"THE HANDCART BOYS"
He's lying in the tree line, blood running down his arm.
Listening for the sound of the Handcart boys, to remove him from this harm.
He flew in on a modern jet that got shot down in this affray.
But he is no different than the wounded at Shiloh, trying to survive, till they safely take him away.
In the dark of the night she waits with so much pain to bear.
Injured in the crash of her aircraft and now this seemly endless nightmare.
Where is the chopper that will lift her from the smoke, the fire and the pain?
Where are the Handcart boys, hurry, her life is beginning to drain? He was wounded when a round slammed onto the "cruiser's" deck.
Shards of metal are protruding from the right side his neck.
The corpsman has stopped the bleeding; he's been prepared, to be extracted in the night.
The Handcart boys are racing his way, and will be there by first light.
Get in, get them out, and hurry back, to the safety of our lines.
It has been this way since ancient wars, to the battles of modern times.
The two-wheel Handcart is the way the wounded were removed from battles in past wars.
Our modern Handcart has a rotor-blade and sliding doors.
Look at history, look at art work, or at movies if you will.
When it came to removing the wounded off of some war torn desolate hill.
It was a Handcart carrying the broken and the dying with their screams of pain.
It was a Handcart transporting at Normandy in the cold June rain.
Every branch of the service has its modern version of the Handcart boys who respond to the call.
They go out for the wounded and dead, bring them back, get them all.
Some times the Handcart boys are brought back in a Handcart not of their own.
Some times they become the wounded & the dying, and for their efforts, they never come home.
There are also women who work these, latter-day Handcarts and their lives too, are on the line.
It is a dangerous mission, but just as their predecessors they to make that recovery in time.
They move out over the desert, into the night as the sand blows and swirls.
These Handcart operators are our Handcart girls.
I have a two-wheeled wooden handcart with an old worn flag sitting out on my front lawn.
It is not a protest, it's a reminder of our injured, who returned by Handcart, lying there upon.
In order to defend this Nation, we will continue to send the brave & young, our freedom they earn.
And we will always have a need for the Handcarts, for our wounded and dead, they must return.
Major Van E. Harl, USAF Ret. 15 March 2003
Vanharl@aol.com
Special Operations Wing – SOW
Pigs are important in special-ops.
One is always on guard duty at Rescue Rock.
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Majpr Van Harl, (USAF)Ret
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Survival Skills-2011 Style
I was watching my favorite liberal cable news channel, Fox, as a couple from Washington state were interviewed. John and Patricia Norvell had just survived four nights trapped in their vehicle on Mount St. Helens.
I perked up as the interview started, with hopes that I might gain some appreciation for well-used field craft skills these two survivors demonstrated to stay alive. They had driven on a snow covered road that they ran off of and got stuck in a ditch. All they had with them was some jelly beans and a blanket. They were out of cell phone range and oh, yes, they are both diabetics. I was very quickly losing patience with these two as I watched them tell their remarkably “stupid” story, and yes I do understand the selection of that word.
At the close of the interview they were asked if they had any words of wisdom to pass on about survival skills they learned during their ordeal. The husband stated, “Make sure you pay with a credit card.” At that point the Colonel was telling me to calm down and stop shouting at the TV.
The Norvells had bought gas, I assume just prior to driving into the mountains. Mr. Norvell felt if he had paid with a credit card, instead of cash, there would have been an electronic signature out there in the cyber world, so when his family finally figured out they were missing the authorities could track down that last location their credit card was used. This would have given the search and rescue folks a starting point, since the family had no idea the Norvells had even gone into the snowy back woods. The Norvells failed to preplan to protect their own lives and the only thing they learned from their cold nights on the mountain was to pay with a credit card!
I continue to say in my columns and to persons who will stop long enough to hear my rantings, “You do not live in a 911 world no matter how much you truly believe you do.” There is this pathetic mind set in our society that all that needs to be done to cover every base of safety and injury prevention is to have a cell phone handy, so you can dial 911 from any location. Once you have made that simple little call all your fire, police and emergency medical needs will be met in a matter of minutes. So, I could--lets say- go off into the snow covered mountains as a brittle diabetic, with my equally brittle spouse, with limited or perhaps no diabetic supplies, no food in case I have a blood-sugar incident and no emergency gear. No I don’t need any of that stuff, I can just dial 911 and the cavalry will charge in and save me and of course the tax payers will foot the bill for the man-hours of overtime. Now what happens when your cell phone does not work?
I am an old, retired cop, a former volunteer fireman, and currently a Colorado Ranger and it never ceases to amaze me how unprepared, sometimes criminally unprepared, people are and they expect someone else to rush in and save them.
I was working an air show back in the early 1990s. I got a call that a young boy was down on the tarmac having an asthmatic attack. There were thousands of people tightly packed on that flight line and the ambulance was having trouble getting through the crowd to render aid to the stricken child. The boy died on that tarmac and the parents were extremely upset that the Air Force medics did not save their child. The question was asked where the boy’s asthma meds were. Where was his rescue inhaler? “He did not like to carry that stuff,” was the mother’s reply. “It was a bother for him and he did not like being reminded he had asthma,” she also told us. Sadly, the boy will not have to be bothered with anything ever again and because of this family’s foolishness, the responding Airmen get to live with the idea that they were possibly at fault. They were not at fault. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail and sometimes failure means irreparable harm or death. But whatever you do, leave a credit card trail so the police and the medical examiner can figure our where the body is.
