Left HS before report cards came out. Enlisted in the Marines for four years. By the time those years were over, I was hooked - they had me for life. Spent nearly ten years as enlisted. Received a Silver Star, Bronze Star w/V, Purple Heart as a Sgt during first RVN tour. Upon returning to the State's received a combat commission to 2Lt. Retired after 36 total years as a Colonel. Book follows my career, but is more about the heroes with whom I served, the great mentors I had, and the leadership principles they instilled in me.
While we may not admit it, no matter what one’s walk of life was we all have had Godfathers at times who helped with the ladder of success. Personally, I had many in my career; however, there was one who stood head and shoulders above the rest. He had more to do with my career than anyone else, especially during my early years as an Enlisted Marine. His name was Lee Manuel Bradley, Sr.
We first met in 1962 as DI’s at PISC. He a Sgt, me a Cpl. Lee taught me much during our nearly two years together. While only a year or so older than me, he taught me much more than how to be a better DI or Marine.
There was a policy in force at the time that two DI’s could not work two platoons together in sequence. How was it then that Lee and I worked three straight platoons together; he as the Senior DI (SDI) and me as the Junior DI (JDI)? Well, during our third platoon, I ask Lee that very question, and he shared with something that I never revealed to anyone. He said when the four seniors had been designated, they met with the Chief DI and picked their juniors. No one wanted me because they thought I beat recruits. I was loud, seemingly overbearing, aggressive acting type DI. The wild JDI that remained the disciplinarian throughout the 13 weeks while the SDI and other JDI backed off some. I was the discipline maintainer of the team. From my outward actions and appearances everyone thought I beat on recruits – I did not! Strangely we were allowed to work three straight platoon together and no one said a thing about it except to complain because we came in first in everything e.g., drill competition, 30 and 60 day tests, inspections, etc. We were the team the beat; we were known as the “Two B’s.”
I will not regale all the other influences Lee had on my career. If you have read “The Book” you know all about them. They were indeed very influential. In fact after our third platoon together, Lee transferred to Quantico, and I picked up the next platoon as the SDI. While he never admitted it, I am certain he had something to with assignment.
However, the biggest influence of all was getting me assigned to Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. where I eventually was commissioned, and Lee was there to serve up my first salute.
It’s all in the book. In fact Lee’s name shows up in the book more than any other Marine with whom I served.
Sadly, Lee passed away on 29 August of this year. The world lost another of its heroes. Someone who made a difference every where he went and with whom he touched. I have personally lost many great Marine brothers this year, it has something to do with our age. As Charlie Tyrian (Col, USMC (Ret), who’s also in the book repeatedly told me when I turned 80, “Welcome to the decade of death.” However, the loss of Lee still tugs at my heart strings
I wept profusely when I received word from Lee’s oldest daughter, Geneva, that he had passed. Our current world is losing its heroes everyday, and this time it lost a huge one. All I could think about was the last we talked on the phone (he in CA and me in FL, 1000’s of miles apart) and how we laughed and joked about our times together. Why did I not call him more often is the question that keeps running through my mind as I think about Lee and his influence on me as a person and a Marine.
I know he is up there in the hands of the Lord and I am sure He has some special missions for Lee. Until The “Two B’s” are together again, save me an assignment Lee. May you be blessed as the godfather to so many souls here on earth. I love you Lee as the brother I never had.
I woke up this morning, made a cup of coffee and settled at my computer to check mail as I knew there would be tons of it. I scanned down the subjects and saw a name that caused my heart to skip a beat, “Uncle David (Sgt. David F. Langley).”
For those who have read my book that name might ring a bell. What a surprise to read that email, I choked up, fought back the watery eyes, while memories swirled through my head. I closed my eyes and actually saw him standing in his dress blues. The email was from Sgt Langley’s niece. She opened with,
” How amazing life is….As I was searching online this morning for a picture of my Uncle David to post on Facebook, I found an excerpt from your book about him! Of all days, to have discovered that, on NOV 10, the Marine Corps Birthday.”
If you want to know the story of her uncle, go to page 239 of the book. I must warn you that it is sad.
I am amazed how the internet has allowed us to connect with people we actually never met, but have a link to our past, or to reconnect with a long-lost friend, a ghost from our past, or a fellow warrior.
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Today is the day, I have to keep my phone in my pocket, which I don’t normally do, and have to charge it repeatedly . Why you ask? I am usually on the phone all day calling and receiving phone calls to/from people I love!
Two hundred Forty-one years ago we were born in a Tavern named Tuns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I always thought it proper that we were born in bar.
To all my brothers and sisters out there, raise a glass of your favorite libation, mine is single malt, but whatever your choice, and drink to every Marine who has ever served or is still serving. We are not a clan, group, alum, or any of that stuff, we are family. And I love my family dearly!
Happy Birthday Family!
The Marine Jim Bathurst
I know this is last year’s version, but I still love it!
The editor of my book, Dennis Copson, Major, USMC (Ret) , a regular contributor to this blog, and an Ezine Expert Author — to whom I spoke to in the wee hours of this morning as Donald was being lauded for his win when PA went into his column, sent me this via email. It’s disgusting and should be of interest to anyone that watched TV News. They should carry a disclaimer up front stating: ” Caution For Entertainment Only.” Considering all the Hollywood types, self-professed celebrities, elected types from both sides of aisle, pollsters, and all the MSM, including TV, radio, and print — she LOST! But, it still “ain’t” over, the fat lady’s not struck up a tune yet, and maybe she never will. From what I saw on TV today, the liberals have no intention of coming to the middle aisle and shaking hands.; they still don’t get it. and I wonder if they ever will. “The Don” may have to lead with a big stick!
Liberal journalists are biggest losers in Trump victory
To most journalists, the election of Donald Trump is Mourning in America. Trump won despite a massive effort by the liberal media establishment to discredit and destroy him, and they were still at it early Wednesday morning, even as it became obvious that they’d utterly failed to derail his candidacy.
On CBS, Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie painted the anti-Washington wave that carried Trump to victory as a racist “push-back against the advancement of African-Americans, of Hispanics, of women, of Muslim-Americans.”
On MSNBC, co-anchor Rachel Maddow also played the race card: “I’m thinking about President Obama too. I mean, to have the first African American President succeeded by a guy who was endorsed by the KKK….it’s a big deal.”
The networks spent far more airtime airing the details of Trump’s controversies than trying to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her scandals. The GOP nominee was slammed as embodying “the politics of fear,” a “dangerous” and “vulgar” “misogynistic bully” who had insulted vast swaths of the American electorate. Reporters also bluntly called out Trump for lying in his public remarks in a way they never did with Clinton, despite her own robust record of false statements.
It wasn’t just TV of course; this anti-Trump attitude permeated elite journalistic circles. Go back to May 4, when Trump clinched the GOP nomination by knocking off Ted Cruz and John Kasich in the Indiana primary. The gang on CBS This Morning greeted RNC chairman Reince Preibus with a copy of the New York Daily News; co-host Charlie Rose laughingly read him the headline: “It says, ‘Republican Party 1854-2016; Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here today to mourn the GOP. A once great political party killed by epidemic of Trump.’”
Co-host Gayle King helpfully added: “There’s an elephant, Reince, in a coffin, just to make the picture really clear for you.”
Over the next six months, the Trump bashing reached epic levels. On MSNBC, host Lawrence O’Donnell derided Trump as an “imbecile candidate,” while NPR’s Bob Garfield slammed him for “racism, xenophobia, misogyny, incitement, breathtaking ignorance on issues, both foreign and domestic, and a nuclear recklessness, reminiscent of a raving meth head with a machete on an episode of Cops.”
CBS Sunday Morning contributor Nancy Giles, on MSNBC in June, speculated that Trump was “clinically insane.” MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski floated the same smear in late August: “It’s time to hear from somebody in the mental health community…There’s not anybody at this table who doesn’t think he has some sort of problem.”
ABC permitted left-wing author and MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson to appear on This Week in June to claim Trump’s “nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism that wreaks terror on the American democratic experiment.” Over on CNN, journalist Carl Bernstein agreed that Trump’s coalition “includes an awful lot of bigots and nativist and a lot of hateful people.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario for America if he [Donald Trump] wins?” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow mused to Rolling Stone, just days before co-anchoring her network’s coverage of the GOP convention. “I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor….I think that’s possibly where we are.”
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, appearing on HBO’s Real Time in September, suggested the end of American democracy: “American democracy will be in greater danger than it’s been since 1860, if Donald Trump were elected president.”
On CBS following the second presidential debate, ex-Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer was disdainful: “I just hope to God I don’t see another campaign like this one. America can do better than what we have seen here tonight. This was just disgraceful….This was WrestleMania, this wasn’t about presidential politics….I think Donald Trump gets most of the blame here.”
Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on October 16, former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham sneered: “To paraphrase Henry Adams, the movement from George H. W. Bush to Donald Trump disproves Darwin.”
The anti-Trump venom was welcomed by a number of leading journalists, who openly lobbied their brethren to drop any pretense of objectivity and become full-throated anti-Trump partisans.
Back on August 8, in an obvious signal to campaign journalists, the New York Times published a front-page “news analysis” by media writer Jim Rutenberg suggesting objectivity was impossible if reporters believed “Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes.”
Rutenberg offered a conscience-clearing get-out-of-jail free card for reporters who wanted to tilt the scales: “It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”
In a piece for Time.com, Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos echoed Rutenberg: “If a candidate is making racist and sexist remarks, we cannot hide in the principle of neutrality. That’s a false equivalence.”
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank agreed: “In an ordinary presidential campaign, press neutrality is essential. But in Trump….attempting neutrality legitimized the illegitimate.”
You don’t have to be a Trump fan to see this kind of thinking as a dangerous corruption of the news media’s role in our system. Reporters are supposed to supply honest and balanced information about both candidates, and then voters get to decide which is the better choice. Throwing those rules away means either that journalists have no faith in voters to select the “correct” candidate, or arrogantly presume to make the choice themselves.
Journalism’s own credibility appears to be the final casualty of reporters’ over-the-top campaign bias. According to a USA Today poll released October 26: “By nearly 10-1, all those surveyed say the news media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see Clinton rather than Trump elected. That includes 82 percent of Trump supporters and 74 percent of Clinton supporters.”
An Associated Press poll found the same 10-to-1 perception of an anti-Trump bias in the media: “Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it’s biased in his favor.”
Now that Trump has won, journalists need to recognize that their unprecedented attempt to destroy a presidential candidate has resulted in serious, perhaps permanent damage to their credibility.
Rich Noyes, is research director for the Media Research Center.
I assume my followers were wondering what I was going to come out with this morning. Well? It was a late night, didn’t hit the rack until around 0400. When I awoke a few hours ago, I ran to the TV and turned it on just to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. Thank you Lord, it was a divine intervention, and I am riding a wave of euphoric elation. First the Cubs, then this. WOW!
I don’t know what to say except it happened, it happened against all odds, every pundit, anchor, pollster, and political science major got it dead wrong from the get-go! This election will be studied for years by poly sci professors. How in the world could everybody, and I do mean everybody get it so wrong you may ask? Well, they forgot to listen to the people, they were too busy looking at everything through their own colored glasses and then putting everything into “their” little compartments and came up with the obvious answer.
My flag will continue to fly proudly, we won! God bless the United States of American and HER Marines…our birthday is tomorrow — 241 years old we are!
Pat Condell at his best. He’s warning us, but we are too gullible and lazy so we rely on the MSM, (love his comment about CNN), and all the progressive Globalists to enlighten us. He hits some soft spots, especially his disgust with our GOP, and he sure nailed it. God help us! Probably too late as today is the day, but it’s still worth the listen.
salute.
