Hoax Several U.S. servicemembers or their family members received fake messages saying an evacuation order had been issued for the Korean Peninsula, but the hoax was reported within an hour of when people started to receive them, a military spokesman said. The command stressed the claim was false, saying "USFK did NOT issue this message" and warning recipients not to click on any links or open attachments included in them. The false alarms were delivered 21 SEP via text message and Facebook, the military said in notices distributed on social media. Anybody affected should report messages to U.S. Army counterintelligence on these hotlines: 0503-323-3299 or 010-3100-0171. [Source: Stars & Stripes | Kim Gamel | September 21, 2017 ++ Courage To Live They called themselves the Battling Belles of Bataan, but to the GIs fighting a desperate and doomed battle for the Philippines in 1941 and 1942, and later to their fellow civilian internees, they were, simply, angels. The Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, as they're best known, were a group of 88 Army nurses and 12 Navy nurses stationed in the Philippines in early December 1941. "They were trailblazers for women in the military, for the Army Nurse Corps," said nurse and ANC historian Lt. Col. Nancy Cantrell. "They set the example for the rest of the services. Their story told the world ... that women are tough, they can serve in combat and they can survive." [Source: The American Legion | Elizabeth M. Collins | August 22, 2017 ++] TRICARE For Life When you don't know if you should to see to a doctor. If youre stateside and you aren't sure whether you need care or what level of care you need, you can call the Nurse Advice Line 24/7 to talk to a registered nurse.

Operation Focus also called Operation Mocked, was a surprise strike on Arab military airfields carried out by Israeli Air Force. The attack which was launched at 07:45 on June 5, 1967, and destroyed over 450 aircraft on the ground in only a span of three hours. Operation Focus is of great importance in the study of air strategy and set a very high standard for subsequent air war operations in Israel. In mid-1967, Egypt together with other Arab nations (Syria, Iraq, and Jordan) issued hair-rising threats to wipe out Israel. This followed Egypt's president Gamal Abdul Nasser decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. This caused tension between the two countries and both were on a high military alert. With the help of other Arab countries, Egypt war (known as the six-day-war) against Israel. Considering her chances, Israel realized that standing against several countries was a terrible mistake and decided to turn the impending conflict in their favor by conducting a preemptive airstrike against their enemies' combined air forces. To be successful, Israel used a new weapon, a rocket-assisted anti-runway warhead to initially destroy the runways. With about 20 French Mystere IVa jet aircraft which they had acquired from France in January of 1956 as well as some Ouragan, the Israelis disabled the runways and had all the time to attack Egyptian airfields, destroying dozens of planes, most of them to the ground.* TRICARE For Life When you need urgent care. For urgent care, you can go to an urgent care facility. The Urgent Care Pilot Program allows most TRICARE Prime beneficiaries to get two urgent care visits per fiscal year without a referral from your PCM. Learn more at TRICARE.mil/UrgentCarePilot.

 

Sanzaro~Mike | Delayed Purple Heart There is a quality common among combat veterans, a quiet, unassuming nature that belies experiences few can match, let along understand. Mike Sanzaro, a veteran of more than 300 combat patrols during the height of the Vietnam War, is soft-spoken and matter-of-fact, a man who speaks about extraordinary events in the way some would recount a trip to the grocery. Perhaps that's why it took the urging of Department of Veterans Affairs doctors for Sanzaro to request a Purple Heart that had been due him for more than 40 years. In 1969, Sanzaro was a young man who spent his free time flipping through old issues of Leatherneck magazine. It was a lifelong dream, he said, to join the Marines - even though he had a comfortable life with a steady job as a movie theater manager and a girlfriend he planned to marry. It didn't take much for a Marine Corps recruiter to lure him away from all of that. "We can guarantee you a rifle," Sanzaro was told. "He lied to me. I got a machine gun instead." He went to boot camp in San Diego in July 1969 and soon found himself in Vietnam, working as an ammunition carrier for a seasoned machine gunner. When recounting the early days of his tour, Sanzaro mentioned that he single-handedly saved the lives of his entire squad. His squad was on a routine patrol through the jungles about 15 miles west of Da Nang, when they were ambushed from the left. His squad leader formed them into a fighting line and ordered them to advance on the enemy position. "We just walked slowly toward the enemy," Sanzaro said. They laid down fire and received plenty in return. "You can hear those bullets go right by your head. I'll never forget that feeling." As they fought, a group had circled around to the Marines' left flank. The Viet Cong guerrillas - distinguished, Sanzaro said, from North Vietnamese Army troops by their poor accuracy - began firing right down their line. "It was the worst situation you can think of," Sanzaro said. "So, I just ran toward them." With bayonet affixed, he charged the bushes and cleared the ambush with a grenade and a full magazine's worth of rounds. He had saved the lives of the men behind him, at great personal risk. Some months later, they spent most of the day trekking through the jungles "taking a few sniper rounds here and there." But it was mostly quiet until the point man triggered a booby trap. Their patrol was a small one, too small for a corpsman to be attached. So, the non-wounded (Sanzaro included) began to tend to the wounded as the radioman called for a medevac. "As I was patching up this guy, I looked over and I could see a couple of trip wires," Sanzaro said. They had walked into a kill zone of a half-dozen booby traps, marked with piles of rocks and other small, telltale signs. Sanzaro ordered the squad to freeze as he picked his way to an old cornfield so that he could throw a smoke grenade to signal to the medevac pilot where it was safe to land. "I knew they never booby-trapped areas where they grew food," Sanzaro said. A chopper drew near, prompting him and another Marine to grab the wounded man and carry him to the field. It wasn't a medevac chopper, though. Instead, it was a command chopper, carrying Maj. Cornelius Ram, Capt. Douglas Ford and Capt. Robert Tilley. They landed to provide medical assistance as best they could. "As they're walking, the point man's feet fell off," Sanzaro said. Badly shattered, they flopped toward the ground. "Even though he had a shot of morphine in him he gave out a bloodcurdling scream." Sanzaro squatted down to ease the stress on the man's legs. That's when Ram stepped on a land mine, estimated to be an 81mm mortar fashioned into a booby trap. "The next thing I knew, some Marine had rolled me over and was trying to wake me up," Sanzaro said. "My entire helmet was split wide open. I thought, "I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world." Had that guy's feet not fallen that split second, if I had not squatted down, that shrapnel from the booby trap would've cut me right in half." Ram was killed in the explosion. Ford was hit in the neck by shrapnel and died in Sanzaro's arms as he attempted to get him to his command chopper. Sanzaro and the other Marines managed to get the previously wounded Marines to the now-waiting chopper. Afterward, he took point for the remainder of the patrol and got his men back to the base. "It was just my job," he said. "I never expected anybody to pat me on the back." Nobody did. In 2017, Sanzaro finally received his Purple Heart. [Source: Stars And Stripes | Michael S. Darnell | September 22, 2017 ++] Corn Shucking. An easy way to shuck corn which eliminates all of the silk is to place ears in the microwave for 4 minutes each (i.e. 2 ears = 8 min). Hurricane Harvey's rains could end up destroying 500,000 cars, according to an analysis by Cox Automotive.