Who Dey Veterans!!

[combatbengal]

I’d like to take a moment and thank all of my fellow Veterans for all that you’ve provided! I awaken each morning with a renewed appreciation for the sacrifices you made in order to create and maintain this blanket of freedom that Americans feel on a daily basis.

Many Americans have no idea what the military goes through or how they provide the way of life that we’ve come to enjoy. So, let me explain what a veteran is. A veteran is someone who, at one point in his or her life, pulled out a checkbook and wrote a blank check - Made payable to 'The United States of America ' for an amount of 'up to and including their life.'

Although many of us are fortunate to spend this Veterans Day with friends and families, many of our Soldiers are spending this day separated from their loved ones. To those of you deployed, I thank you and your Families for your service and sacrifice. To those of us who are blessed to be home today, I encourage you to reach out in support of our deployed Soldiers, their Families and the Wounded Warriors among us.

[ArmyBengal]

Love the avatar. I earned my Combat Medical Badge in Afghanistan.

My sig actually tells the story of my deployment.

Left the wire to give support to an Afghan border patrol under attack at night.

Ended up taking care of 11 casualties with gunshot wounds in every area of the body imaginable.

Saved 9 of the 11 after about an hour long firefight and twelve hour ground evacuation. Sand storms kept the birds from flying.

I loved trauma medicine and that was the most difficult of all situations I could have imagined.

Caring for 11 shot up guys in the dark while getting shot at in the middle of a sandstorm.

That's my Veteran's Day war story and I'd do it all again.

God bless all of those that set the example before me and those that are still out there today.

I hope everyone enjoys and remembers why we have the day.

[combatbengal]

That's awesome. I earned my CMB in Iraq. I was the XO for C med; manning the radios in the TOC one night. We received a nine line medevac, so I launched aircraft to go and evacuate the wounded warriors. About 10 mikes later, the pilots returned to the LZ; weather was too bad to fly. We had no gun support to use so I put together a team; two medics in an FLA and three of us in a HUMEE for fire support. We headed towards Bagdad from Mosul. It was dark, cold and windy. I noticed a burning vehicle ahead on the right, which was really close to our casualties. Radioed back to my medics and told them to keep an eye open. As we approached the vehicle, we sustain small arms fire; so I made the decision to drive through the threat which turned out to be a good decision that night. We got to the casualties; still under fire, we triaged them quickly, got them packaged and on the FLA and proceeded back to base. Was a crazy night; but we saved three lives that night.

I also managed two mass casualties’ missions while the commander was out of the net.

[kingwilly]

Hats off, gents. TY for your service. Proud to have you as fellow Bengals brothers.

Not a vet myself, but my mother's side is filled with Marines, back to pre-WWII.

Father served two VN tours in Navy (one on PT boat, one on destroyer Brinkley Bass), and his side is all Navy, back to Civil war. Have great-great grandpappy's Naval Academy commission, signed by Lincoln in 1862!