Woodring Wall and Museum

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The 75th Infantry Reunion crowd walked into the Museum after seeing the Vietnam Woodring Wall outside. There was a huge artillery cannon outside the museum. I thought it might have been from WWII but it was built in 1998. I decided not to stop and sketch it. Inside the building was a small museum of WWII to present military memorabilia.

There was a whole wall bookcase full of military books. I picked up one book and immediately found chapters of the Colmar Pocket and Ruhr Industrial Area Battles of WWII. Unfortunately there was not enough time to just sit and read.

The next room had some round tables set up and a podium at the front of the room. Here Bob Ford introduced himself and gave us a brief talk on his military carrier. Bob was particularly proud that there was a living WWII vet in the audience in Charles, who served with the 75th Infantry in WWII at the Battle of the Bulge. Bob said that he wanted to serve to honor the men who fought in WWII.

Bob handed out photos of himself posed in front of the 282 Assault Helicopter he piloted in the Vietnam war. The photo was taken in January of 1968 in Hue, South Vietnam. In the photo Bob was wearing a bulletproof chest protector and he was holding an M16. His command signal was Blackcat 21. Bob praised the accuracy of his machine gun crew. Any time the chopper was getting flack from the ground the gunners would hit the ground guns with absolute accuracy.

Outside I was speaking with a 1st Lieutenant Colonel who said that there were not enough troupes sent into Vietnam. Even so, he felt that the battle could have been won.However the media went in and started to claim that the was was not winnable. That message gave the enemy hope and a conviction that they should hold out and keep fighting. He felt the media had committed treason.

Bob Ford got choked up as he spoke about loosing an entire crew in Vietnam. When an audience member asked if he ever had to deal with napalm, he said that the photo he had handed out showed barrels of napalm in the background. He instructed his crew to stay clear of the stuff. Bob is incredibly fit. It wasn’t until the next day that someone from the reunion told me that Bob is 88 years old. He was wearing the uniform that he was wearing when he was 23 in the photo. He works out every day. He wrote a book about his Vietnam war experiences called Blackcat 21: The True Story of a Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and his Crew.

Vegas Scream

Posted on by Thor

Where do the unvaccinated go to gamble? You guessed right, that would be Las Vegas. COVID-19 emergency declarations for Nevada ended on May 20, 2022 as the public health agency for metro Las Vegas noted that the pandemic isn’t over.

While most of the state’s pandemic measures, including business restrictions and mask mandates, have already been lifted, the Southern Nevada Health District said it was important to remind the public that the virus that causes COVID-19 continued to circulate.

“Cases are currently increasing, and new variants are emerging,” said Dr. Fermin Leguen, chief medical officer for the district. “It is as important as ever to protect yourself and others by getting fully vaccinated and boosted if you are eligible.”

CES a tech convention was held in Las Vegas marking a return to in person conventions. The show reported attendance of over 40,000 people, with 30% of those attendees traveling from outside the U.S. Immediately afterward, about 70 show goers from Korea who attended  tested positive for COVID-19. “Many people who attended the CES international electronic product fair in Las Vegas, last week are testing positive for COVID-19,” said Son Young-rae, a South Korean senior health official. It is, of course, impossible to say exactly whether the people were infected on the show floor or in some other part of Las Vegas, such as casinos, where mask wearing is much less common.

Nevada has had over 10,909 deaths attributed to COVID-19 and over 744,000 reported infections. It is a great place to get infected and then return to your home state and infect friends and family.

Korean Military Fight Omicron

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North Korea is battling an explosive COVID-19 outbreak. Experts are raising concerns that the virus could devastate a country where few have been vaccinated against the disease, medical supplies are limited and the health system in a dilapidated state.

Dictator Kim Jong Un, ordered the army to get to work “on immediately stabilizing the supply of medicines in Pyongyang”, where officials said the Omicron BA.2 variant was confirmed in at least one death last week.

As of 6pm on May 16, 2022, five days after announcing the outbreak, North Korea had reported a total of 1.48 million cases of ‘fever’, It also announced a further six deaths. It is almost guaranteed that those numbers are but a fraction of the actual totals since the dictator can in his own mind do no wrong.

The North Korean dictator had been offered assistance from South Korea, China, and the World Health Organization (WHO) but all help has been refused. Kim, who considers himself a god like figure, thinks that he is the only one who can help his people. Rather than accept vaccines from abroad, he thinks his nation will find the best cure for COVID.

Kim has said the outbreak is causing “great turmoil” in the country and on Sunday visited pharmacies neat the capital’s Taedong river, state media KCNA reported.

Despite the public health crisis, new satellite imagery indicates North Korea has resumed construction at a long-dormant nuclear reactor and officials in Washington and Seoul have warned that Kim is preparing to conduct another nuclear test.

Analysts have warned Kim could speed up nuclear testing plans to distract the population from the outbreak.

A huge military parade in North Korea on April 25, 2022 was likely a superspreader event that quickly spread the virus through the county. Send in the tanks.

Over 60 Infected at the Olympics So Far

Posted on by Thor

Over 60 people working at the Olympics in Japan have tested positive for COVID Since July 1, 2021. Athletes or others who may have arrived early for training camp but are not yet under the “jurisdiction” of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are not included in the count, an official told the Associated Press.

Table Tennis player Ryu Seung-min of South Korea was the first IOC member to test positive. Two South African soccer players who were the first athletes inside the Olympic Village also tested positive.

Team South Africa confirmed the coach of its rugby sevens team also tested positive at a pre-Olympics training camp in the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima. He is in isolation there and will miss the entire rugby competition, the team said. The British Olympic Association said six athletes and two staff in the track and field squad are isolating at the team’s pre-Olympic base in Yokohama after being deemed close contacts of a person who tested positive following their flight to Japan. U.S. tennis player Coco Gauff didn’t travel to Japan after testing positive for the coronavirus.

The planned arrival of over 11,000 people is stoking fear that the Games will be a major superspreader event. Tokyo reported 1,008 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the 29th straight day that cases were higher than seven days previously. It was also the fifth straight day with more than 1,000 cases. The Olympics will open under a state of emergency in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures.