needed was a new form of "Responsive" coding that would let
any HTML file work on any device. This new type of code
revolved around something called HTML5.
Adding to this was the fact that Google and
Apple decided to make their own Operating Systems (Android
and iPhone OS) for use on Tablets and SmartPhones... and
when they did this, this time they completely disabled Flash
animation from ever running on their systems. Q.E.D.
So, with Flash completely banned for portable
devices, HTML code needing to be upgraded to HTML5, new
coding needed for Responsive web pages, and Android and
iPhone OS systems to contend with, webmasters around the
world soon found themselves having to upgrade the near
entirety of all of their sites. [BTW, that low moan you hear in the background is the
sound of us webmasters lamenting the workload we now have in
front of us.]
In our case this means an awful lot of work.
Among other things it means we now have to
check coding on 13,092 files, 8,513 animated and
non-animated graphic images, 12,880 HTML
files that have not been HTML5 code verified yet, and
10s of thousands of links that have not been manually tested
in the past 12 months.
How does this affect you, you ask?
For the most part, it doesn't. If you are
looking at our website using a PC, the chances are that
everything is working just fine. If however you are sitting
at the bar, having a cold beer, and looking at our website
on your SmartPhone or Tablet, then likely as not some of our
older Flash animation is not working, and the music you want
to listen to won't play. If so, bare with us. After
all, as a former member of the 518th Signal Company we have
a "Can Do" attitude!
See, now don't you wish you had volunteered for
this job?
Continued from left column...
Without doubt there are Veterans in
trouble. Most are men who had troubles making the transition from military life—especially
where combat was involved—to civilian life. Stories abound
of how after 6 or more years of active duty in the Service many of
us got out and found ourselves ill equipped to deal with the
civilian world.
Part of this stems from the
fact that when we went in we were inexperienced in life as a
whole. For many of us, Service life was the first time we
found ourselves truly independent from mom and dad. Yet
while the kind of independence we received was heady and
uplifting stuff, when it came to making life decisions, not
to mention the most mundane of decisions like what to wear
and when to get up, those decisions were still being made
for us... by the Army this time, instead of mom and dad.
In the end then, coming from "home"
where so many decisions were made for us, and going into the
Service, proved little different, as decisions continued to
be made for us. It's no wonder then that when many of us
finally left the Service we found ourselves still unable to
make decisions about life on our own. Going from mom’s apron
strings to the controlled and ordained life the Army offered
didn’t exactly prepare one for a life of independence.
As an example, trying to decide how to
handle simple matters from how to cook and feed ourselves,
or when, where and how to do our laundry—or
what kind of civilian clothes to buy and wear—escaped us, as
during the military these and so many other basic parts of
life were both dictated to and done for us.
While seemingly insignificant matters, this inability to adjust to an independent
lifestyle and jump on the “life of a civilian” bandwagon—and
get with
the program—caused many of us to lose progress in our
quest for success… slipping behind our civilian friends as
we watched them get job promotions faster than we did, earn
more, buy fancier cars, and get the better girls.
Being a civilian and then joining the
Army and hanging around in it for six years, and then
leaving and trying to fit back into civilian society proved
a handicap for many of us Vets. For many, many years the
girls we sought could tell us from the boys that didn't go
into the Service by the fact that they were well on their way to making a career,
while we were still playing around. Those that didn't serve
were well dressed, while we were the ones who wore a never ending assortment of wrinkled
shirts and un-pressed pants.
If one adds PTSD or some other
destabilizing element to this equation one has a nearly perfect
formula for a troubled Vet… someone unable to find his way
in the civilian world. This, and other causes, has caused
many, many Vets down through the years to suffer multiple
divorces, broken families, alcoholism… and homelessness.
Veteran homelessness, it's a real problem.
Robert A. McDonald, VA Secretary,
recently said “The men and women who have fought for this
nation should not have to fight to keep a roof over their
head.”
This is true. This is true.
Fortunately, the concerted effort
that has come about since the V.A. suffered the
embarrassments of 2010, when it was found that the
timeliness and quality of the Veteran health care it was
giving was abysmal, has led to a similar concerted effort to help
those Vets who are homeless... and it has paid off.
To be specific, Veteran Homelessness has
dropped by nearly 50% since 2010. As to whom we owe this
improvement, it is hard to say. On the surface the praise
must obviously go to former Procter & Gamble CEO Robert A.
McDonald, who replaced General Shinseki in July, 2014.
Behind him President Obama deserves credit too, for putting
a businessman into the position instead of a political hack
or another ex-military man. Political hacks we all know have
little to nothing in the way of experience in managing
something as big as the V.A…. nor for that matter do
ex-military men. Fighting a war is one thing, running a
global conglomerate that is both profit centered as well as
results centered is another.
Regardless, it is good to see our
government grabbing itself by the butt and getting out of its
own way, and in the process making room for professionals to
do the job. As to what kind of work the “professionals” did
as it relates to Veteran homelessness,
one need only look at the situation this past January—in the
middle of what was a very cold winter—to see that
improvements have been made in helping homeless Vets. At
that time one would have found fewer than 40,000 homeless
Veterans, admittedly a large number, but still one that is 47% lower
than for the same time six years ago. That is, six years ago
there were over 85,000 homeless Vets on the streets of
America.
How did this come about? The answer
is as it always is: someone began paying attention to the
situation and worked the problem. In particular, a unique
partnership between HUD and the Department of Veteran
Affairs set the ball in motion. A byproduct of a White House
initiative to end Veteran homelessness—and again something
for which we must doff our hats to Obama—the extra
backing that HUD provided in the way of rental assistance
made all the difference in the world in helping put roofs
over the heads of homeless Vets.
If Our Government & Military
Leaders Are Going To Lie To Us, Try Them As Traitors & Hang the S.O.B.s
What in God's name is going on with our country?
We're sure you have seen the reports: the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
has been cooking ISIS War intel to make it look better than
it is.
This is troubling beyond measure.
There’s a
reason the U.S. military stays out of politics, and it’s a
good one. It’s because we the people… the civilian people…
own and run this country, not the people we elect to
administer our government, not the people who run our
political parties, not the media, and certainly not our
military. The job of the military is to protect
we the people, not the political hacks that serve in office at
any one
point in time.
What’s especially galling
about reports that intelligence generated by CENTCOM was
manipulated to paint a rosier picture of the U.S. effort to
combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria than really existed is that it was done by U.S.
military Officers. Army Officers among them.
For all of us Signal Corps Officers who take enormous pride
in the dedication we have to our country, and our
willingness to die for it, this is a kick in the pants. What
the hell has gone wrong with the United States Army’s
Officer corps that men who take the oath of command will
spit on that very oath? Not only are their actions a breach
of their oath, if they prove true, they also constitute
treason.[1]
Try these despicable people, and if the reports we read in
the press prove true, hang the S.O.B.s
One need only look at Turkey's recent coup to see what happens when Army
Officers decide to involve themselves in politics. When a
military starts sticking its nose into politics, and taking
sides to push the agenda of one political leader or another,
a nation’s freedom is throttled. The fresh air of liberty is
purged from the lungs of the people—we
the people—and despotism takes root.
Despotism is a form of government in which, in its final
incarnation, a single entity rules with absolute power. That
entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may
be a group, as in an oligarchy or even a dominant political
party. And while it is true that despotism and its
associated forms of rule that involve the curtailment or
abolition of traditional forms of government can come from
many sources, it is at its worst when it comes from a
country’s military.
If the answer is the last in the list, a republic, then what are U.S.
Army Officers doing cooking the books to make Obama’s war
strategy for the Middle East look better than it is?
Our readers might find this strange, but this is not the
first time this has happened in the U.S. military. During
the Korean War our beloved Signal Corps lost track of its
mission and found itself producing propaganda videos for our
government, where the content of the videos was based on
falsehoods and lies.
Yes, our Signal Corps.
In the video below, The Crime of Korea, you’ll find a
fascinating story produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
Little more than a propaganda piece targeted for consumption
not by the enemy, but by the American public, it opens with
the narrator reminiscing about what Korea was like when he
first arrived in 1945, for the Japanese surrender.
With idle talk he reminisces of how well the Allies were
received and how the Korean people were glad to finally be
rid of their Japanese colonial masters. Note how he entwines
his opinions with allusion to the “centuries
of Russian and Chinese domination” of the Koreans. Oh how
his words and the scenes play to our heart strings.
Once he has established that he is a good guy, and that you
should trust him, he flashes forward to 1950, this time
posting himself as a war correspondent. Unlike in earlier
scenes, now the video footage shows buildings and public
centers gutted and destroyed. Korean people lay on the
ground shot, some with their hands tied behind their backs.
From there the narrator begins to expound on North Korean
Communist war crimes against the South Korean people. And
from there he glibly segues to the crime of war itself, and
the North Korean Communist’s crimes of aggression against
the South Korean people… a war crime, as he states it, that
sent so many people to their deaths.
Time:
00:15:31
To make his point, the narrator shows
scenes that the film claims to be the result of Communist
massacres; again, scenes intended to illustrate to the
American people the true nature of the aggression forced on
the south by the North Korean invaders. “Everywhere lay the
murdered dead.” the narrator says, as the camera pans over a field of
pits filled with dead bodies... identified as being from
the Taejon Massacre.
But here is where it gets sticky.
Footnotes:
[1] Treason: a) the
offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill
its sovereign; b) a violation of allegiance to one's
sovereign or to one's state or the citizens of that state;
c) the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith;
treachery.Click here to return to your
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