Retired Marine Corporal to Receive Medal of Honor

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2014 – Retired Marine Corps Cpl. William “Kyle” Carpenter will receive the Medal of Honor for his conspicuous gallantry in Afghanistan from President Barack Obama at a June 19 White House ceremony, according to a White House news release issued yesterday.

Carpenter will receive the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions on Nov. 21, 2010, while serving as an automatic rifleman with Company F, 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 1, 1st Marine Division (Forward), I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, according to the release.

In July 2013, Carpenter was medically retired from the Marine Corps as a corporal due to his wounds, the release said. He is currently a full-time student at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Carpenter will be the eighth living recipient to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the release.

Carpenter was born in Flowood, Mississippi, on Oct. 17, 1989, and graduated from W. Wyman King Academy, Batesburg, South Carolina, in 2008, the release said. In February 2009, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at Recruiting Station Columbia, South Carolina, and completed his basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, later that year.

According to the release, Carpenter’s personal awards include a Purple Heart Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and Combat Action Ribbon. Additional awards and decorations include the Navy Unit Commendation, Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with one bronze campaign star, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon with one bronze star, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Medal ISAF for Afghanistan, and Rifle Sharpshooter Badge.

The Medal of Honor is awarded to members of the armed forces who distinguish themselves conspicuously by gallantry above and beyond the call of duty while:

-- engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States;

-- engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or

-- serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

The meritorious conduct must involve great personal bravery or self-sacrifice so conspicuous as to clearly distinguish the individual above his or her comrades and must have involved risk of life. There must be incontestable proof of the performance of the meritorious conduct, and each recommendation for the award must be considered on the standard of extraordinary merit.

USS Jason Dunham Starts Simulated War Games

By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW/AW) Derek Paumen

ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) began the theater anti-submarine warfare (TASW) phase of Submarine Commander's Course-40 (SSC-40) outside of the Bahamas, May 19.

Jason Dunham was joined by embarked members of Destroyer Squadron 28 (DESRON-28), the guided-missile destroyer USS Farragut (DDG 99) and the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64). The exercise will give the vessels involved the unique opportunity to work and learn from one another; in order to improve their anti-submarine hunting capabilities.

"It's a benefit to our forces that we can support Submarine Atlantic (SUBLANT) and submarine forces in general," said Capt. Richard Brawley, deputy commodore of DESRON-28. "We train our crews with something we never get to see during our training phase."

SSC-40 is a training course designed for naval officers preparing to take command of a submarine. The class lasts several weeks and comprises four phases, including classroom and field instruction. SSC-40 has a long history with other nations and international participation is commonplace, both surface and submarine side.

"SSC-40's primary purpose is to qualify respective commanding officers and executive officers," said Brawley. "Typically we try to involve other nations such as Canada or England."

During the three-day exercise, combatants participate in a wide variety of exercises including torpedo launch and evasion, counter fire operations, and the search and prosecution of enemy submarines using multiple radars, sonar, and sonobuoys.

For the Sailors involved, the course gives them a chance to put their training to the test and take the knowledge gained from each other into possible future combat scenarios.

"There's no limitations on a submarine," said Sonar Technician (Surface) 1st Class Michael Miller. "The gloves are coming off. This is as real as we ever get to practice. We will take the information and apply it wherever we deploy in the world for anti-submarine warfare as needed."

Jason Dunham is currently operating in the U.S. 2nd Fleet area of responsibility participating in SCC-40.

NATO Defense Chiefs to Discuss Russia, Afghanistan

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT, May 20, 2014 – Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will discuss the situation in Eastern Europe, Europe’s southern flank, and the way forward in Afghanistan during meetings with NATO’s uniformed leaders in Brussels this week.

The NATO Chiefs of Defense meetings are held twice a year, and this one is a lead-in to the NATO Summit that’s slated in Wales in September.

In Brussels, the chiefs will discuss the Russia-Ukraine crisis and its implications for the alliance. They will also assess the situation in the Middle East and North Africa -- an area crucial to NATO’s southern flank.

Dempsey telegraphed this concern during a May 14 speech at the Atlantic Council last week.

“NATO is in a critical crossroads … given the aggressiveness of Russia, so its eastern flank must be reconsidered,” Dempsey said at the council meeting. “But I’ll also tell you that my personal advice to my fellow [chiefs of defense] in NATO is that the southern flank of NATO deserves far more attention than it currently receives from NATO.”

The alliance leaves the southern flank to the southern European nations, the chairman said. Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are most concerned about the Mediterranean.

“And yet the issues that are emanating into the NATO southern flank from the Middle East and North Africa could quite profoundly change life inside of Europe, not only Southern Europe, but well into Central and Northern Europe,” he said.

Terrorist cells, criminal syndicates, human traffickers, and drug smugglers see the southern flank as an opportunity and the alliance as a whole must consider the threats to the region.

The chiefs will also discuss plans for the remainder of the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan and the implementation of Operation Resolute Support -- the advise and assist follow-on mission in the country.

Meanwhile, Russia’s actions in Ukraine have changed the political situation in Europe, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a press conference in Brussels yesterday.

“It is less predictable and more dangerous,” Rasmussen said of Europe’s current political situation. “For NATO, this has implications for now and in the future.”

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its continued threats to the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine has led to Russia’s international isolation, including NATO’s suspension of all practical cooperation with Russia.

“NATO cannot take what it has achieved for granted, because Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has posed a challenge to a fundamental principle -- the right of sovereign states to choose their own paths,” Rasmussen said. “Russia has committed to this precept many times, but we see that President [Vladimir] Putin now refuses to uphold this promise.”

The secretary general noted that Ukraine will hold its presidential election May 25. More than 5,000 observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will monitor the election. U.S. officials believe this election will be a good mirror of the true sentiments in Ukraine.

“This is the vote that counts,” Rasmussen said. “Any effort to delay or disrupt the elections would be an attempt to deny the Ukrainian people their choice and a further step back to find a genuine political solution to the crisis.”

To deter Russia and reassure allies, NATO has beefed up the Baltic air-policing mission. The alliance also has added ships in the Baltic and the Black Seas. Alliance airborne warning and control system aircraft are patrolling the skies over Poland and Romania. And NATO has increased the number and size of its exercises.

“Right now, about 6,000 troops from across NATO are taking place in Exercise Steadfast Javelin in Estonia,” Rasmussen said. “This is a significant exercise aiming to test our ability to repel an attack against an ally. It includes infantry, fighter jets and also a cybersecurity team.”

Steadfast Javelin, he said, is a good example “of the steps we are taking to bolster our forces and their readiness.”

The alliance must look at how much nations spend on defense and how they spend it, the secretary general said. NATO has a goal of each member country spending 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, but only four do so -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Greece. Some nations -- France, Turkey and Poland -- are close to that benchmark.

The secretary general said he is encouraged that NATO nations are looking for ways to reverse the trend toward less defense resources.

Face of Defense: Troops Train With Surgical ‘Cut Suits’

By Army Staff Sgt. Carrie A. Castillo

Army Reserve Medical Command

FORT MCCOY, Wis., May 20, 2014 – Medical Readiness and Training Command members from San Antonio employed a special piece of equipment during a military medical exercise held here from April 26 through May 16.

During the training, the military medical personnel employed the Human Worn Partial Task Surgical Simulator, also known as a cut suit.

Army Master Sgt. Tinamarie Reese, a combat medic, and Army Sgt. 1st Class Kristina Boettcher, a licensed practical nurse, are only two of the six personnel that were trained and certified to work with the cut suits during the exercise.

“The neat thing about these cut suits is we can ‘heal’ them,” Reese said. “This gives us the opportunity to have a 24-hour turnaround time on any one of the suits we have here. We prepare one to be worn on a live person with any type of wounds we choose, to create different scenarios. When they have completed the scenario we bring the cut suit back and begin the healing process by cleaning it and then closing the cuts with clear silicone.”

Using the suit “allows them to be able to provide invaluable training to go beyond notional training and be able to actually go through the process of real surgery,” Boettcher said.

Officials said the cut suit is used as part of the exercise scenarios given to medical personnel at either the Expeditionary Medical Facility that is being operated by the Navy, or the Combat Support Hospital that is operated by the Army.

Once the scenarios and wounds are planned, exercise participants like Reese and Boettcher get to work choosing which organs will be damaged by an improvised explosive device, a gunshot wound, or even adding live earthworms to the intestines.

“We try to make everything as real as possible. Yesterday we added live earthworms to the intestines to act as parasites,” Reese said. “A soldier, sailor or airman could very easily drink parasitic water while deployed, so this just makes it more real. I like to see the reactions of the docs when they cut into the organs and there are different materials and smells in there.”

Army Spc. Devonne Woodruff, a dental assistant, 912th Dental Company, Twinsburg, Ohio, was one of three soldiers that volunteered to wear the cut suit. Woodruff met the physical profiles needed to wear the suit.

“It was something different to do besides the other training we are getting while we’re here,” Woodruff said.

“There was one soldier I had to get out of the suit halfway through the scenario. He got claustrophobic,” Reese recalled. “This suit weighs about 35 pounds and it’s worn just like a backward flight suit because it zips up the back.”

The cut suit is designed to be worn by a male weighing about 150 to 200 pounds and 5 feet 10 inches tall, officials said. These requirements are due to the length and girth of the suit. It needs to be form-fitted to the body, with no loose material. The volunteer is also only allowed to be in the suit for up to 4 hours.

The cut suit team employs a blood-pumping system that’s attached to the patient.

“We will add the BPS for the wound on his leg,” Boettcher said, “so that the first responders will have to apply a tourniquet before he can even go into the emergency room. I have a remote that is linked to the BPS and I can let more blood flow until I believe they have the tourniquet on correctly.”

Combat medic Army Spc. Kevin Strebler, an Akron, Ohio, native with the 912th Dental Company at Twinsburg, Ohio, was the volunteer for one of the cut suits.

“I’ve done this two times before -- this is my third time,” Strebler said. “It’s fun. I get to yell and scream about my injuries to play along. The mannequins don’t yell and scream, so they [the doctors] have to pretend more.”

Dempsey Urges VMI Graduates to ‘Get At It’

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2014 – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tied his May 16 commencement address at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington to the Battle of New Market that occurred exactly 150 years ago during the Civil War.

On May 16, 1864, 257 young VMI students stood alongside combat veterans at Bushong’s Farm facing Union forces. At the order they crossed a fence line and charged through a wheat field at the Union line. Ten of the young men were killed and 84 wounded.

“One cadet, George Lee, recalled the feeling of crossing that fence,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said. “He remembered a profound eagerness, to, ‘Get at it.’”

“‘Get at it.’ I like that as a touchstone of what we expect of you,” the general told the graduates.

A total of 143 VMI graduates were commissioned into the U.S. military, and they are poised -- like the group in 1864 -- to face new challenges and dangers. Dempsey said he understands what the new officers feel, noting that when he entered the military 40 years ago he was concerned whether he would measure up.

However, Dempsey said, he, too, was ready to “get at it.”

“Imagine what it must have felt like to leave that fence line,” he said. “It’s precisely the same worry that young men and women experience today in places like a forward operating base or airfields or ports. Some powerful combination of courage and fear, confidence and uncertainty whether they will measure up.”

Trust, he said, is the cement that holds it all together, in their fellow service members, in leaders, and in institutions.

The general told the graduates that while some will lead the life they expect to lead, most will be surprised. But that doesn’t matter, he said, because they leave VMI with a moral compass.

“Patriotism, discipline, courage, integrity, resilience and, of course, trust,” he said. “A moral compass as reliable today as it was to those New Market cadets 150 years ago.”

Dempsey said each graduate now faces their own version of the wheat field on that long-ago Civil War battlefield.

“It’s uphill, and it is strewn with rocks and boulders,” he said. “It’s now your duty to ‘Get at it.’”