You Big Mouth, You!

I posted an article entitled THEY CALL THEM “CHARLIE’S ANGELS” from the National Guard site and it became the most linked and most commented upon post I’ve ever had. It’s the moving story of three women from North Dakota who are serving as combat medics with Charlie Company, a unit of the North Dakota National Guard, in Iraq.

It lays out their daily challenges, their feelings, and their experiences. It portrays three extraordinary women working, and succeeding, in a very difficult place.

Very nice story, but these women are not helping the effort. They weaken men, and they weaken the effort. Their inclusion has lowered the training standards which gets men killed. We have to pretend that women are soldiers, but must rely on marines and special forces who are not so stupid to give in to political correctness. How many of the men of the 507th had to die because the women cowered in the vehicles while the men fought the ambush.
Sgt. 11th Armored Cav

That’s the harshest comment in the discussion. I was open mouthed when I read it. It’s very clear that the person who wrote it did not read the same article I did. Nor does he appear to have a clue about what really happened to the 507th.

These three women have what may be the most difficult job in combat, saving lives. And watching lives you’ve given your all to just slip away. It’s one thing to have someone die in front of you. As an EMT, I can tell you with certainty that it is a far different thing to have tried your best and still have your patient die. And then have to get up and go on to the next patient. No time to grieve, barely time to breathe. People who do this deserve admiration, because they demonstrate a courage that most people don’t have.

The women shown in this article volunteered to serve this way. They’ve been shot at, been wounded, been bloodied, dirty, tired. They’ve been everything their fellow male soldiers have been, and they still have time to be lifesavers.

Then my commenter throws in the gratuitous insult about the 507th. This is the unit that Jessica Lynch was with.

Let’s see. The unit got lost, led by men. Its officers and noncoms, men, were responsible for the training and preparedness of the unit, including both the use and maintenance of weapons. Men commanded the unit in the ambush. Haven’t seen any problems caused by women rear their heads yet. There were three women in that unit, one was killed in the ambush, the other two were captured. Since the ratio of men to women in the unit was about 10:1, it’s hard to see how their presence caused any casualties. And, oh, yeah. Even if Jessica Lynch had, for some reason, cowered, I’d say getting butt fucked and crippled for life by her enemies would more than make up for it. Wouldn’t you?

Some folks just don’t get it. In every military unit there are big men and little ones, tall and short, skinny and fat. Not everyone can do every job, that’s why the military teaches teamwork for one thing. If the Army was supposed to be the biggest and strongest guys around, we’d have an Army of 25,000 or so.

What I want from a fellow soldier, sailor or Marine is someone who’ll have my back covered. Someone who will help me when I need help. Someone who will do their best. Someone I can count on when it all goes in the crapper. There’s nothing about sex in any of that. I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman. I just care that they’re there.

National Guard

Sgt. Angela Magnuson, Sgt. Kristen Pagel and Sgt. Jessica Fisher

Angel 1: Sgt. Jessica Fisher

Fisher grew up in Jamestown, N.D. She lives in Fargo, where she is studying to be a dental hygienist. She has plans to marry and raise a family when her combat duty is done. Fisher’s father also serves in the North Dakota Army National Guard and is retiring before the end of the year after having served 28 years in the defense of our country. He was activated in 1990 for the Gulf War and hopes his daughter can get the job done this time so the United States doesn’t have to come back yet again.

Within days of arriving in Iraq, this 26-year-old had already spent a very dark and scary night in March near Samarra, Iraq, trying desperately to save the life of an unknown soldier who was crushed when a Humvee rolled over. That soldier without a name would literally die in Fisher’s arms. He wore a wedding ring on his left hand. That he was married is all that Fisher would ever know about him. After the incident was over, the combat patrol returned to their base camp so Fisher could change into a clean uniform before going right back out on an IED patrol again.

Fisher initially had no fear when she was assigned to the Trailblazer mission. Her experiences have changed her, though. She no longer goes to the showers alone or anywhere else on the camp. “I never go alone because if we got mortared or hurt no one would know,” she says.

She prays before and often during every mission. She tries to prepare herself for the stressful duty by listening to soft music and using a gentle body mist to relax her. After O’Donnell’s incident she felt nauseous before each mission and didn’t want to go back out. But she knew how much everyone counted on her, and she wouldn’t dare let them down. “I remember going to chow, no one saying anything. I came back and puked my guts out,” Fisher said. “I hid tears behind my sunglasses” for several days.

Even though she finds it difficult being away from her family and friends, Fisher knows how crucial her role is in Iraq. She may be a medic but she is not only just a medic. She has found IEDs, as well. In fact, she says, “I am a Trailblazer first and a medic second.” She has also trained on all of the weapons in the company and can operate them if the need should ever arise.

Fisher looks forward to returning to North Dakota when her duty is done. She says she will no longer take freedom for granted. She misses the little things: “Going to Wal-Mart. Going to get milk. Going to get stamps at the post office. Mowing the grass. Just sitting on my steps and watching the sprinklers.”

Angel 2: Sgt. Angela Magnuson

Angela Magnuson grew up in Fingal, N.D. She lives in Aberdeen, S.D., where she is studying to be a laboratory technician. This 28-year-old single mother has aspirations of becoming a pharmacist or chiropractor “after I grow up.”

The most difficult part of serving in Iraq was leaving her 6-year-old daughter, Abigail. “I can’t hold her. I can’t kiss her goodnight. I am missing out on her whole first year of school,” she said.

Still, Magnuson has no regrets. “We’re doing a good job here. It is nerve-racking. We are doing a good thing here for the people and other Soldiers �� keeping the roads safe. This makes me feel like I am an active part of history.”

Like Fisher, Magnuson has seen her share of both combat and non-combat injuries. In one of the first C Company missions ever to see combat, Spc. Kane Melling suffered minor shrapnel wounds to his face and head after a car bomb exploded right next to the Humvee in which he was the turret gunner. Magnuson said Melling was spared serious injury because of his Kevlar helmet and ballistic glasses he was wearing at the time. Magnuson described the scene, “Very intense. Our guys were shooting into the trees. I was working under fire. We moved him (Melling) to the back of a 5-ton truck and treated him there while shooting was still going on. You can’t really think about what is going on around you. You just have to do it.”

On another occasion Magnuson treated an Iraqi civilian who was stabbed by another Iraqi that had recently been released from prison for committing murder. The Soldiers from third platoon were able to break up the fight and arrest the perpetrator while Magnuson went to work. The victim didn’t know it, but he was getting some of the best emergency medical care available anywhere in the country. There is no doubt it was awkward for him to be treated by a female in a land that views women as inferior. He didn’t complain, however, as she stopped the bleeding and bandaged the stab wound. Had Magnuson’s IED combat patrol not been driving by and seen the fight in progress, he probably would have died. When tragedy strikes, out of nowhere, an angel descends. Another life is saved.

There was one life, however, that Magnuson could not save. Monday, May 3, 2004, is a day that she will never forget. C Company lost one of their most beloved Soldiers, Spc. James Holmes of East Grand Forks. This time Magnuson was assigned to third platoon for the IED patrol. On this fateful day the bomb hunters became the hunted as a cowardly enemy insurgent scored a direct hit on the rear Humvee, exposing a weakness in the armor that had, until then, gone unnoticed. Holmes was the driver and took a direct hit. The IED was placed in the median of the four-lane divided highway and was remotely detonated. The triggerman was never seen.

Holmes had served in the Marine Corps and then joined the North Dakota Army National Guard when he moved from Arizona to Grand Forks to attend the University of North Dakota. When the 141st Battalion was activated for duty in Iraq, Holmes volunteered to go along to help fill a vacancy. Because he was a volunteer and didn’t have to be in Iraq, it makes his death even that much more tragic. “It makes me feel that he sacrificed his life for all of us,” Magnuson said. His name was Spc. James Holmes. But to those who knew him, he was affectionately called “Tugboat” because he was a large man who would pull his load and then some. He was a teddy bear kind of guy, but somehow the nickname “Tugboat” was more fitting. C Company Soldiers have since painted “Tugboat” on the side of the driver’s door of the Humvee he was driving the day he was killed.

Holmes didn’t say much after he was hit except, “I just can’t breath.” Already suffering from his fatal wounds he continued to drive the Humvee to safety. After about five minutes Holmes felt he had gone far enough to protect the other Soldiers of third platoon and stopped his vehicle. Knowing that Magnuson would have a difficult time removing his large frame from the vehicle in order to be treated, Holmes climbed out and lay down on the road. Magnuson started removing his clothing to assess his injuries. She could see it was more serious than just getting the wind knocked out of him as he had told her. “He told me what he wanted. He didn’t want morphine for the pain. He didn’t want oxygen. He tried helping by holding the bandages in place.” Holmes probably knew how seriously injured he was. He had served on an ambulance squad back in Arizona and had treated traumatic injuries himself. He helped talk Magnuson through it and keep her calm. He seemed more concerned for her than himself.

Despite Magnuson’s and Holmes’ heroic efforts and extraordinary teamwork, he would die five days later in a hospital in Germany with his parents at his bedside. Magnuson remembers, “After that I wanted to go out even more. If something else happened I wanted to do it right this time. If there was another accident, I wanted to do everything right. I took it personally that I had failed him in some way.” Of course, she had not failed him. Magnuson had done everything right. His life could not be saved. But at least she bought him an extra few days so that his parents could see him one last time. Again, an Angel descended.

Magnuson’s experiences in Iraq have given her a new outlook on life. “I have learned not to take anything for granted. Nothing.” She plans to vacation more and “not sweat the small stuff.” She hopes to get married and have three more children, backpack across Europe, scuba dive and just take every advantage that life has to offer.

Angel 3: Sgt. Kristen Pagel

Kristen Pagel lives in Fargo with her husband, Dave, stepson Ryan, and her 82-year-old grandmother, who is a veteran of World War II. Pagel’s grandmother served as a nurse who, among other duties, helped treat and clean up the concentration camps at the end of the war. She writes to Pagel twice a week because, as Pagel says, “She understands how important mail call is.”

Pagel serves as the senior medic for C Company. In addition to going out on combat patrols with the Trailblazers, she completes the scheduling for the medics, tracks Soldiers’ immunizations, illness and injuries, and monitors the mental health of all of the Soldiers in the unit. “We (the medics) are the first line for combat stress or for troops to come talk to when they have problems back home.” She and her fellow Charlie’s Angels can then make a determination if the soldier needs to be referred to a therapist or psychiatrist in the mental health unit of the Troop Medical Clinic.

But Pagel has her own way of helping relieve the stress of living in a war zone. “I make supper, bake cupcakes and little things like that. Giving (the Soldiers) candy, or rubbing them on the head, or giving them a hug seems to make a bigger difference than I would have thought. For the most part, the guys are all a bunch of big teddy bears that need attention and love and affection.” For Pagel the hardest thing about being a medic is “the people you spend your days with are also the people you will have to treat.”

The Soldiers would not have it any other way. For them, they know they are going to receive quality medical treatment from people who know them and truly care about them rather than a medic who is a stranger that they may never have met.

However, one of Pagel’s most memorable moments treating an injury came when she had to treat the enemy. The Trailblazers had stopped along the road to check out a suspected IED when the insurgent ran up to the convoy of vehicles and began throwing grenades. Almost instantly, one of the second platoon gunners trained his weapon on the man and shot him twice; once in the leg and once in the arm. The gunner saved the lives of several Soldiers that day as three more hand grenades were found hidden on the insurgent while he was being bandaged. Pagel set aside her emotions and began the medical intervention that would save the life of the very man who had just tried to kill her and her fellow troops. Although he had an arm and a leg amputated as a result of his wounds, he survived. Referring to the way he attacked the convoy, and the fact that he had more grenades hidden on him, Pagel said, “I don’t think he had any intentions of living.”

The medical care available to Iraqis is sometimes lacking. On another occasion, Pagel’s combat patrol came across a five-vehicle collision involving a child and one trapped occupant. Extrication equipment is rarely available in Iraq. Several civilians began trying to manually pull the car door off and then to pull the trapped man out of the car, ultimately causing him more pain and injury. Once he was freed from the vehicle, Pagel attempted to start an I.V., but an Iraqi doctor arrived on the scene and refused to allow it. Pagel described the scene this way: “He (the doctor) was very rough with him when he helped me bandage his leg. He picked him up by the arms and legs and threw him into a sedan despite an obvious injury to one of his legs.”

Pagel is very protective of the medics that work for her. “I mostly worry about the long-term effects this experience will have on the rest of the people I serve with. I guess I feel like I need to protect them as much as possible so they can go back and have a happy and fulfilling life without any emotional scars �� images haunting them the rest of their lives.”

Pagel looks forward to returning home and her job as the finance manager for Luther Family Ford in Fargo. She hopes to be a general manager of a car dealership someday. She also looks forward to the day when the “children of Iraq will have a better life than their parents had.” After spending more than eight months in the heat of Iraq one might think she would welcome the milder temperatures of North Dakota. However, when she retires she wants to live someplace in the southern United States “where the temperatures are warmer.”

A very, very odd tale is unfolding here in the Rochester area. Did I mention it’s odd? So very, very odd.

The basics are:

• man meets woman on Internet
• man travels to woman’s home to meet her in person
• man marries woman asap
• couple returns to our area
• man alledgedly beats woman to death after one month of marriage

Not all that odd, you say. Oh, just wait. There’s more.

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle:

The Wayne County man charged with killing his newlywed wife he met over the Internet had previously lived his life as a woman.

Craig Musso, 44, of 5684 South Slocum Road, Ontario, was charged last week with second-degree murder in connection with the strangulation death of Linda Lou White, 43, who lived in Tennessee before their marriage in October.

Musso graduated from Sodus High School in 1978, and is pictured as Wendy Musso in a senior yearbook picture.

Officials were unable to talk about what medical procedures, if any, Musso underwent to live as a man, citing medical confidentiality laws. But they confirmed Musso is transgender.

R News

Wayne County investigators will consider an Ontario man’s sex change as they search for a motive in the strangulation death of the man’s wife.

The Wayne County District Attorney’s office confirmed Craig Musso, charged with the murder of his newlwed wife, Linda White, was born Wendy Musso.

District Attorney Rick Healy said Musso underwent surgical procedures and hormone therapy over a number of years to become a man.

The 44 year-old is accused of strangling his wife at their Ontario home November 12th, a month after the two were married.

The couple had an eight-month online courtship. They met and communicated over a Christian Internet chat room.

Musso met White in person in October at her Tennessee home. The next day, the two were married.

Healy plans to present the case to a grand jury sometime next month.

Is it me or is this odd, so very, very odd?

UPDATE 2-25-2005: Jesus, people, don’t you see anything unusual about this story, this relationship? Her family claims she didn’t know he was transgendered. And, how does a medical examiner make a mistake about strangulation? I haven’t said a damn thing about Musso’s transgendered status, though it too is unusual. Nor have I mocked him/her. Can’t we all agree that this was a very uncommon sort of relationship?

Frankly, enough things suck in my life that I don’t give a rat’s ass if you want your very own penis or not.

Army Spc. Rebecca Finnick - Spc. Joshua Miller - Sgt. Charles Quintanilla

< Seattle Times

The 30-year-old Finnick was cited for unleashing an initial volley of fire that helped protect the convoy from direct hits by rocket-propelled grenades. She then rescued a wounded gunner from a Humvee’s turret. After giving her first aid, Finnick took to the turret to provide security while injured soldiers were evacuated to the hospital.[snip]

Spc. Joshua Miller received the Silver Star for voluntarily placing himself in peril to save the life of a fellow soldier when his foot-patrol squad was ambushed by insurgents. Miller single-handedly fended off a 20-man assault on his squad’s position. Then, under heavy fire, he managed to rescue his vehicle commander, who was trapped in debris.[snip]

Sgt. Charles Quintanilla received the Bronze Star for decisive and aggressive actions to fend off 25 insurgents armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

PG turns 21 today. While it’s not the milestone that it used to be, it’s still a big day in a young woman’s life.

I’ve said before. I’d adopt PG if I could. She’s a wonderful young woman, and puts up with my eccentricities far more than she needs to.

I browbeat her into running a six hour shift with me yesterday afternoon. Two calls, and she was medic for both. First called resulted in a 47 yr old man asking for her phone number. Second call resulted in her having to pull the pants up on an 84 year old man. I had told her that she doesn’t qualify for babehood until guys her own age start hitting on her. Then we get back to the base two hours past end of shift to find several paramedics and other younger male members of our corps there, to wish her a happy birthday and enjoy her company. She drew a crowd and I guess she gets promoted to babehood.

Babehoodom?

Fox News

“I feel embarrassed and humiliated, especially because my parents and the people who love me have been hurt,” the socialite and reality TV actress said Monday in a statement to The Associated Press.

“I was in an intimate relationship and never, ever thought that these things would become public.”

Oh, let’s see, dear. You mugged continually for the camera. You stopped the sex so that you could pose. You were having sex with a man nearly old enough to be your father. You “stole” this man from a friend. Guess what? You should feel embarrassed and humiliated! And brainless, I forgot brainless.

This post will stay on top for the day. New posts appear below this one.

Thank you, Dad!

North Africa: It was here at Maknassy that the Group received its baptism of fire. Beginning on March 28th and lasting approximately a week all elements received daily counterbattery and harassing fire from German artillery ranging in caliber from 75mm to 210mm mortar. There, in its first combat experience, the Group was faced with the problems of virtually unlimited observation, which operated in favor of the enemy with his longer range artillery. A long range artillery piece was sorely needed to neutralize the German 88, which was emplaced out of range of our 105s and shot at them at will with little fear of retaliation. This disadvantage was especially felt at Maknassy, which was surrounded on three sides by mountains firmly held by Germans; the plain in between offered scant defilade and insufficient cover.

To us at that time it seemed that the enemy had definite superiority in the air. The JU 87 or Stuka dive bomber, laughed at by men who came in a year or so later as an obsolete crate, was a very real menace with its dive bombing and screaming sirens. Our fifty caliber machine gunners and a small amount of attached anti-artillery became expert, but their numbers were not sufficient to prevent all the Jerry planes from getting through. The average day brought at least four or five raids, and each night planes would drop flares that seemed to hang like lanterns, attempting to unnerve troops into giving away their positions.

One gun from the 36th Field Artillery Regiment (Long Toms) obtained with difficulty and emplaced near Maknassy on April 2nd. The Group Headquarters operated the fire direction and organized the observation for this gun, the “Forces Counterbattery” for this entire sector. Business was good and on one day the single gun fired 825 rounds. The enemy tried desperately to knock out this thorn in his side with heavy artillery fire and bombing raids, but because of dug in positions for both the gun and fire direction center and superior camouflage, his biggest success was hitting the powder pit two days consecutively.

---

Sicily: At noon on July 31st there was a timely arrival of provisional antiaircraft battery for protection of the Group position area, for on the morning of August 1, enemy planes twice bombed and strafed the roads in the area of the Group. Four of the enemy planes were shot down by ground fire, after swooping down over the Group Headquarters Battery breakfast chow line. No damage was sustained except for a few overturned mess kits. These were the last enemy planes reported near the Group Headquarters during the Sicilian campaign.

---

France: While with the 7th Armored the Group Headquarters operated in two echelons in different columns. On the 28th the echelon referred to as “Rear” became separated from the column it was following and advanced along a road that had not been cleared by the armor. In the village of Regault a German tank appeared which attacked this echelon of the Group Headquarters. The vehicles were quickly dispersed, a fifty caliber machine gun set up on a ground mount, a Bazooka team began firing, and a gun of the 558th was called on to go into position adjusted by a cub. The tank was driven off but it had take its toll. One man was killed, the battery commander, Captain Petty, and two men seriously wounded, and several other men injured slightly.

The Odyssey of the Fifth Field Artillery Group

DefenseLINK

By Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2004 — Not only is Walter R. Bieder, 83, a true American hero, he’s one of the luckiest men alive.

A combatant in several hard-fought, bloody battles of World War II, Bieder earned two Silver Star Medals and two Bronze Star Medals for heroism without even getting a scratch.

“God was looking out for me,” said Bieder, a retired Parma, Ohio, police officer who now lives in Woodbridge, Va.

An Army private first class when he hit Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, Bieder was later decorated with the Silver Star Medal “for gallantry in action in the vicinity of Colleville-sur Mer in Normandy, France,” according to the award citation.

The citation states, “Acting solely on his own initiative, Sergeant Bieder crossed a dense minefield under heavy fire and captured a number of enemy snipers. After delivering his captives to the command post, he rejoined his section and led a successful assault on the well-fortified machine gun placement.”

Bieder recalls slipping a hand grenade onto the launcher of his M1 rifle and firing the grenade at a machine gun nest. “It went right in front of them,” said Bieder, who later turned down a battlefield commission to lieutenant because he would have had to leave his unit. “So I quickly put another one on, brought her up a little bit, and boom — I got him.”

About three weeks later, he was cited for gallantry in combat the second time. This time he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with V device for valor during ground combat in Belgium in September 1944. He was recommended for a second Bronze Star on New Year’s Day 1945 for valor in action near Czechoslovakia. But, it was more than 20 years before he was presented his second Bronze Star Medal because of a paperwork mixup. It was mailed to him in January 1964.

Bieder earned his second Silver Star, the nation’s third highest decoration for valor, while serving with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, during the Battle of Hurtgen Forest. He was cited for gallantry in action in the vicinity of Weisweiler, Germany, on Nov. 26, 1944, when his company was “impeded by intense enemy fire from numerous camp placements concealed in the thick of foliage of the Hurtgen Forest.” The Battle of Hurtgen Forest was fought from September 1944 to February 1945 south and east of Aachen, Germany.

The decoration’s citation states in part, “Sergeant Bieder fearlessly exposed himself to a barrage of enemy fire. He reorganized his men and bravely landed a successful attack against the foe.”

Bieder started his trek across the battlefields of World War II when he joined the Army’s 1st Infantry Division when the unit was bivouacked outside of Oran, Africa. On July 10, 1943, he fought in the invasion of Sicily. “It took us more than a month to capture Sicily,” he noted. “Then we bivouacked outside of a town called Licata, Sicily, where we stayed until the war ended in Sicily in August.”

In early November 1943, the unit sailed from Sicily to England to prepare for the D- Day Invasion. “All hell broke loose when we hit Omaha Beach,” Bieder noted. “The tide was out, so we had a long beach to cross with a lot of obstacles, including land mines. Only four guys from one of our landing craft got out of the landing craft alive.

“When they dropped the ramp of the landing craft, the Germans cross-fired right into it,” Bieder said. “Four guys jumped off the rear of the landing craft; that’s how they got out alive. When we stepped off the landing craft, we went down in the water up to your neck. And we lost a lot of equipment there due to that. “When we got on the beach the water was red with blood and bodies all over the beach,” he continued. His unit fought its way inland until being pinned down in a hedgerow by the Germans. “We couldn’t move and our radio communications was cut off so we couldn’t communicate with our company commander,” he said. “Then we started getting hit by friendly fire because the Navy didn’t know we were out that far.”

Under the cover of darkness, the unit made it back to its company area. “There wasn’t many of us left,” Bieder noted. Bieder said he’d never forget the tears flowing down his company commander’s face on D-Day night. “He cried because he said they lied to us,” Bieder said. “The beach was supposed to be full of bomb craters, and we were counting on them being there, but there were not any around to use as foxholes.” According to Bieder, his commander cried because there were only 60 men left out of a reinforced company of more than 200 troops. “We were so battered that we couldn’t even take our first objective,” the combat hero said, adding that all the unit’s tanks had sunk in the surf “the guys and all.”

Reinforcements and equipment arrived in about a week to kick off the push through France. The Army Air Corps paved the way through France with wave after wave of bombers. “It was quite a site to see — the sky was black with bombers,” Bieder said. “They just kept coming over and dropping bombs out in front of us — just dropping for two hours! After that, we started our push through France. “Some of the people and some of the Germans who survived, were running around like they were wild,” he continued. “I mean, the percussion of all them bombs and everything. There were dead cattle all over the place.”

Bieder said he doubts anyone who claims he wasn’t scared on D-Day. “Nobody can tell me they wasn’t scared,” he said. “The worst part is when you’re waiting to go into combat. After the fighting started, it was just a little different. But the initial waiting, waiting. That gets you. I was scared, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

His unit bypassed Paris and went to Belgium, but some of them went to Paris after the city was liberated for a bit of rest and recuperation shortly before the Battle of the Bulge, which was fought from Dec. 16, 1944 through Jan. 25, 1945.

Military historians called it “the coldest, snowiest weather in memory in the Ardennes Forest on the German/Belgium border.” More than a million men, 500,000 Germans, 600,000 Americans and 55,000 British fought in the battle. There were more than 100,000 German casualties, killed, wounded or captured; 81,000 American casualties, including 23,554 captured and 19,000 killed; and 1,400 British casualties, of which 200 were killed.

That was another fierce battle Bieder survived unscathed.

“That was one of the worst winters in Europe’s history,” the he noted. “Believe me, the Lord was watching over me. At one point, it was so cold and my (olive drab) overcoat was so frozen that when I slipped out of it, the damn thing stood up by itself!”

Bieder recalled the night he and four other soldiers crawled to the edge of a pillbox where they heard German voices. “I hollered out in German to come out, surrender, or I’m going to kill all of you,” said Bieder, whose grandmother taught him to speak German. “Fourteen of them come out of there. “I felt so sorry for an older German who grabbed me and pleaded with me not shoot him,” he said. “I told him I wasn’t going to shoot him. We marched them back to our areas and sent them to a (prisoner-of-war) compound.”

Bieder said he went through “hell” during the war, but one of his unforgettable memories was Thanksgiving dinner in 1944. “I’ll never forget Thanksgiving in ‘44,” he said. “They said all the troops were going to have turkey for Thanksgiving. We did get turkey — cold turkey sandwiches with cold coffee! It was a cold rainy day, and we were sitting in foxholes with water up around your waist. But boy, damn it, it tasted good!”

When he was discharged from the Army, Bieder became the manager of a movie theater where he had worked before going to war. He later became a policeman in Parma, Ohio, and retired in 1969. He met his late wife, Eleanor, at the theater, and they were married on Oct. 7, 1948. She had four children before their marriage and the couple had seven more children together.

Reflecting over the affect of his combat experiences on his life, Bieder said, “I had a little rough time sometimes. My mother said shortly after I was home, I used wake her up hollering and screaming, ‘Watch out! Get that!’”

After the nightmares subsided, Bieder was closemouthed about his wartime experiences. “I just didn’t talk about it,” said Bieder, a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7916 in Occoquan, Va. “A lot of people would ask me questions, and I’d just say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ The only time I ever talked was if I knew it was somebody that understood. “I never even said much to my kids about it,” said the father of six girls and five boys.

Bieder said there’s now a book out about his platoon’s exploits called “Until the Victory is Won,” written by David Allender.

A threesome, with Nicole Richie.

Grim, really grim.

I just e-mailed the following to most of the people in my personal address book.

With this e-mail, I’m asking you to remember to vote
tomorrow, November 2. Your vote counts and it is
important. No matter who you support, please vote.

I’ll be voting for George Bush. I believe that in a
post-9/11 world, we need to take the fight to the
terrorists. That is what Bush has done. Nearly 45
million people are now free from governments who
supported terrorism world-wide and who murdered their
own people at home. The fight against terrorism is not
finished, and I believe that George Bush is the best
candidate to carry on that fight. Over thirty other
nations agreed with him in Iraq, and over forty in
Afghanistan.

The Bush economic record is comparable to any in
modern times. The average poverty rate for his first
term is lower than at any other time since Jimmy
Carter was President. The gap between the earnings of
men and women is at a record low. The unemployment
rate is lower than it was at the same point in 1996.
Hourly manufacturing wages are at a record high. Home
ownership is at a record high. The number of people
employed has been at record levels all summer, with
1.69 million more people working than were working in
January 2001.

George Bush was determined to do one thing before all
else. He chose to return some of your money to you.
Taxes are your money, taken from your pocket. Every
single American has benefited by having more of their
money returned to them or not taken from them in the
first place. Elimination of the marriage penalty,
creation of a 10% tax bracket, $1,000 per child tax
credit, all keep your money in your pocket.

George Bush has a record that we all can look at. He’s
been strong on security and national defense. He’s
kept his promise to lower taxes for every American.
The economy has made a solid recovery from the
recession and the attacks of 9/11. Vote for him or
against him, based upon his record. I think that’s
fair to ask of you.

In any case, please vote.

Thank you.
Chuck Simmins