314th Cavalry Regiment

Years back I had a great discussion with a guy in my maintenance section of the 8-40 Armor at Fort Huachuca. In it we discussed 3.14 and the uses of determining the diameter of various pipe. He installed irrigation systems and I was working for a water utility.

Oddly we did not know that the old cavalry regiment for the Army Reserve out of there was the 314th Cavalry. It was also stationed at Fort Bliss as well.

Just food for thought.

Flight Of The Prisoners by Tissot

Gerald Ford

Was Gerald Ford the Reduction Gearbox of America?

When a turbine motor is mated to a transmission it has to have a way to reduce the torque so as not rip the transmission and drive train up. Think about the fact you are using an aircraft motor to power a land vehicle so this would be needed. The answer is a reduction gearbox and this is a device that takes the output of the shaft that is generated by the stators chopping the air to make it a force and taking it and using a series of defusing motions allows it to be used as the force needed to turn the shaft entering the transmission.

So if you think about the Vietnam War and the associated domestic problems it was Gerald Ford that allowed us to transition to what would become the Jimmy Carter era.

Sounds simple but I am going to explore our last true Freemason President of the United States.

Duty at Fort Riley

This Is Ridiculous!

Army chief faults unfit recruits for injuries

By Jim Wolf Jim Wolf Wed May 18, 6:57 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Army recruits have had poorer diets and are less fit than past generations, making them more prone to injury from heavier loads lugged in combat, its top general told a Senate panel on Wednesday.
"It's really the generation of Americans that have this problem," said Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey. "But it's exacerbated by the load we ask them to bear."
He singled out poor eating habits plus carbonated drinks as a contributing factor to "musculoskeletal" injuries that have been a leading cause of U.S. medical evacuations from Iraq and Afghanistan. Such injuries typically include fractures, tendinitis and connective tissue disorders but not combat injuries.
Dempsey was responding to concerns from U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, a World War Two veteran who won the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. decoration for military valor.
Inouye, 86, fretted that individual U.S. troops' combat gear was pushing toward 125 pounds (56.7 kg) compared with, as he put it, the no-frills load he carried as an infantryman.
"I feel for them because I believe my combat kit never exceeded 20 pounds (9 kg), including my rifle, boots and helmet, grenades and all the ammo I carried," the Hawaii Democrat said at a hearing on the Army's fiscal 2012 budget request at the Appropriations Defense subcommittee he chairs.
"I hope we can lighten the load and lighten the injuries," added Inouye, who lost his right arm in a battle against German forces.
Dempsey said troops' heavy combat load was a "constant issue on our minds" as the Army tried to lighten everything from boots to helmets to rifle opticals. It is also studying squad-level changes that could shift more of the batteries being lugged to automotive "mules" and robotic devices, he said.
But part of the problem "is that young men and women coming in the army today are not as fit or as skeletally sound as you were," he told Inouye.
"Even in basic training, before we load the soldier with the gear that eventually they will have to learn to bear, we have these same kind of musculoskeletal injuries," Dempsey said.
The Army did not immediately respond to a request for details of a typical combat load.
Inouye said musculoskeletal injuries had risen ten-fold in the last four years and the cost of related disability benefits was topping $500 million a year.
(Editing by Paul Simao)

San Francisco

Since the City of San Francisco is named after Saint Francis Asisi I thought I would move that stuff over here from Yankee Tirade. Although the St Francis House behind the Grand Lodge of New England is in Boston as well as Cardinal O'Malley being a Capuchin Friar which is an order that honors the saint as well.

So what is the big deal with St Francis? He is supposed to be the first person to get stigmata. Although there have been many cases since.They say it is real but who knows and its thought that eighty percent of people who get it are women.

So in the future I will examine this as well as Nixon and Cambodia.

Fort Richardson Chapel