"You can't engage anybody in battle who doesn't do the same things you do...It's like a boxing match, where your opponent gets to kick. It's impossible to survive, let alone win." ---David Kelley In addition to life-threatening blood loss, Kelley had sustained an ugly hodge-podge of injuries of the sort consistent with a bomb attack: permanent nerve and tendon damage (in both legs); an injured internal organ (his liver); and significant shrapnel to the head, arms, and chest.
The incident, however, did not end with the bombing of Kelley's truck. "We were [then] engaged by small-arms fire," recalls Kelley. "Our gunners were shooting back." "The thing is, we'd been out on patrol, and we were actually going back to refit," says Kelley, regarding his platoon leader's fateful decision to order "one last sweep" of the major supply route they'd been inspecting that day. "We were going back to get more fuel, more water...We were actually going to make it back in time for a hot meal---something that was only possible maybe three times a month!"
Part I "...I was in the third vehicle, the one that took the hit. When the thing blew up on us, it pushed me down into the floorboard. I didn't think I had any legs anymore, from the pain I was feeling...I remember telling our driver to stop, but he wasn't even there anymore." ---David Kelley The main reason a very restless David Kelley entered the military at 17 was that he was tired of school. "I called every branch," he remembers. "I left messages with all of them; The Navy was the first to call me back." And so Kelley began his military service as a Navy man in 1994.
Wow. This ring thing must be really touchy business... One of the zaniest old sitcoms on TV was "The Nanny", which happened to star one of the funniest women on the planet, Fran Drescher. As many will remember, even though this Queens-born Nice Single Jewish Girl might occasionally think about something besides marriage, her giant-haired mother, Sylvia, never for a second wavered in her own desire to see The Nanny hitched and living the high life on Long Island. And with each passing day...month...year...Sylvia became less and less choosy about possible candidates for son-in-law.
This post is a follow-up to an article written by Toni Thompson on October 29th, 2007 entitled: Warriors Voice: 1SG Jeffrey Pennington 1137th Military Police Company Missouri National Guard. First Sergeant Jeffrey Pennington has chosen to re-deployed to Iraq. The following is a powerful testimony in his own words: I am being deployed to Iraq again. I will fall in with a Military Police company charged with helping train Iraqi Police forces in a fairly large city. During my last tour I was stationed on a rather large base with a fledgling, but present, information infrastructure, several conveniences such as small shops for sundry items, dining facilities for hot food and best of all it was out in the desert
