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Thread: Army Officer Commercial

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    So where would PoDunk State be located? Considering the Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, state of Michigan, university "U" of lake Michigan represent the FIVE largest engineering and sciences state sponsored concentration of schools on the PLANET.

    Of course cultural sensitivity is important and care and stewardship of the environment are also important.

    I unfortunately want that dirty, nasty, cursing, blood thirsty army that smiles after the kill. While helping little old ladies across the street, working in the most technically advanced army on the planet, and discussing the philosophy of Kant and Jung while doing civil affairs.

    That's what we do here in fly over country that forgotten by coastal elitist metropolitan wasteland of hard working, hard playing, folk.

    You know, right there next to PoDunk University. Heck I work at one of those PoDunk U's. What do we have to say for it? Oh, the most astro-nuts launched out of the atmosphere, Ameila Earhardt, Sully don't wanna swim to New York, a variety of captains of industry, many soldiers and sailors (captains of the Wabash), and lots of corn. Of course my campus is so far out in the sticks the nearest burg is that tiny little town called Chicago. You know that place where first run theater often beats Broadway?

    No culture, but lots of corn here on the shores of Lake Michigan.

    But hey, in other news this fall we are opening an ROTC on our campus.
    I did some of my schooling in the midwest actually. I'm not quite sure where Podunk State is located; I just know that it exists. It's the place that apparently has a huge ROTC program which keeps producing young officers who can't spell or write, who refer to "haji" and "man-dresses", wear sunglasses when talking to the local populace and who wonder why Jews don't celebrate Christmas.

    "I unfortunately want that dirty, nasty, cursing, blood thirsty army that smiles after the kill."

    I don't. I want the Army that actually wins wars. That Army would have been great for fighting the Soviet hordes when they came across the Fulda Gap but that Army almost lost us two wars this decade and did lose a war in Southeast Asia. Don't get me wrong, we need the good old boys who grew up coon hunting and we certainly need to preserve plenty of HIC capacity. But right now, the kinetic stuff is secondary (and indeed depends upon the stuff that the kid who grew up in Jackson Heights knowing four languages might just happen to be better at).

  2. #22
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    2. Considering the conflicts that we are currently in; four LTs with the wrong mentality may well do more harm and less good than one LT with the right mentality.
    Correct. But who's to say that a group of over-educated urban elites would be any more capable of producing the "right mentality" than their social and cultural opposites? How can you be sure they won't end up looking down their collective noses at folks who don't think the same way they do or aren't as open-minded as they are? I've met plenty of the "elites" who are just as close-minded and opinionated as their more "rural" counterparts...they just use bigger words to convey their disdain. And some of those same folks contributed to the policies and execution that lost that war in Southeast Asia you allude to.

    What we need is a mix, and there is no silver bullet to get that. Not even on the more elevated coasts....
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
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  3. #23
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    ..Considering the conflicts that we are currently in; four LTs with the wrong mentality may well do more harm and less good than one LT with the right mentality.
    of a commander not doing his or her job, pure and simple -- not of the accession system or pool.
    As for the marriage thing: Army officers used to get married later in life than equivalent civilians. Not so anymore. I'd suggest that's a result of where officers are from.
    No, it's a function of economics (it pays more to be married), lust and --in this case, the Army is the culprit -- tacit encouragement of marriage, Officer AND Enlisted because the married people cause less trouble. No matter that they ultimately cost more and are arguably less risk averse than those who are not married and in fact impose a long term burden on the Army. The Army takes a long view on cultural change but is into short termism when it comes to the hassle level on Commanders.
    ...That 200 cadets from Podunk State are equivalent to 200 cadets from NYU...
    That doesn't merit a response but I will note that even the podunks get students from many nations as well as from all over the country. I lived in Manhattan for a couple of years, heard about the same number of racial and ethnic slurs there as I did in San Francisco or Atlanta or hear now on the Redneck Riviera in Florida-- NYC and Boston may even have a slight edge.

    No, that isn't an education problem, that's a command failure.
    My "stereotype" was specifically of company grades...there's a reason for that. And I stand by it. And when we still have CPTs discussing "haji" and "man-dresses"....I'd suggest that young officers from more diverse backgrounds might turn out to be force multipliers over that (very low) bar.
    Previous comment applies -- that's a command failure. You cannot legislate morality or decent behavior -- but you can darn sure dictate it...

    Not to mention that your next conflict may be a major high intensity model and that cultural factor will be totally irrelevant...

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    Correct. But who's to say that a group of over-educated urban elites would be any more capable of producing the "right mentality" than their social and cultural opposites? How can you be sure they won't end up looking down their collective noses at folks who don't think the same way they do or aren't as open-minded as they are? I've met plenty of the "elites" who are just as close-minded and opinionated as their more "rural" counterparts...they just use bigger words to convey their disdain. And some of those same folks contributed to the policies and execution that lost that war in Southeast Asia you allude to.

    What we need is a mix, and there is no silver bullet to get that. Not even on the more elevated coasts....
    true on your conclusion. but kids from the coasts tend to be either a. from first-generation immigrant families or b. are the elites you speak of. in which case they've probably traveled extensively in Asia, the ME or Africa and know other languages (besides Spanish)...which does, in and of itself, lend itself to dealing with other cultural environments. My concern here is with young officers, not the folks who actually get us into wars (that's a separate discussion). I'm not saying that we should get rid of southerners, I'm saying that it might be advantageous for a variety of reasons for the number of young officers from the coasts to be more than the current number, which is infinitesimal. I'm also suggesting that the dominant cultural environment of the Army is hostile to people from the coasts. And I'm tired of hearing that we're not real "Americans." And, yes, the northeastern "elites" do hold all sorts of (mostly but not always wrong) stereotypes about the Army (and the rest of America for that matter). And that hurts recruiting too. But the Army does itself no favors when it acts in ways that reinforces those stereotypes.

  5. #25
    Council Member CR6's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    I get the economics behind ROTC. But that also assumes that all ROTC candidates are equal. That 200 cadets from Podunk State are equivalent to 200 cadets from NYU (who come from across the country in reality). In our current operational environment, where COIN and cultural sensitivity are key, that's a false assumption I think.

    My "stereotype" was specifically of company grades...there's a reason for that. And I stand by it. And when we still have CPTs discussing "haji" and "man-dresses"....I'd suggest that young officers from more diverse backgrounds might turn out to be force multipliers over that (very low) bar.
    The issue isn't geographic origin or commissioning source. It's training, and more specifically post-commissioning training. Assuming that 200 cadets from NYU, or any east-coast urban university, are somehow "shovel-ready" for operations requiring cultural sensitivity doesn't make that much sense to me.
    "Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)

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    Agreed on the Army encouragement and incentivization of marriage...but that's part and parcel of Army culture too. And like I said, it discourages us single folks from entering. (Never mind that Forscom posts are always placed in areas where the local younger female inhabitants are chain-smoking obese single mothers.)

    Considering that over 40% of young officers are from the South and considering where the posts are, I don't see the resistance here to the idea that the Army is culturally dominated by southerners. That's simply inevitable.

    I also am unclear on what the opposition is to the logical point that 200 cadets at a relatively low-ranking school are likely to have more mediocrities and turds among them than 200 cadets at a high-ranking school, whether it be Carleton, Emory, the University of Chicago or Columbia. That's just a function of math.

    A commander can't change hicks into diplomats overnight.

    Until the economy changed everything (very temporarily), look at what happened with enlisted recruiting. They were mining ever deeper and deeper into the same zip codes, having to issue more and more waivers.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by CR6 View Post
    The issue isn't geographic origin or commissioning source. It's training, and more specifically post-commissioning training. Assuming that 200 cadets from NYU, or any east-coast urban university, are somehow "shovel-ready" for operations requiring cultural sensitivity doesn't make that much sense to me.
    Why wouldn't cadets who grew up speaking Arabic or Mandarin or Russian be more ready? Why wouldn't cadets who spent two years in Israel in high school be more ready? Why wouldn't cadets who spent the summer of their jr. year traveling in the ME or Africa be more ready?

    There are millions of Americans who fit that description. The Army ignores them at its own (and the nation's) peril. How many lives were lost because of some retarded prison guards?

    Power-point slides and a few actors at an NTC are no substitute for prolonged, formative exposure to other cultures.
    Last edited by Massengale; 08-06-2009 at 11:12 PM.

  8. #28
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    I also am unclear on what the opposition is to the logical point that 200 cadets at a relatively low-ranking school are likely to have more mediocrities and turds among them than 200 cadets at a high-ranking school, whether it be Carleton, Emory, the University of Chicago or Columbia. That's just a function of math.
    Since, there is absolutely NO reasonable reliable current method of ranking schools in any form or fashion. Since, in many cases the best academic schools and the best ROTC programs are joined sets. Since, most of the Ivy Leagues are liberal arts programs, and the military has always decreed that they are interested in engineering talent (oh since Thomas Jefferson and the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890).

    I wonder why you have such an unfathomable derision for people from the south, midwest and inter-mountain region of the United States. I've never run into this kind of egregious cultural centrism in Bozeman, Durango, Kalamazoo, or Champlain. You continue to refer to people from anywhere but the coasts as turds and mediocrities among other unflattering derisive terms.
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  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Since, there is absolutely NO reasonable reliable current method of ranking schools in any form or fashion. Since, in many cases the best academic schools and the best ROTC programs are joined sets. Since, most of the Ivy Leagues are liberal arts programs, and the military has always decreed that they are interested in engineering talent (oh since Thomas Jefferson and the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890).

    I wonder why you have such an unfathomable derision for people from the south, midwest and inter-mountain region of the United States. I've never run into this kind of egregious cultural centrism in Bozeman, Durango, Kalamazoo, or Champlain. You continue to refer to people from anywhere but the coasts as turds and mediocrities among other unflattering derisive terms.
    1. I of course said nothing of the kind. (Ok, I don't have much good to say about Killeen or Lawton or Fayettville. Have you been to any of those three?) Better reading comprehension please. For example, you clearly misread the "turds and mediocrities" reference. Try again.

    2. yes, the Army has concentrated on engineering and ignored languages, cultural studies, communications and all sorts of other fields that might actually have won some wars for us.

    Technology is nice but pictures are often far more important. And we are still very amateurish when it comes to that sort of thing.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    Since, there is absolutely NO reasonable reliable current method of ranking schools in any form or fashion. Since, in many cases the best academic schools and the best ROTC programs are joined sets. Since, most of the Ivy Leagues are liberal arts programs, and the military has always decreed that they are interested in engineering talent (oh since Thomas Jefferson and the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890).

    I wonder why you have such an unfathomable derision for people from the south, midwest and inter-mountain region of the United States. I've never run into this kind of egregious cultural centrism in Bozeman, Durango, Kalamazoo, or Champlain. You continue to refer to people from anywhere but the coasts as turds and mediocrities among other unflattering derisive terms.
    You also failed to notice that I mentioned two midwestern schools and one southern school as examples of "elite" schools. To make the engineers happy I'll add Caltech, CMU and MIT as examples.

  11. #31
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    to try and refocus this so it doesn't become a free-for-all my point is this:

    1. The Army is racially diverse but culturally homogenous.

    2. Although the causes of this homogenity are multiple, one of its effects is that it is self-perpetuating.

    3. Although this homogenity is cost-effective for the Army in raw dollars, it has been quite costly in the long run due to 2nd order effects...such as a chasm between policy makers and the Army and...well....sucking at COIN.
    Last edited by Massengale; 08-07-2009 at 12:21 AM.

  12. #32
    Council Member CR6's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    Why wouldn't cadets who grew up speaking Arabic or Mandarin or Russian be more ready?
    From my limited experience, the Mandarin and Russian wouldn't have helped that much in Iraq, but the Arabic is useful. That said, my friends who attended NYU didn't speak any of those languages. Russian is probably helpful in Afghanistan. That said, a multi-lingual background doesn’t automatically free an individual from the prejudices of their culture and family, nor does it mean they are more receptive to other cultures.

    Why wouldn't cadets who spent two years in Israel in high school be more ready? Why wouldn't cadets who spent the summer of their jr. year traveling in the ME or Africa be more ready?
    Certainly, but I am not convinced that students at East coast universities commonly have such experiences. Again, in my experience, study abroad programs focused on Europe and Latin America. Three months of cultural tourism may be broadening, but I wouldn't say it prepares someone for anything like troop leading in stability operations.

    For the record, I am a graduate of east coast prep schools and an East Coast University. I don’t feel that helped me corner any markets in cultural awareness or immersion. I married a fellow student who was a first generation American from a Korean family, who grew up speaking Hangul and practicing her family’s cultural traditions, and traveling back to Asia periodically. As far as I can tell after 18 years together, these experiences didn’t make her (or her family) any more or less open minded than anyone else I know. We are all subject to biases and human frailty.

    There are millions of Americans who fit that description. The Army ignores them at its own (and the nation's) peril.
    But I don’t see the correlation that officer recruiting in Northeastern schools really gets after this demographic.

    How many lives were lost because of some retarded prison guards?
    How was that not a leadership and training failure? An East Coast degree doesn't change that. For that matter, BG Karpinski is a graduate of Kean College of NJ, and COL Pappas graduated from Rutgers. East coast educational backgrounds among leaders did not prevent this problem. Of course, they weren’t Tier One graduates, so maybe that accounts for the less than stellar outcome.

    Power-point slides and a few actors at an NTC are no substitute for prolonged, formative exposure to other cultures.
    Amen brother. The crappy job we make of cultural immersion training is something we can discuss at length.
    "Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)

  13. #33
    Council Member Cavguy's Avatar
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    All -

    Also a new Army Strong/Warrior Ethos commercial.



    And for those who are lazy, an embed of the original video being discussed.



    I dunno, I like them, especially the officer one. Best the Army's done in awhile.
    "A Sherman can give you a very nice... edge."- Oddball, Kelly's Heroes
    Who is Cavguy?

  14. #34
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cavguy View Post
    I dunno, I like them, especially the officer one. Best the Army's done in awhile.
    I have to agree I like them. Where can a 43 year old expert on cyber warfare sign up? Oh, thats right I'm to old now. Take that USNR I slipped out of your fingers again! The vids are great though. Even my pinko commie spousal accessory unit likes them.
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  15. #35
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Different Folks abound. They're everywhere...

    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    to try and refocus this so it doesn't become a free-for-all my point is this:
    Best way to avoid that in my observation is to avoid name calling on places and people who do not meet your standards.
    1. The Army is racially diverse but culturally homogenous.
    Essentially correct -- what's your recommendation for change?
    2. Although the causes of this homogenity are multiple, one of its effects is that it is self-perpetuating.
    True, see my question 1.
    3. Although this homogenity is cost-effective for the Army in raw dollars, it has been quite costly in the long run due to 2nd order effects...such as a chasm between policy makers and the Army and...well....sucking at COIN.
    Again, correlation is not causation -- the Army doesn't do COIN well simply because it eschewed it doctrinally and trainingwise for almost 30 years at the direction of a number of very senior, not company grade and generally not from the South persons (Specifically and in turn: from / College : MA/USMA; CA/UCB; KS/USMA/Rhodes Scholar; PA/USMA; NY/USMA/Dual MAs Harvard; PA/USMA; MA/Norwich/MA UNH; OK/USMA; HI USMA/MA Duke). In fairness, one of the PA guys and the Hawaiian tried to reverse that neglect but the system just outwaited the first mentioned and went back to what it does best, little change. The second became OBE. One of the worst at killing and burying COIN was the Rhodes scholar. Notice the thread -- no common state other than the two from PA...

    Do recall that COIN is only one Army mission; cultural sensitivity is not a requirement in warfighting (trust me on that) -- really not even in COIN because, as I noted earlier, the lapses you cite are command problems, not individual cultural error attributed to people whose greatest flaw seems to be that they do not think the way you do.
    I'm also suggesting that the dominant cultural environment of the Army is hostile to people from the coasts.
    I spent 45 years in and working for it; my observation was not that, it was that the dominant cultural environment was hostile to people from the coast (or anywhere) who expressed an obvious sense of superiority and disdain for those not so anointed...

    That, I believe is due to the coastal 'gentlemen' not demonstrating some of that cultural sensitivity that you mention they intrinsically possess and you seem to prize. Hicks are like that in responding to pseudo elitism. It's a Scotch Irish thing...

    P.S.

    Been to Fayetteville, avoided the others; full of Earthlings, no place for an old airborne sweat -- the trick if you get back to Bragg is to go west, to Troy and points west, get out in the small towns away from post. Or you can just go to DC and meet kindred spirits...

  16. #36
    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    As for the South being more willing...I'd say that's primarily a result of that being where the bases are.
    Or it could be that there is a tradition of military service in the South and the Midwest that goes back many generations. Or maybe it's the fact that the South and Midwest are more politically conservative and therefore don't tend to look down on military service as being for the uneducated or sociopathic. I'm no scientist but I suspect that it is not a coincidence that red states provide tend to provide more recruits than blue states.

    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    And why is it that the Army advertises during NASCAR races (or so I'm told) but not during golf? Isn't that self-fulfilling?
    Hard to say. Maybe the Army hired an ad agency who then did research to determine the best place to spend the Army's advertising dollars. Maybe they discovered that you can find more people at a NASCAR event who are willing to enlist than at a golf tournament. I don't know.

    Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
    Many of my peers back in NY are multilingual, uber-well-traveled, educated and in excellent physical fitness. Many of them are willing to do something of public service for much less than private-sector money. They often end up in the foreign service or at Langley. But being unmarried, usually not Christian and a heavy traveler (the DOD pass/leave policies are obviously archaic and asinine) does not fit into Army culture, not well at all. The Army doesn't consider them and they don't consider the Army.
    First of all, what civilian job have you had, or even heard of, that gives you thirty days of paid leave a year plus obscene amounts of three and four day weekends? I'm getting close to retirement and I want to find that job.

    Second, there is a world of difference between foreign service or service at Langley and military service. I was born in New Jersey and raised in Suburban Pennsylvania. I went to a private high school with exactly the people that you are describing. My parents still belong to a country club in Jersey where they play golf with those kinds of people. If you are honestly trying to tell me that the only thing keeping them out of the Army is the Army is too Christian and too pro-marriage and doesn't give enough time off, I'm just not going to buy it.

    SFC W

  17. #37
    i pwnd ur ooda loop selil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
    First of all, what civilian job have you had, or even heard of, that gives you thirty days of paid leave a year plus obscene amounts of three and four day weekends? I'm getting close to retirement and I want to find that job.
    It is called Academia. 3 months off a year, most federal holidays, a Xmas break, a Thanksgiving break, and Spring Break. Especially in Ivy League colleges.
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    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
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    So what you are saying is that we need more culturally sensitive officers. I can see that. We certainly don't want officers who don't refer to Arabs as "Hajjis" or their clothing as "man dresses." And we would certainly want them to be culturally sensitive enough to characterize anyone not from the coasts as a dumb hick and to refer to criminals as "retarded." We should definitely be doing more to keep the "hicks" out. So what if Southerners and Midwesterners have been the backbone of the military for decades? They're not our sort. As soon as we cut back on them then the highly educated, well-traveled, multi-lingual elite will come pouring in.

    SFC W

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    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
    It is called Academia. 3 months off a year, most federal holidays, a Xmas break, a Thanksgiving break, and Spring Break. Especially in Ivy League colleges.
    You got me, Selil. I am actually pursuing a degree in military history with an eye towards a masters so that I can eventually teach. But other than academia, what jobs give you that time off?

    SFC W

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    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
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    Default Again Kudos!

    But one irritation - They lead from island to island - with American Caesar Douglas MacArthur in the footage - well - I would beg to say that Chester Nimitz would be that leader.

    And a little known fact concerning George Washington crossing the Delaware River (They lead across frozen rivers):

    Washington's crossing of the Delaware, occurring on December 25, 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, was the first move in a surprise attack against the Hessian forces in Trenton, New Jersey at the Battle of Trenton. Final preparation for the attack was begun on December 23. On December 24 Washington ordered that each man be provided with three days rations and that they keep their blankets handy. He also ordered that security be tightened at each river crossing. The Durham boats used to bring the army across the Delaware from New Jersey were brought down from Malta Island near New Hope and hidden behind Taylor Island at McKonkey's Ferry. A final planning meeting took place on December 24, with all of the General Officers present. General Orders were issued by Washington on December 25 outlining plans for the march and attack. Just prior to the commencement of H-hour, an advance / lead party consisting of 7 Continental Marines pushed off and aided the advance of the main party, to include General Washington's boat, through the utilization of aft-facing black out candles mounted on their Trimountaine Whalers - a boat considered by many at the time as “unsinkable". Legend has it that 4 of the 7 Marines were deemed “liberty risks” by Continental Army military constable officials within an hour of landing in the vicinity of Trenton.
    Last edited by SWJED; 08-07-2009 at 02:33 AM.

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