Memorial Day 2013

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Don Layman
Johnny Cardenas
Darrel Kasson

Charles Browning

Richard Peris

Julie Ryan

Carroll LeFon
Timothy Simpson

Sling Loads

Sling loading a HMMWV

As a break for everyone and a treat for the engineers our unit takes a day to introduce the combat engineers to rigging and hooking up sling loads to the Blackhawk.  We start them with a cargo net, move up to a water tank and finish up with a HMMWV.  In the afternoon we take them on what's called an Incentive Flight, which is nothing more than a short ride designed to give them a couple thrills and an different view of the environment they've been working in.  It makes for a long day, but it is a lot of fun.

Hooking up the load

And now for a different kind of mission...

One of the coastal artillery batteries that once protected the Panama Canal

My last couple of deployments have been in support of the breaking things part of the military.  From March through July members of my unit have been rotating down to Panama to support Army and Air Force construction engineers and medical groups as they built and improve infrastructure in some of the more remote parts of the country.  Our primary mission here is CASEVAC, meaning moving injured people from where they got hurt to the best hospital for their type of injury.  The drive from Panama City to the old Ft Sherman on the Atlantic (north) side of the canal took nearly three hours with no traffic.  During the busy part of the day traffic just plain stops.  By comparison, it takes us 18 minutes to fly it.