"There. That's better."

Once, long ago when I was an officer, I handled a suicide.  It was the only one in which I was the first officer on scene and the last to leave.  A man in his late thirties had been driven beyond his limit by women in his family, in his family by fate and by choice.  He used 12 gauge shotgun and arranged the circumstances so as to hurt everyone involved as much as possible.

He had stuck the muzzle of a pump gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.  He was lying on his back with gun on top of him, (I think, I don't have my case file here to check) and an ejected shell on the floor beside him.  From interviewing people who had been around, I knew it was a suicide but that shell on the floor was a question mark so I called in the detectives to do a crime scene investigation just to make sure.  It was our policy to treat every suicide as a homicide until proven otherwise.  The detectives later told me when people used pump shotguns to kill themselves, it was common for the shell in the chamber to be ejected.

The detectives came and did a complete crime scene workup, mostly for practice.  The coroner's representative had come out also to pronounce death.  When the detectives were done one of them took some photos of the corpse so he could use them in classes for other officers.

As he was about to take the pictures the coroner's representative asked him to wait a moment.  The shotgun blast had removed most of the left front quadrant of the victims head and since he was lying on his back, the right side of his face had sort of flopped over on to where the left side had been.  The coroner's rep walked over to the corpse and moved the right side of the face back to where it should have been.  Then he stood up and told the detective go ahead and take the photos.  When the detective had his shots, we bagged up the body and went home.

Isn't it curious how someone's sense of order can prevail in the most unusual circumstances.  That  man's head was wrecked, but the coroner's rep didn't want it photographed until he had put it back the way it should be, just a little. 

pink, orange, whatever

This is a photo taken during another dust storm.  Visibility was about 30 metres.  It looks orange in the photo but it impressed me as being more pink.

I am told the thicker the dust layer the more short wave length light it blocks.  Only the long wave length light gets through so things tend to the red.  

Our world can be very strange.

Dust

We had a dust storm here recently, a lot of dust storms recently.  The images above and below were taken at around noon and 4:00 p.m. respectively.  It wasn't that windy.  For some reason parts of the world turn yellow.

  An OH-58D driving by.

We fly to an island in the sea

This is the British Commonwealth cemetery.  There are mostly New Zealanders buried there, older men when they died, in their late 20's and early 30's I think.  I read that Commonwealth cemeteries were beautiful and perfectly kept and they are.
This is  my room from the outside, second floor.  It was on the water.  I don't know how to turn the picture the right way 'round.






We flew to an island in the sea a little while ago to have the airplane worked on. It is a beautiful place as you can see. The trip was uneventful and now I can say I have flown over the desert and the sea, a big desert and a medium size sea.

The airplane was worked on there instead of our big base because one of the many subcontractors on the project was too cheap to do what was needed to get a critical employee into this corner of the imperial frontier. So we moved the airplane to the man. The food was good and I stayed in the nicest room I ever stayed in but I would have rather not been a part of a government boondogle (how is that word spelled anyway?).

Imperial Auxiliary

There dozens of Ugandans at this big base, maybe more. They fulfill an important military function that in years past would have been fulfilled by American soldiers. But the Army is too small (despite what all the ivy league lawyers and mba's inside the beltway say) so we have to hire help. The Ugandans do a good job, They should, they are all Ugandan Army vets and many have seen combat. They are friendly guys too. There are many nationalities here, Nepalese, Indians, Serbs, Senegalese, Pakistanis, Turks, British, Ethiopians, Filipinos etc. The Ugandans are unique though in performing a strictly military function.

They got me to thinking about the Roman Army. Roman forces, especially Imperial forces (please correct me if I have this wrong) had very large contingents of auxiliaries who were not Roman citizens. They comprised a lot of the cavalry, archers and other specialized units. These were critical to the composition of the Roman Army. There wouldn't have been one without the auxiliaries.

I wonder if we are headed down the same path. What will our forces look like in 100 years? Is it really a good thing that a country with a population of around 300 million won't field enough soldiers to do all the jobs that must be done? Maybe I should look at it from the standpoint of an ivy league lawyer; if you can hire some Ugandans for the job, then nobody will ask the son of an ivy league lawyer to do it.

Working with the Marines

We recently had occasion to work with the Marines. There had been a small increase in hostile acts (such a sterile phrase for attempts to kill people) in their area and we were directed to help them if we could.

We get briefings before all our missions but on this occasion we had an especially detailed brief given by people just above the little unit we were supporting. This is unusual for us and most helpful. Most of the time we get very general briefs "Okay boys, this city of 2 million has been really hot lately. Stay alert." Thank you very much.

This time we were able to ask questions about the small things, like what do they think caused the upsurge in hostile acts? They didn't know exactly but mentioned the local police hadn't been paid in a while. Ahaaaa.

So we flew down there and helped to the extent we could. During the flight we communicated directly with the little unit, another relative rarity for us. Nothing much happened but when we were talking with the unit, they used phrases like "our Marines are looking" or "the Marines really liked that."

I really liked the phrasing used. It was a Marine communicating with us but he still used that construction: "our Marines", "the Marines." Maybe it was appealing because it put the emphasis on the others to the exclusion of self. Anyway, I liked it.

Then we flew home to our big base.

Some genuinely tough guys

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA_qsYSmix0">

This is a video I found on youtube. These are some real live tough guys who are more than most of us can ever hope to be.

A New Link, Pine River World News

I posted a new link today called the Pine River World News. It is a collection of news stories from around the world culled from local sources. It is very interesting with things you would never find in the mainstream news.

For example,there is a column in there from a Beirut newspaper written by a guy who wrote a classic spy novel about the CIA. And the column is about the CIA. You probably won't find that in the Times.

The guy who does the PRWN has much better cop stories than I do.