I hope everyone who reads this blog enjoys this awesome National Holiday. We have many holidays in this great country, but this one is a true one. It is not one created by hallmark or celebrating working in the yard or not even somber in reflecting on our national heroes. This holiday is about the birth of our country and we should all be singing Happy Birthday Today.

Enjoy a great weekend and I hope a safe one.

Bouhammer is celebrating and out…

The one thing I like about my blog is the the ability to have tracking of the types of visitors I get. One of the things it collects is the language of the computer accessing my blog. Now the tracking technology is not the best (probably because of a mis-configuration on my part) and I don’t collect data on about a 1/3 of the visitors. However here is a sampling of the number of computers by language that have accessed my blog over the last 30 days.

I guess it helps that the war in Afghanistan is an international war with many participants.

English 1736
German 25
French 10
Dutch; Flemish 9
Spanish; Castilian 9
Italian 6
Swedish 5
Unknown 3
Japanese 3
Danish 3

Here are the top cities from which my blog has been visited over the last 30 days. These are city names only, regardless of what country they are in.

* Albuquerque
* Alexandria
* Arab
* Ashtabula
* Athens
* Atlanta
* Austin
* Brick
* Brooklyn
* Buffalo
* Cary
* Chicago
* Columbia
* Columbus
* Cooksville
* Dallas
* Denver
* Fairfax
* Fayetteville
* Fort Lauderdale
* Fulton
* Houston
* La Grande
* Los Angeles
* Louisville
* Miami
* Milwaukee
* Minneapolis
* New Port Richey
* New York
* Norfolk
* Northwood
* Ocala
* Oklahoma City
* Orlando
* Ottawa
* Portland
* Rochester
* Rugby
* Saint Paul
* San Diego
* San Francisco
* San Jose
* Seattle
* Tallahassee
* Tempe
* Toronto
* Tucson
* Washington
* Welzheim

Here is July 2nd version of Freedom Watch Afghanistan. This one covers the increase in deaths for the 2nd consecutive month, recovery of a rollover MRAP and how the customs inspectors do their jobs.

My good friend who goes by RN Clara Hart sent me an Instant Message the other day to give me a heads up / warning about this blog post. She told me that it was about to go on the sandbox and with her knowing a little of what I have went through in the past, plus what I went through in the last 2 weeks with losing one of my previous soldiers in Afghanistan she wanted me to know it would be there in case I read it. She wanted to make sure I was prepared to read this.

As with all of her posts, this one is awesome. Her writing will pull at your heart strings, cause that stinging lump to form in the back of your throat and at the same time make you damn proud to be an American and glad that we have people like this treating our wounded. I cannot encourage you enough to please go over to http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2008/06/carnage-of-the.html and read that posting.

I got an email from this company the other day after they found this blog. They told me about this kind and selfless act they are doing for family members of deployed service-members. The are running a promotion that “...gives military families a free customizable banner to help welcome home their loved ones returning from overseas..“. I have forwarded this to some Family Readiness Groups here in NY, but I also wanted to help them get the word out to anyone else who could benefit from this. I know there are a lot of families of deployed soldiers/marines/airmen/sailors that read this blog.

They are giving away a total of 10,000 banners and giving up to 15% of proceeds to the Disabled American Veterans association. You can find out more by going to their website at www.buildasign.com/Troops

Bouhammer Out…

*Bouhammer Note- It has been a very busy last 10 days since NY National Guard lost the first three of the five soldiers that she lost recently. I did not get a chance to conduct a virtual interview, but in its place I am posting this rant that I received from Mike T over the weekend. I talked with Mike T  on the phone twice over the last few days as he was home on leave. He sent this to me and I asked him if I could put it in a poem format as I felt it would flow well that way and he agreed. Since Mike T had to leave the USA today to head back to Afghanistan in order to finish his tour, I figured it would be a good day to post this entry from him. Even though it started as a rant, I feel it is really a poem in hiding.*

So we sit, in the middle of NJ, I listen to everything that happens around me.

I have Dead Kennedys and One Republic, Cicero.

I have something in my life.

There’s something in combat that you lose.

You look at the flowers, the literature. You look at your life.

There are things that you see that no one else can find.

You grow old, you grow tired. You find happiness. You call in an air strike.

You watch as somebody grows upon you. You just wanted her to know how you felt.

You’re tired of feeling like some used up bag of war. I am ready to stop and come home.

I get tired of telling her that she’s nothing but beautiful.

But you’re old, you’re tired, you’re beat up.

Yet you don’t remember what it was like not to drink a bottle of vodka and make excuses for your country.

You sit there and just say I’m sorry. How do you sit there and say I drank too much and believed too much? Because that’s what I did.

How do you sit there and say this shouldn’t have happened, but I did them? Part of my life that I can’t explain.

That’s it.

That’s what you’ve got. I’m sorry I blew up this village or shot down these people. It is what it is, right?

You come home on a c-130 to nothing.

To you, to this imaginary life. To a woman who loves me to no end.

I have music and I have art.

Everything stops when I get off that aircraft. And here I am, still missing everything. It’s never fair though.

It’s not fair to say what we want to say and do what we want to do because it just never is.

Last night I got to hang out with good friends, and tonight here I am, ready to argue again. If I have to do this, then they’re the ones missing out.

Sometimes I wonder if I gave up everything. I’m so pissed off. Find war is such a simple matter.

I’m not sure it’s that anymore. But what about my beach? My Ocean Grove? Having wine with my future wife?

What about the things that I care about?

What about the things that I gave up?

What happened to the things that I cared about?

What about the drafting table, Osaka, piancones?

Where is my rose that I left so long ago?

I sit here and sometimes wonder those things because I have a house and I have a family.

I have shot and killed, and the worst part is that my family thinks I’m a drunk. They think I’m a failure.

Sometimes I think if my new family thinks that too?

What do you do? How do you suffer? I’ve seen life. I’ve tasted art. Will we find our own way? I just don’t know how to do it anymore.

I’m tired.

So I write this, I sit here on my living room floor, my future wife typing as my German Shepherd sits with us.

But I can’t explain shit. Here I am, tired, worn down, beaten down. But I love my country. I love my ocean.

How do you explain what you have given up for 11 years?

How do you explain what you’ve given up for everyone else for 11 years.

I miss the times, I miss the art. I miss the humming in my life.

I’m tired of people shooting at me. That’s what it is.

I get to sit on my floor, drinking a beer.

I’ve got 48 hours left until I go back and I’ve got no excuses.

But I have rosemary wine, I have salty wind.

These are the things that people dream of. I have books that people imagine having.

And I have a fiancée that no matter what, I will jump out of a helicopter for, I will do anything for her because I can’t do anything about the war. So its back to war then back to my real job.

This is not really current news, but I have been wanting to post about this story.

http://www.military.com/news/article/afghans-outraged-at-us-decision.html

I was in country when this happened, and I remember hearing about it and thinking “what are they thinking” and “what happened”. It just did not sound correct. I knew the Rules of Engagement in country at the time as well as everyone else and something in the story did not line up. I figured that it was not as bad as the locals tried to make it out to be and I was correct. I mean it was bad, bad for the Marines who got abmushed and bad for the innocent locals (assuming they were innocent) that were caught in the crossfire. I also was shocked when my old battalion commander from back in the day, LTG Kearney kicked the entire company out of the country and the BDE CDR (COL Nicholson) from 10th mountain started paying damage and loss stipends to the locals. I thought that was very pre-mature and rushed so soon after the incident without knowing really what happened.

Well the Marines have had their day in court and they have been proven innocent of the trumped up charges against them and vindicated for the public shame bestowed upon them by the actions of COL Nicholson and LTG Kearney. I know both of these men ( I worked with COL Nicholson in Afghanistan and met him there) and I am sure they have learned from this mistake also.

There are two things I hope come from this incident, that MAJ Galvin, CPT Noble and all of their men have their records completely cleared and there are no lasting effects from this. I also hope that all commanders and future commanders learn a lesson from this incident and think twice before assuming our brave service-members are guilty of anything before all the facts are collected and analyzed in the proper judicial system.

So the Afghans are mad huh? Good, maybe they will get mad enough to start to fight back against the invading enemy and stand up for themselves and quite counting on us to do it for them. In the blogger’s roundtable I was on yesterday with LTC Hall, he told a story about that exact thing happening in his area of responsibility.

I was able to participate in another blogger’s roundtable with LTC Hall (who is the Battalion Commander of 2/7 Marines in Afghanistan) today. There were only a few of us on the call, but the questions were very good and as always LTC Hall was very outspoken in his answers and had a lot of good updates on the happenings in his area of responsibility. More importantly he was able to express some of the great things his Marines have done and continue to do every day.

You can listen to the recorded session of the roundtable HERE.

Bouhammer Out….

“The number of U.S. and allied troops killed in Afghanistan in June has reached 40 — the highest monthly toll of the seven-year-old war….”

The rest is at the link below. I wonder how BG Votel feels about his overly optimistic comments now? If you are not sure what I am talking about, you can go back to a few postings in my blog from April HERE and March HERE.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/27/afghan.fighting/index.html

There is one more link I wanted to put with this posting. This is a good story on the comments from the new maneuver commander that is on the ground, MG Schloesser, about the increase of attacks in the E/SE sector. This was my old neck of the woods when I was there. This is also there area where you may have seen reports recently about 55 enemy fighters killed in one battle and 22 in another battle.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-06-24-voa46.cfm?rss=asia

REVERSE THE TREND, SURGE MORE FORCES NOW!!

The links below are from various news outlets that have written stories about all three New York National Guard soldiers that were killed last weekend in their fight on the Global War on Terror.

SGT Rodriguez

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/06/revere_soldier_killed_in_afghanistan_ambush.html

SGT Seabrooks

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-lisold0626,0,3803486.story

SPC Mangano

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-limang0626,0,6372114.story