By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
March 7, 2008 - Air Force Capt. Edward V. Szczepanik thinks his experiences -- both good and bad -- can help the American people understand the challenges servicemembers face in the war on terror. The captain, a C-17 Globemaster III transport jet pilot based at McChord Air Force Base, Wash., is one of 12 servicemembers who have deployed in the war on terror who were selected to be part of the Defense Department's "Why We Serve" public-outreach program. He is traveling the country, telling his story to community, business and veterans group audiences and at other gatherings.
Now in its sixth quarterly iteration, the outreach program conceived by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace underscores an effort by the Defense Department to bridge gaps between military and civilian cultures. The program is apolitical by design, and speakers do not address department policies; rather, each member offers Americans a glimpse of military life as seen through the eyes of someone in uniform.
Szczepanik was part of 8th Airlift Squadron operating out of Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan.
"We flew in and out of Afghanistan, Kuwait and other bases in Central Asia and the Middle East," Szczepanik said. "We delivered personnel and supplies to U.S. and NATO forces.
Kyrgyzstan became independent following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Manas is the main point of entry for troops entering and leaving Afghanistan. Szczepanik and his unit deployed there for four months.
The captain said he wants to talk with audiences about life in the military and life overseas. "There are many people who don't know anyone in the military," he said. "It's important for them to know what we do and why we do it." The American people need to understand that servicemembers are all volunteers, "and that we're normal people," he said.
Szczepanik said he always knew he wanted to be in the Air Force. His grandfather served in the Army Air Forces during World War II as a maintenance technician on P-51 Mustangs. Szczepanik is from Columbus, Ohio, and was commissioned out of the ROTC program at Miami (Ohio) University in 2003.
He will let audiences know what he and his crew did in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. "I'll talk about conditions in and around Manas and what I saw when I flew into Afghanistan," he said. "We didn't get off the air bases, but I can tell them about the conditions that airmen work under in country and how they live.
"What impressed me was the servicemembers at these bases (in Afghanistan) do as much, if not more, than we do at established bases in the States, but with a lot less," Szczepanik said.
He said he also wants to give Americans an idea of the cultures that U.S. servicemembers operate in. At Manas, the captain and other airmen volunteered to help a local school. "Our job was to mow the grass in the playground," he said. "I figured we'd be given old manual push mowers. But no. The principal of the school handed us sickles and sharpening stones," he continued. "I'm Midwest born and bred, and while I've seen pictures, I've never used one. We did the job, but it was a learning experience."
Szczepanik also will tell U.S. audiences of the cost of war. "My last mission in Afghanistan was a human remains mission," he said. "We took a fallen Special Forces officer out of Bagram (Air Base, Afghanistan) to Manas for transfer back to the States."
There is a ceremony plane-side as an honor guard loads the remains on the aircraft. "After the ceremony was finished, members of his unit came up and shook each of our hands and said thank you and told us to take care of him," Szczepanik said. "For me, of all the experiences I had during the deployment, it was the most emotional and most eye-opening. It showed me what the cost for freedom is and the sacrifices people are making. It really meant a lot to me that I could be a part of that."
By Jamie Findlater
Special to American Forces Press Service
March 7, 2008 - Troops with sound personal finances are better able to focus on mission accomplishment, a Defense Department official said yesterday. "While you are deployed in harm's way, your focus has to be on the mission at hand; it shouldn't be on the financial situation at home and whether or not it's sound," Navy Cmdr. Dave Julian, associate director of the department's Office of Family Policy, Children and Youth, said in an America Supports You Live Blog Talk Radio segment.
The effort to educate servicemembers and ease the burden of financial worry was the focus of DoD's Feb.24-March 4 "Military Saves Week" observance that was dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of individual financial readiness.
During the week, financial service managers around the globe put on financial fairs and contests to educate family members and help them come up with the best ways to prepare for the future and ease financial worry.
"The things that are affecting the greater society as a whole also affect our servicemembers," Julian said. "The cost of gasoline drives everything up, (and there are) issues with subprime mortgage rates, but then for military members, there is the added stress of: 'Will my family be financially fit while I am deployed?" he said.
This year's focus for the campaign, "Military Youth Saves," was to educate military family members under age 18 about the importance of starting early on a sound financial path. Events ranged from essay contests with savings bonds for prizes to competitions to see who could save the most with coupons at the commissary.
But promoting financial awareness isn't just a week-long effort in DoD, Julian said. Programs are in place year-round to help servicemembers manage their money.
"We encourage members on an installation to go to their financial-readiness specialist at the financial-readiness center to get an assessment and find out where they are financially and what their level of financial literacy is," Julian said. The push is to encourage servicemembers to establish financial goals ranging from building wealth to recovering from debt and making a plan.
Julian noted the Better Business Bureau has a program called "Military Line," a resource cautioning servicemembers to avoid "too-good-to-be-true" offers. "We had one case outside Charleston Air Force Base (in South Carolina) where the organization was set up outside as a military information center and, in fact, it was selling insurance," he said. "Once you get through the paperwork and the fluff, it might be some sort of insurance or lending deal," he cautioned.
The Better Business Bureau isn't the only outside organization participating in the Defense Department effort. "DoD has also partnered with about 23 financially related nonprofits that all offer some sort of financial resource for military families to take advantage of," Julian said.
The Defense Department's Military Homefront Web site, www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil, is a good resource that links to all these partners providing official information about DoD policies and procedures, he said. He also encouraged servicemembers to use Military OneSource's "Money Matters" feature, which has personal-finance calculators, DVDs, CDs and podcasts.
Financial readiness equates to mission readiness, and that couldn't be truer than it is today, Julian noted. He explained that creating this awareness and connecting people to the resources available is an important part of the mission.
By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
March 7, 2008 - Frank Woodruff Buckles lived an unassuming life for 105 years. That was until word got out that he was among the last of a generation that his countrymen only recently seemed to embrace. In 2006, Buckles' quiet life on his 330-acre cattle farm outside of Charles Town, W.Va., changed when renowned portrait artist David DeJonge contacted him about being part of a photography exhibit of nine of the known remaining U.S. veterans of World War I.
Pleased to represent those few remaining patriots, Buckles agreed. What followed was close work with DeJonge and more than a year of intense media attention. By the time the exhibit was unveiled at a Pentagon ceremony yesterday -- following meetings with President Bush at the White House and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates -- Buckles was accustomed to daily media interviews.
"It doesn't bother me," Buckles told a crowd of reporters and photographers gathered around him after the Pentagon ceremony. As he had told the audience in the packed auditorium minutes earlier, "I feel honored to be a representative of World War I. As the years went on, I found I was among the last of those who served."
Buckles was a 16-year-old farm boy from Missouri when he fulfilled a dream of becoming a soldier. It was the spring of 1917, and he began seeing the patriotic posters hanging in his local post office encouraging boys to fight "over there."
"I was interested in the Army when I was a boy," Buckles told the reporters in the interview 91 years later. "When I was 12 or 13, I slept on the floor" to prepare for a soldier's life, he said.
"I knew what was going on in the world," said Buckles, who still reads daily from his home library full of military and current events titles.
The young Buckles visited a Marine Corps recruiting office at the Kansas State Fair in Wichita in 1917. "I said that I was 18, but the understanding sergeant said that I was too young. I had to be 21," he wrote in a brief biography offered to reporters.
Determined to serve, Buckles returned to the Marine recruiter and was rejected a second time. He also was rejected by the Navy, he believes, because they were suspicious about his age. He then traveled to Oklahoma City, where he was again rejected by the Navy and Marines. Finally, an Army recruiter took his word that he was 18 -- Buckles told them his small town didn't keep records of birth certificates and none existed -- and he enlisted on Aug. 14, 1917.
Buckles followed a sergeant's advice that serving with an ambulance company was the quickest route to France, where the most fighting was. He was sent to Fort Riley, Kan., for training in trench casualty retrieval and ambulance operations. He deployed in December 1917 from Hoboken, N.J., across the Atlantic with 102 men who made up the 1st Fort Riley Casual Detachment. They were aboard the HMS Carpathia, the vessel famous for rescuing passengers and crew of the Titanic five years earlier.
Buckles spent several weeks as a driver at a hospital near Winchester, England. He was anxious to get to France, even requesting a meeting with his commanding officer, a colonel, to press the issue. "He explained to me that he, too, wanted to go to France, but had to stay where he was ordered," he said.
Finally, Buckles was assigned to escort an officer to France. There, he had various assignments at several locations. After Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, he was assigned to a prisoner-of-war escort company to return prisoners back to Germany.
In January 1920, Buckles returned to the United States, without injury, on the USS Pocahontas. He was paid $144, including a $60 bonus. He went to business school and built a career in the commercial shipping industry.
In December 1941, Buckles was a corporate executive with American President Lines in Manila when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. He was held at a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years before being rescued by 11th Airborne Division on Feb. 23, 1945. During his internment, he was fed from a single tin cup, which he still has today and is displayed as a backdrop in DeJonge's portrait of him.
Following his release, Buckles married Audrey Mayo, and they settled in San Francisco until 1954, when the couple bought the West Virginia farm, near a Buckles ancestral home. Buckles still lives there today with his daughter and son-in-law. He was widowed in 1999.
In reflecting on his military service, Buckles, who left the Army as a corporal in 1920, said his favorite memories are of driving a motorcycle with a sidecar in England and meeting Gen. John J. Pershing, World War I commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, upon his return to the United States. Buckles said he was pleased to discover that he and Pershing grew up on farms 40 miles apart in Missouri.
Buckles rejected a media request to offer advice to today's soldiers. "I'm not qualified to tell them anything. They know what to do," he said.
Buckles seemed dismayed at the press attention to his age. Longevity runs in his family and several relatives lived past 100, he said. "I don't feel I'm any older than you," he told the press corps of people mostly less than half his age.
DeJonge told reporters that Buckles' memory is "like a computer." Asked to describe Buckles, DeJonge said, "He has an incredibly optimistic outlook on life."
Editor's Note: One of the authors is a former servicemember.March 9, 2008 (San Dimas, CA) Police-Writers.com is a website that lists state and local police officers who have written books. With the addition of four NYPD police officers, the website now lists 870 police officers and 1819 police books.
Rufus Schatzberg, Ph.D. is a retired New York Police Department detective first grade and the author of Black Organized Crime in Harlem: 1920-1930; and, co-author of African American Organized Crime and Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States.
According to the description of Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States, “This handbook discusses the definitions and historical background of organized crime, theories and research, specific crime groups and their operations, and law enforcement strategies to counter organized crime. Both the excellent introduction and 21 chapters provide background and analysis for each subject.”
Carey Spearman joined the U.S. Army in 1965. He served in Vietnam in 1967, assigned to the 44th Medical Group, 616th Medical Company. After his discharge, he would join the New York Police Department in 1973. He was promoted to detective, and to the rank of Sergeant in the police department and distinguished himself in undercover narcotics work and as supervisor of NYPD's Staten Island Community Affairs Division. Carey Spearman retired from the New York Police Department in 1995 with twenty-five years of service. In 1997 he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from St. John's University, New York. Carey Spearman is the co-author of Vietnam Veteran's Homecoming: Crossing the Line and 36 Years and a Wake-up: An American Returns to Vietnam.
According to the book description of Vietnam Veterans' Homecoming: Crossing the Line “is a thoughful and moving account of the impact that the Vietnam War had on one veteran's life. Medic Carey Spearman's emotional message will resonate in the hearts and souls of each and every veteran that picks up this book, and enlighten anyone that did not live through the war.”
Jerry Strollo, CPP, is a security consultant and retired NYPD Captain. He owns/operates REMS Training, Inc a certified FSD and security guard training school. Jerry Strollo is the co-author of Management and Supervision of Law Enforcement Personnel.
William F. Walsh, Ph.D. is the director of the Southern Police Institute and professor in the Department of Justice Administration at the University of Louisville. William Walsh has a BA in Behavioral Sciences, MA in Criminal Justice and a PhD in Sociology. Dr. William Walsh is responsible for all educational and professional development course offerings of the Southern Police Institute.
Dr. William Walsh’s is a former member of the New York Police Department where he served for 21 years. He is the author of Supervision of Police Personnel: A Performance Based Approach; and, a co-author of Police Administration; Strategic Management in Policing: A Total Quality Management Approach; and, Organizational Behavior and Management in Law Enforcement.
According to the description of Organizational Behavior and Management in Law Enforcement, “This absolutely outstanding book overcomes the obstacles and impediments that beset so many others in the field of police management. Its clear, concise presentation and realistic and very thorough overview of contemporary law enforcement organizations and managerial issues make this a tightly written book that manages to cover all the relevant major topics in contemporary law enforcement management.”
Police-Writers.com now hosts 870 police officers (representing 383 police departments) and their 1819 police books in 32 categories, there are also listings of United States federal law enforcement employees turned authors, international police officers who have written books and civilian police personnel who have written books.
Contact Information:
Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.), MPA
editor@police-writers.com909.599.7530
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