From this report, comes the news that young people in this country are often too overweight and out of shape to join the military.
The Army is facing a weighty new challenge: would-be soldiers who arrive at basic training so out of shape that they suffer alarming numbers of stress fractures and other injuries. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army, said the nation's obesity epidemic has forced the military to turn away a growing number of enlistees because they were too overweight to fight. But he said that even many recruits who are in good enough shape to be accepted into the 10-week course are unable to complete it because their poor diet and lack of regular fitness quickly results in a variety of training-related maladies.
This is not a completely new problem, there used to be videos films shown to young men to give them some direction on getting in shape. Here's one from the series, "Are You Ready for Service?"
Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. --John F. Kennedy
Naval Aviation News is a magazine produced by and for Naval Aviation. It started up during WWII and is still in publication. The old issues are interesting reading, articles month by month, through the war and on into the 1950s and up to the current day.
One of the regular features was Grandpa Pettibone, a cartoon character that hosted a safety column in each edition. There would be a report about a mishap or accident and then Grandpa Pettibone would cite the pertinent regulations, the obvious mistakes, and occasionally plead with the Almighty for pilots and mechanics to develop some sense. He was introduced to the world in 1943 and was still active 60 years later. He is such an institution in the Naval Air community that occasionally there are articles published crediting the column with saving aircraft and lives because someone thought, "Now wait a minute, I don't want to be the feature article in next month's column."
He who turns around and lands at base will live to fly to some other place. --Grandpa Pettibone
The American Ship Building Company built ships for use on the Great Lakes during the first half of the 20th century. One of those ships was the Seeandbee, a coal fired, side-wheel excursion steamer built in 1913. In the spring of 1942 the U.S. Navy acquired the ship and converted it into an aircraft carrier. They sailed it on Lake Michigan, with a small group of supporting ships, a freighter that had a crane to pick downed aircraft, and some smaller vessels to rescue the pilots. The carrier was designated the U.S.S. Wolverine. Used throughout the war to carrier qual new Navy pilots, the ship was eventually joined by a second converted steamer, the U.S.S. Sable. They had some limitations. They burned coal, trailing big plumes of smoke as they steamed at their best speed for flight operations. They didn't make enough speed to launch airplanes on calm days, needing a breeze to sail into to allow launches. The decks were only 28 feet above the waterline, meaning that the launched airplanes dipped alarmingly close to the water on takeoff. They also had no hanger deck, so the planes took off and landed with all the other aircraft staged on deck.
They were berthed in Chicago. A town that a lot of sailors remember as a great place for liberty during the war. There is a museum for the Glenview Air Station. Here's a slide show of flight operations on Lake Michigan. Those ships are gone, sold for scrap right after the war. But in their day they trained almost 18,000 Navy and Allied pilots, and launched and recovered 116,000 flights.
I remember those Great Lakes flights very well in the open cockpit that winter. Coldest I ever was in my life. --President George H.W. Bush, reflecting on his training as a Navy pilot
We're going to collapse under the weight of the debt. It isn't just what we owe today. It's everything that is already promised that we will owe over the coming years, the "unfunded liabilities". If the first and immediate action of the next Congress isn't to completely restructure the budget of the United States to eliminate deficit spending and begin to repay the dept, everything else we do is just rearranging the deck chairs while we sail into the icebergs.
Debt is the slavery of the free. --Publilius Syrus
Christine O'Donnell is getting dragged though the muck because she had an interest in witchcraft in high school. I really think it is more questionable that she appeared on Bill Maher's show in the 1990s.
Her Democratic opponent wrote a paper in college called Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist about his transformation to Marxist beliefs while studying in Kenya. Here's a couple of quotes from that paper.
"Kenya provided a needed catalyst; …I studied under a bright and eloquent Marxist professor at the University of Nairobi…"
"I came to suspect…that the ideal of America as 'a beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world' was not exactly based on reality."
"I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America might be largely untrue."
It would be interesting to hear Mr. Coons' thoughts on his youthful exuberance for a system that gave us such wonders as Stalin, Mao, and the ongoing hell of North Korea under Kim, but if the choice is between a woman who had an interest in Wicca in high school and a self professed Marxist that thinks the economic and social miracle represented by the first 230 years of America is largely untrue, I'll take the witch.
If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. --Winston Churchill
Freedom for a teenager in America meant a car. Everyone had a dream car. Mine was a 1968 Mustang, fire engine red with a V-8 and 4 on the floor. I never owned one. I test drove one, used, in 1974. My dad wouldn't co-sign for me to get it, thinking the car too old to be reliable and perhaps recognizing the gleam in my eye and the lead in my foot.
But when it came down to it, any running car would do. My best friend had a 1963 Ford Galaxie. One friend had his mother's Dart. My girlfriend at the time had a Vega. It was the mobility that mattered.
I ended up with a 1973 Mazda RX-2. It looked exactly like this one, same metallic blue 4 door sedan. A 2 rotor Wankel engine, developing torque and horsepower way in excess of other motors the same size. I didn't want the car when I test drove it, until I was rolling down a freeway ramp in third and stepped down hard to accelerate into traffic. After that it was just fine. I stopped caring what it looked like. Like the Raleigh bike in the previous post, function meant more than looks.
It had other features that proved their worth over time. It had reclining bucket seats, a decent radio, and lights in the dashboard.
Freedom ².
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. --Mahatma Gandhi
In 1969, my dad got me a Raleigh 3-Speed bicycle. It was used, but it was my first nice bike and started my love of bicycles and bike riding. Just looking at the picture makes me miss it. I don't need to have one, and will not get one, because what I really miss is how it made me feel.
When I got on that bike, I felt free.
One of the most important days of my life was when I learned to ride a bicycle. --Michael Palin
A room in the main building held uniforms, books and patches, all loaned for the event. Outside, a series of tents and equipment were set up, all from different eras, reflecting the changes in equipment since Scouting began. Several large pioneering projects had been lashed together, and children were invited to climb and play on them. Behind the museum the Troops had set up a field kitchen. There were kettles of stew, dutch oven cobblers, and cold drinks.
It was great to see them out there, a remnant of the America I remember. Do you think there will be Boy Scouts cooking cobblers on an open fire on the 200th Anniversary of Scouting in 2110?
The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself. --Sir Robert Baden-Powell
223 years ago today the Constitution was signed by delegates from the States. We used to teach it to children, when the words meant what was written on paper. Now it is a "living document" and new interpretations keep being discovered, making it too confusing for anyone but our judicial superiors to understand.
Dewey's makes pizza. They have a nice website, makes their product look appealing. They have a logo, too. If I owned Dewey's, I'd be getting a copyright lawyer on the phone tomorrow morning. I think this might cause some brand confusion. I can hear the phone calls to the Democratic Party headquarters now, "Yeah, I'd like to get a large tax increase with extra socialism. Can you deliver it to the former United States?"
Imitation is the sincerest flattery. --Mohandas Gandhi
Timothy was the son of Irish immigrants, born in 1751 near Delaware Water Gap. It was frontier then, and he grew up hunting with a rifle. The stories of his accuracy as a marksman are legendary. He served in the Continental Army, wintered over at Valley Forge in 1777-1778, survived the war and became a successful farmer. When he died in 1818, the State Legislature voted to erect a monument. That monument would not be put in place until 1929 and we will return to it for the quote at the end. First, we are going to go back to a particular day and two shots taken with a Kentucky long rifle. The day is October 7th, 1777 and the battle became known as the Second Battle of Saratoga. British General Simon Fraser is on the field, preparing his troops to flank the Colonial lines. He is somewhere between 300 and 500 yards away, a distance considered safe, even from the accurate fire of the Colonial marksmen.
A Colonial officer calls Timothy Murphy forward and says, “That gallant officer is General Fraser. I admire him, but it is necessary that he should die. Do your duty.”
Sgt. Murphy climbs a tree, takes aim, adjusts for windage and distance, and shoots Gen. Fraser off his horse, mortally wounded. He will die the next day. Sir Francis Clerke comes onto the field to take command. Sgt Murphy, having reloaded, shoots a second time and kills Clerke instantly. Shots taken on the battlefield, at very long range, with a black powder flintlock rifle.
The British could not recover from the loss of those two officers. The lines collapsed and the British retreated to a defensive position. Ten days later, having lost nearly a thousand men, Gen. Burgoyne surrendered his army. It was a huge victory for the Colonists, leading to France recognizing the United States as an independent country and providing a needed victory over what, to many, appeared to be the overwhelming power of the British Empire.
It is one of those pivotal moments in history. One rifleman, two shots, and the course of a battle, a war, the future of a nation, and the history of the world are changed. Which brings us back to the monument. In 1929, at the ceremony where the monument was unveiled, then Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the dedication speech. He had this to say:
This country has been made by Timothy Murphys, the men in the ranks. Conditions here called for the qualities of the heart and head that Tim Murphy had in abundance. Our histories should tell us more of the men in the ranks, for it was to them, more than to the generals, that we were indebted for our military victories. --Franklin Roosevelt
The constant refrain from the gun control crowd is that they just want the assault weapons, and small concealable weapons, and large regular capacity magazines. They aren't opposed to you having having a weapon, just not that one, because it's too powerful, holds too many bullets, can be hidden too easily or is just so goshdarn scary.
So ask them this, would they support you wearing a sword?
You already know the answer, because as Oleg points out, it isn't about guns, it's about control. He, of course, says it with fine photography.
Liberty is the prevention of control by others. --Lord Acton
The Sullivan brothers, George, Francis, Madison, Joseph and Albert, joined the U.S. Navy in January of 1942. A friend of theirs had died at Pearl Harbor a few weeks before and they wanted to do their part. There were five of them, and they only had one request. They wanted to be assigned to the same ship. They got their wish. They were assigned to the the light cruiser, U.S.S. Juneau. In November of 1942, in support of operations on Guadalcanal, the Juneau was torpedoed and badly damaged. In retreat, around noon the next day, she was hit again, directly in the magazine. She didn't sink, she exploded.
The explosion was so violent that the other ships in the area assumed no survivors and steamed away to safety. Approximately 100, mostly badly injured, men were alive in the water. 8 days later, 10 men were rescued. It is from them that we know that George Sullivan survived the explosion, and swam from raft to raft, to the men and bodies floating in the water, calling out and searching for his younger brothers, until a shark took him.
On January 11th, 1943, a car pulled up to the Sullivan home in Waterloo, Iowa and three men in Navy uniforms got out. Thomas Sullivan saw the car arrive and already knew it was only going to be bad news. He greeted them by asking, "Which one?"
The reply was, "All of them."
That could be the end of the story, but it is not. There is more, and it is the important part.
Tom Sullivan worked on the railroads, running freight trains full of war supplies. A hour after hearing about the loss of his 5 sons, he went to work, telling his wife that if the trains didn't run, more boys might be killed for need of the ammunition and equipment he was responsible for.
In April of 1943 their sister Genevieve joined the WAVES.
In September of 1943 their mother Alleta christened the destroyer U.S.S. The Sullivans.
Refusing to be crushed by their loss, they put aside their private grief and made speeches and public appearances in support of the war effort.
In short, the surviving Sullivan family displayed a strength, courage, and love of America as great as anyone who ever put on a uniform and went to war.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. --Laurence Binyon
54% of the electricity in the United States is made by burning coal. 20% of the electricity comes from nuclear power plants. It doesn't matter what you think you are doing, when you buy an electric vehicle, you have switched from gasoline to coal and nuclear power.
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. --Albert Einstein
Since people asking, yea, I miss him. He wasn't perfect, he made mistakes, I disagreed with him on a lot of things. But he didn't hate the country and everything it ever stood for.
When the towers fell, they pulverized themselves. The dust was made up of particles of all sizes, right down to the microscopic. That dust included concrete, asbestos, lead, cadmium, powdered glass, mecury, dioxin, and more. The firemen, police, and construction workers that were involved in the recovery efforts, along with others that worked or lived nearby, had long exposures to the pollutants.
It is a huge problem, not one that lends itself to a short blog post. Hundreds have died. Tens of thousands have reduced lung, liver, or kidney function, many to the point they can no long work. It seems clear that, heroics aside, the site should have been treated like a toxic waste dump.
I collected some links, but it is so widespread I'm only including two. If you want more, there is a list at the bottom of the Wiki article on the issue. The other is the FealGood Foundation, an organization founded by the 9-11 responders to support one another and work for compensation. I'm not usually one to advocate spending government money, but this is not a social program, it is recognizing the service of hundreds of thousands of people that sacrificed more than they realized in the opening weeks of the Long War. It may not be possible to return them to health, but we as a country can help ensure that they get what care is available and such assistance as can be provided for them and their dependents. I want to see them treated as veterans treated like veterans should be treated.
They say what heroes we are and now that we are sick, everyone has turned their backs on us. --Former NYPD Det. Richard Volpe
On the top of the World Trade Center in New York City was a restaurant called Windows on the World. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine captures the restaurant's website as it was in February 2001. Most of the links work, you can even see the menu. Just don't click on See the View, the camera doesn't seem to be working.
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. --Kenji Miyazawa
We weren't nuanced. We weren't worried about whose feeling we hurt. In case you think I'm remembering it wrong, here are the front pages from just four U.S. newspapers. Kind of hard to dismiss the Hartford Courant and USA Today as vile right wing hate mongers. We saw it clearly that day. They mean to kill or convert us all. They attacked the best they knew how. If they could have done more, killed more, destroyed more, they would have. If they could do it better today, they would. It's hard to think that there are people out there that believe in a god that will reward them for killing themselves if they take a few of the hated infidels with them. Easier to go back to sleep and figure it won't happen in your lifetime.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war. --Ann Coulter
Nine years ago today, Peter Hanson, his wife Sue, and their two year old daughter Christine were getting ready for a trip to California. They were going to visit relatives and then take Christine to Disney World. Christine was excited about the trip and told her grandmother about going to see Mickey Mouse when they spoke on the phone.
Peter Hanson was a vice-president of a computer company, his company was based in Groton, Massachusetts. They had tickets for a flight out of Boston the next morning. Christine would be the youngest person on the plane. I wish with all my heart that I had never heard of her. I wish she was an eleven year old, having friends, dealing with school, on the verge of becoming a teenager, dealing with her parents. I would offer up my own life to make that so.
Christine Hanson is the one I remember. I could not remember them all, so I picked one. I will remember until I reach the clearing at the end of the path.
He who does not punish evil commands it to be done. --Leonardo da Vinci
Nine years ago today I had the day off. We went canoeing. The perfection of the day was breathtaking. A Carolina blue sky, a light breeze, afternoon temperature in the low 80s. We put in at the landing in the primitive camping area in Goose Creek State Park. The marsh grass and trees were showing some signs of fall. The creek runs up through the park becoming narrower as it goes. We slowly picked our way along, stopping to look at birds and wildflowers. When we got to a point where all we could do was turn around, we paddled back out.
Going past the landing, we paddled out into the Pamlico Sound. The breeze was in our faces, so it was slow going, but the water was calm enough for the canoe. We paddled almost all the way across, enjoying the exertion. When we turned around it was a fast run back to the creek, 20 minutes to cover what had taken a couple of hours going out.
We sat in the sun on the landing and ate and talked. After we loaded the canoe on the truck and started home, she fell asleep. I remember it so clearly because it was the last day of the old world. A carefree, gentle day on the water. There will never be another day like it in my lifetime.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. --Lesley P. Hartley
Note: I originally posted this last year. I just don't have anything better to say today.
The same groups that killed three thousand people on September 11th, 2001 continue to threaten the country. The Washington Post reports today that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told CNN the country would be at risk of attack by Muslim extremists if the planned Mosque at Ground Zero is not built, and built right on the planned location. He argues we should build the mosque as a matter of national security.
At the same time, in Florida, a local preacher has captured world headlines by announcing he plans to burn a Koran. Street protests, flag burnings, threats from Muslims, and a general condemnation from all sides has occurred. Here's a question to put it in perspective. If someone took a pile of Bibles, added some copies of the Torah, threw a Book of Mormon, a copy of the Hindu Sutras, and then put the Koran on top and burned them all, who would be offended? Who would threaten violence? Who would commit violence? That's what I thought.
The advance of Islam in this country since 9-11 has been remarkable. Always the desire to appease, to appear liberal and understanding, coupled with the threats from the other side pushes forward the agenda. Our army collects and burns Bibles in Afghanistan. It is a violation of military regulations to talk about your religion with the people we are fighting to protect. We act out of fear, defensive and off balance.
We are losing.
We fight not for glory, nor for riches, nor for honor, but only and alone for freedom, which no good man lays down but with his life. --Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland, 1320
After 9-11, the country reacted to secure airports and airplanes like it was the only place we could be attacked. Spending 40 billion dollars on airport security since the 9-11 attacks, the government acts like that is the only place an attack might occur. If the enemy was a little more creative, we would have seen attacks on bridges, trains, elementary schools, college campuses, and shopping malls. Meanwhile, every innocent citizen attempting to take a flight is treated to a Kabuki theater of security procedures in which elderly men, small children, and soldiers in uniform are treated with the same scrutiny as young adult men taking one way flights to Yemen. I am old enough to remember walking down the concourse to the observation deck and watching the planes take off. No one searched me, no one considered me a threat. It happened in a place called America.
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin
Nine years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was busy helping Europe and Japan rebuild. America was already involved in the Cold War and the war police action in Korea was the issue of the day. What America was not doing was fighting with the Japanese and the Germans. That was definitely over.
Saturday will be the 9 year anniversary of an enemy attack on this country. Whatever we call this country, and whatever anyone would like to call the enemy, it is good to try to see things clearly. We have spent billions of dollars, lost thousands of lives, and accomplished nothing. We are still losing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is going nuclear, and the last thing I read before starting this post was a news article about how Gen. David Petraeus had sent an email to Associated Press warning that a book burning would put the troops at greater risk.
What really hammers our collapse home for me was this story from the New York Times. In the pit where the tallest buildings in America were once built, a 50 ton piece of the wreckage of that building has been returned to the site and stood up. Another piece about the same size will be added later in the week. It will, someday, maybe, serve as the entrance to a museum at the site.
We are well and thoroughly fucked if that's all we've managed to do in 9 years. If we were Americans, we would have used every bit of that steel to make weapons, and added it to a global effort to eliminate the threat. Then, when that was over, we would have come home and built some new buildings, taller prouder, stronger than what had been there before.
But we are not.
America is a great power possessed of tremendous military might and a wide-ranging economy, but all this is built on an unstable foundation which can be targeted, with special attention to its obvious weak spots. If America is hit in one hundredth of these weak spots, God willing, it will stumble, wither away and relinquish world leadership -- Osama Bin Laden
The Civilian Marksmanship Program is a holdover from America. They sell old military rifles and ammunition directly to citizens. They also sponsor shooting events of various sorts to promote marksmanship. Our club is affiliated and we have a match every month.
A 70 year old rifle, shooting 40 year old surplus ammo, with iron sights. The goal is to hit a 3 inch circle at 100 yards. Now if I can just improve my off-hand. It's an great opportunity to spend a day at the range and shoot a piece of American history. Here's a list of upcoming matches across the country. See you at the range.
The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot! -– President Theodore Roosevelt
Detroit is dying. Industry is gone. There's almost no income to tax. Unemployment is 28%. The population has fallen steadily since the 1960s, and those leaving are the ones with enough money and vision to find a way out, leaving a higher percentage of the rest dependent on the government for support. The end game for Detroit is to raze the buildings and let the remaining population drift away. There's not even enough money to provide for police and fire services. Here's a look at what some Detroit looked like when it was part of America and how how it looks now. The latest positive spin is to call the deconstruction of neighborhoods creating an urban prairie.
Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself. --Stefan Zweig
In 1943, after taking accelerated classes, all the seniors on the Weslaco Texas football team, the Weslaco Panthers, enlisted in the Marine Corps together. There's a young man named Harlon Block in that picture, he's number 10. He appears again, later in the war, photographed for posterity. He's the man on the far right in this image. As far as I know, that is the last picture of Harlon. He died fighting a week later, killed by a Japanese mortar shell. He was buried on Iwo Jima. After the war, his body was brought home, and his former teammates served as pallbearers at the funeral. Except for joining up in a group and being in a famous photo, Harlon's story is not unusual, 20 students from Weslaco High died in WWII. It was one small part of the price that America paid to be free.
Come on! Do you want to live forever? --1st Sgt. Dan Daly, USMC, at the battle of Belleau Wood
Update: This is a first, as I have never updated a quote on the blog before. 1st Sgt. Dan Daly is commonly thought to have said: "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you wanna live forever? ". When I looked it up, the version I used is what I found, and I was striving for accuracy, not censoring.
The Michigan State Fair claimed be the oldest continuously running state fair in the country. The first annual event was held in Detroit in 1849. The fair changed hands, grew, evolved to reflect the changing economy of Michigan. The fair had a permanent home, setting up every year in the same place since 1905, with large halls, a horse track, livestock barns and a midway. Attendance peaked in 1966 at 1.2 million people. Last year 220,000 people came. This year's event will not be held. Leading the nation in unemployment, with the cities still steadily losing population, Gov. Jennifer Granholm canceled the fair, saying debt-ridden Michigan could no longer afford to subsidize it.
...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second...just so it can hurt a little more. --Jan Denise
Federalizing airport security was not a positive step. No matter how good or how honorable the individuals working in the organization are, any expansion of government should be eyed with suspicion. The growth of the federal government during WWII, however necessary it seemed at the time, was never rolled back. If the threat of Muslim terrorism is reduced, does anyone think the federal government is going to disband the TSA?
The Constitution, agreed upon by the States, set very clear limits on the powers granted to the federal government. That Constitution is still in force, and the States should hold the federal bureaucracy to those limits.
Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases. —- Thomas Jefferson
In my last post, I named the TSA at the airport security organization that saw Gen. Joe Foss as a security risk. A commenter from the TSA points out, correctly, that the TSA was not yet in existence at the time the incident with Gen. Foss occurred. Here is the comment in it's entirety.
Bob here from the TSA Blog. This happened, but it happened before TSA had federalized airport checkpoints. Joe Foss is an American hero and I regret that this happened to him, but it wasn't by TSA officers.
HH - Just wanted to let you know that a large number of our employees including myself are veterans.
Thanks, Blogger Bob TSA Blog Team
I would like to point out that having the comment appear the same day as the post means that either that one of the members of the "TSA Blog Team" is a regular reader, or that the TSA is Googling all the time to find references to their organization, or worse still, they are tied into some sort of government internet monitoring that reports whatever information is found on a daily basis. Here's my hit map from the general area of Washington, D.C., I hope they are all loyal readers, they are all regular visitors in any case.
Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns. --Mitch Ratcliffe
As OldNFO mentioned in his comment on the previous post, Joe Foss was stopped by the TSA airport security because he was carrying his Medal of Honor in his pocket when traveling.
This isn't that surprising. It is, as Gen. Foss himself said, just sad. There was no one in the airport security detail that even knew what the Medal of Honor was.
Today's quote comes from a time when there was an America that trusted her citizens to behave morally in a free society.
Joe Foss's Medal of Honor Citation
For outstanding heroism and courage above and beyond the call of duty as Executive Officer of a Marine Fighting Squadron, at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Engaging in almost daily combat with the enemy from October 9 to November 19, 1942, Captain Foss personally shot down twenty-three Japanese planes and damaged others so severely that their destruction was extremely probable. In addition, during this period, he successfully led a large number of escort missions, skillfully covering reconnaissance, bombing and photographic planes as well as surface craft. On January 15, 1943, he added three more enemy planes to his already brilliant successes for a record of aerial combat achievement unsurpassed in this war. Boldly searching out an approaching enemy force on January 25, Captain Foss led his eight F4F Marine Planes and four Army P-38s into action and, undaunted by tremendously superior numbers, intercepted and struck with such force that four Japanese fighters were shot down and the bombers were turned back without releasing a single bomb. His remarkable flying skill, inspiring leadership and indomitable fighting spirit were distinctive factors in the defense of strategic American positions on Guadalcanal. --Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States
