By Margaret Downing MACHESNEY PARK – When Brad Stoddard graduated from Harlem High School in 2005, he recalls how he was gung-ho to go and fight for his country. That attitude may very well have been inspired in him by his two grandfathers who fought in the Second World War - one with the Navy and one with the Army.“As a kid, me and four or five of my buddies all felt the same way,” he said recently.Brad enlisted with the Marines in August of 2005 and was sent to Boot Camp in San Diego, California, for several weeks that September.“I then came home on leave for a few weeks before entering SOI (School of Infantry Training) at Camp Pendleton.”Next came two months of infantry machine gunner training at which time Stoddard was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Division based at Twenty Nine Palms, Cal. At that time the unit had just returned from Fallujah, Iraq.  Harlem High Grad and ex-Marine Brad Stoddard |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
By Melanie Bradley  David Marlow receives his Purple Heart and other medals alongside his stepdaughter Lisa Koerner, who helped Marlow reconnect with his unit and helped secure the medals he never received after the war MACHESNEY PARK – Former Machesney Park resident David L. Marlow, 59, was deployed to Vietnam when he was 19 years old, and he fought there for nine months, until he was injured in 1969 and was sent home.He and three other Army soldiers sustained injuries when fired upon while traveling down a river in Vietnam. His body filled with shrapnel, he was taken to a hospital and never saw his fellow soldiers again.In the years that followed, he never knew what became of them, his personal possessions, and the medals he should have received but didn’t.“I was mad up until recently, because I could never find out about my unit in Vietnam,” Marlow said. “It’s pretty bad when you have to more or less beg for your medals.”His physical wounds healed with time, but the emotional scars never went away. He suffers from memories that haunt him in his sleep, an emotional pain that is commonly referred to as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS). |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
by Gerald Scott Flint
Volunteer Medics Worldwide teams up with KAMAIR of Afghanistan to accomplish a humanitarian memorial mission to Gandhi Institute of Child Health. Mission objectives: 1. Honor the memory of two fine Americans. 2. Stop the spread of terrorism in Afghanistan by bringing medical assistance to children who have no where to turn for help once sick , wounded or injured. 3.Encourage all those with rescources and means available to them to volunteer their skills, donate materials and place the needs others above their own on a more frequent basis anywhere and anytime in the world. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
