SANDF Soldiers to be Remembered

SABC news:

The memorial service for the 13 SA National Defence Force soldiers, who died in a gun battle with Seleka rebels in the Central African Republic nine days ago, will be held at the Swartkop Air Force Base in Pretoria on Tuesday.

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula handed over the bodies of the deceased soldiers to their respective families last week Thursday. SANDF spokesperson Xolani Mabanga says funeral arrangements will also be announced on Tuesday.

“I would like to emphasise that there is a senior official that has been appointed in SANDF that will be in charge of each and every family, for the preparation of the funeral and all the administration,” says Mabanga.

It is ill-advised or ill-informed of the DA to call a joint sitting

Meanwhile, the African National Congress’ chief whip’s office says calling for a joint sitting of Parliament to force the withdrawal of troops from the Central African Republic, will not yield any results, this after the Democratic Alliance urged President Jacob Zuma to convene an urgent joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament to discuss the matter.

However, the ANC’s chief whip’s spokesperson Moloto Motapo says only Parliament’s joint committee on Defence can make such a recommendation to either the National Assembly or the National Council of Provinces.

 

South African Soldiers Killed in the Central African Republic

News 24:

Bangui – South African soldiers in the Central African Republic are seeking safe passage to the airport after taking heavy losses during fighting with Seleka rebels, Reuters reports.

The agency said at least nine SA soldiers were killed.

“I saw the bodies of six South African soldiers. They had all been shot,” a Reuters witness said. Later, he saw three more bodies in burned-out South African military vehicles.

Amy Martin of the UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, told the BBC World Service that the SA troops had retreated to their barracks and were seeking safe passage to the airport.

Seleka spokesperson Eric Massi said the rebels had broken through a line of South African soldiers during their push into the city.

Around 400 South African troops were deployed in the country as military trainers.

Regional peacekeeping sources said the South Africans had fought alongside the Central African Republic’s army on Saturday to prevent rebels entering the capital.

They took substantial losses and have asked for French support to load their troops and take off,” said the source.

Meanwhile, AFP reported on Sunday night that widespread looting had broken out in the CAR capital.

Homes, shops, restaurants and cars were all fair game for looters in scenes repeated across the city.

“There’s a lot of looting by armed men. They break down the doors to go looting and then, afterwards, the people come and help themselves too,” said Nicaise Kabissou, who lives in the city centre.

Massi had promised on Saturday that the rebel coalition “will have zero tolerance for any looting, exaction or settling of scores”.

But that warning went unheeded on the ground.

 

Iraq War: A Photographer’s Notebook

Reuters:

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT It’s been 10 years since U.S.-led forces waged war in Iraq. In this collection of some of Reuters iconic images from the conflict, the photographers provide a personal account of the events they captured.

45 photos here.

God have mercy…

 

 

A Soldier’s Requiem, Never Fading Away

… Every day there are small reminders, and here was one: Julia would hang the ornament because her father, Lt. Col. Paul J. Finken, died in Iraq six years ago, killed by a roadside bomb on the final patrol of his yearlong deployment.

The moment capsulized one family’s self-guided journey through loss. Over six years, Mrs. Finken and her daughters, ages 14, 12 and 10, have struggled through different phases of mourning, sometimes together, sometimes on individual calendars. But the one constant has been their determination to remember, without letting memory become a millstone.

“I don’t want to squeeze the life out of the memories, because I want them to still be precious and mean something,” Mrs. Finken said. “I also don’t want the memories to drag us down. Because memories can do that sometimes.”

Since 2001, about 4,800 children have lost a parent and 3,650 adults have lost a spouse to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For most, finding that balance between holding on to lost loved ones — and releasing them — will be the key to recovery…

Heart-wrenching…

Read on in the NY Times here.

Priest’s ‘Horrible’ Job of Telling Newtown Parents of Children’s Deaths

ABC News:

A Newtown, Conn., priest had the “horrible” job of informing families this morning that their children had been killed in the elementary school massacre.

There were 20 children among the 27 people brutally killed the day Adam Lanza, 20, invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire on staff and students. Lanza was also found dead in the school.

Most of the children were between the ages of 5 and 10, President Obama said on Friday.

Medical examiners have completed the grim work of identifying all of the victims at the school and families were informed early this morning that their loved ones had been killed.

“We were gathered until after midnight and we were sent out with teams to go to the homes of the victims,” parish priest Monsignor Robert Weiss told “Good Morning America” today. “We went to their homes early this morning to confirm the death of their children and it was just horrible.”

“The uncertainty…even though they knew in their hearts that this was real,”  he said. “And the questions they were asking, the regrets they had. ‘Why did I send my child to school today?’”

Weiss said some of the parents shared the last moments they had with their children. One dad said that, for some reason, his child got up early Friday morning and came down to tell the father how much she loved him. Another parent said their child had asked what dying was like just the day before.

“Parents are really going through a tremendous amount of pain and hurt right now, trying to deal with not just their personal loss, but what happened to their child in the last moments of their life,” he said.

A number of the victims’ families are part of Weiss’ parish. He baptized some of the children and some of them went to his parish’s nursery school.

“It’s hard to believe that these little children are gone,” he said.

Weiss met with the families from his parish who lost children and said the hurt and the anguish are “just settling in now” and then “there’s going to be anger.”

“And then they’re going to have to live with this reality that this big part of their life is gone for them,” he said.

Weiss said he has “no answer” when families ask him why their children have been taken from them…

 

Nuns Provide Support at Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting

Two unidentified nuns leave the scene of the aftermath at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. At least 27 people, including 18 children, were killed. — Don Emmert, Getty Images, Dec. 14, 2012

Relatives react outside Sandy Hook Elementary School following a shooting at the school in Newtown, Connecticut. — Michelle McLoughlin, Reuters, Dec. 14, 2012

Mourners gather inside the St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church at a vigil service for the shooting victims.  — Andrew Gombert, EFE, Dec. 14, 2012

 

 

God Is Not an Englishman

The Rev. Jonathan Woodhouse, Chaplain-General to the Forces

Conger:

God is not an Englishman, the Chaplain General of the British Army said last month in an interview printed in the November 2012 issue of Defence Focus, but that does not mean war or military service is unjust.

In a wide ranging interview the Rev. Jonathan Woodhouse, the Chaplain-General to the Forces was asked if God was on “our side”.

Chaplain Woodhouse responded: “I don’t think that God is on anyone’s side. It’s up to us to be on God’s side and seek out the way he wants us to live. In certain circumstances soldiers are allowed to use lethal force as a last resort but there are very clear rules of engagement. We minister to people who may be called on to use lethal force and that brings a creative tension. War is always the last resort.”

Read it all in Anglican Ink.

 

West Point Chapel Hosts First Same-sex Wedding

Times have certainly changed. And to think that the Sanctuary Window is inscribed with the words: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’

Cadet Chapel, the landmark Gothic church that is a center for spiritual life at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, hosted its first same-sex wedding Saturday.

Penelope Gnesin and Brenda Sue Fulton, a West Point graduate, exchanged vows in the regal church in an afternoon ceremony, attended by about 250 guests and conducted by a senior Army chaplain.

The two have been together for 17 years. They had a civil commitment ceremony that didn’t carry any legal force in 1999 and had long hoped to formally tie the knot. The way was cleared last year, when New York legalized same-sex marriage and President Barack Obama lifted the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting openly gay people from serving in the military.

The brides, who live in Asbury Park, N.J., would have preferred to have the wedding in New Jersey, but in February, Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have allowed gay marriage in the state.

Steven Goldstein, founder and CEO of Garden State Equality, had a message for Christie regarding Saturday’s wedding: “Hey, Gov. Christie. It’s a same-sex marriage. It’s good enough for the military chapel at West Point. It ought to be good enough for you.”

“We just couldn’t wait any longer,” Fulton told The Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday.

Cadet Chapel was a more-than-adequate second choice, Fulton said.

“It has a tremendous history, and it is beautiful. That’s where I first heard and said the cadet prayer,” Fulton said, referring to the invocation that says, “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.”

The ceremony was the second same-sex wedding at West Point. Last weekend, two of Fulton’s friends, a young lieutenant and her partner, were married in another campus landmark, the small Old Cadet Chapel in West Point’s cemetery.

Fulton has campaigned against the ban on gays in the military as a member of two groups representing gay and lesbian servicemen and servicewomen. She graduated from West Point in 1980, a member of the first class to include women.

She served with the Army Signal Corps in Germany and rose to the rank of captain, but left the service in 1986 partly because she wanted to be open about her sexual orientation. Obama appointed her last year to the U.S. Military Academy’s Board of Visitors.

Fulton said the only hassle involved in arranging her ceremony came when she was initially told that none of West Point’s chaplains was authorized by his or her denomination to perform same-sex weddings.

Luckily, Fulton said, they were able to call on a friend, Army Chaplain Col. J. Wesley Smith. He is the senior Army chaplain at Dover Air Force Base, where he presides over the solemn ceremonies held when the bodies of soldiers killed in action overseas return to U.S. soil.

The couple added other military trappings to their wedding, including a tradition called the saber arch, where officers or cadets hold their swords aloft over the newlyweds as they emerge from the church.

Wikipedia has more on the place of Protestant denomination worship that is the West Point Cadet Chapel.

And it apparently houses one of the largest Church organs in the world.

 

Chaplains Support Sandy Relief Operations

US Department of Defense:

National Guard chaplains are providing support as part of Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery operations.

“The chaplains are providing religious services and prayer for recovery teams,” said Air Force Chaplain Brig. Gen. Alphonse Stephenson, director of the National Guard joint chaplaincy at the National Guard Bureau and Air National Guard assistant to the Air Force chief of chaplains. “They’re providing on-the-spot counseling and encouragement to not only military personnel but to everyone who is affected.”

Many of the chaplains who have responded are from the New Jersey and New York areas, which provides for a greater connection to the communities affected by the storm, Stephenson said.

“They’re from the community and they put on the uniform and report to where they are supposed to be and then they go right back out into the community again,” he said.

And while chaplains in the affected areas are primarily there to support military members, they have ministered to non-military members as well, Stephenson said. One way they have done this is by engaging with members of the local clergy.

When it comes to providing support, “a chaplain just doesn’t say no,” Stephenson said. “There is no such thing.”

For Stephenson, a New Jersey native, the storm affected him personally and he found himself providing support to his 89-year-old father in the days after the storm.

“He lives on the Jersey Shore and his lights were out,” Stephenson said. “Thank God his house was standing and everything else was fine, but his power went out.”

After eight days without power, Stephenson said his father was beginning to feel frustrated and somewhat overwhelmed.

“I said to him, ‘You were in World War II in seven invasions and right now you’re sitting in Brick Township, N.J., with a house where the power is out. How tough is that?’” Stephenson said. “And he said, ‘Ya know, you’re right.’”

“And I think that’s what the chaplain has to do — put it in perspective,” Stephenson added.

Putting things in perspective is one way that chaplains work to provide hope and encouragement for those they support, Stephenson said.

“The presence of the chaplain is to bring hope,” he said. “That’s our best product, our most important product. I think the cross or tablets or whatever religious insignia is on the uniform of the chaplain, it’s a symbol of a trusted agent.”

And from the chaplain’s perspective, Stephenson said, that mission of providing hope is the same whether it’s responding to a Hurricane Sandy-type event or as part of the overseas or warfighting mission.

“It’s approached with the same vigor,” he said.

And in a disaster situation such as Sandy, chaplains provide an essential element, Stephenson said.

“I think the chaplain’s presence is absolutely necessary in these situations,” he said.

And being there, he added, is part of the chaplain’s mission.

“We are spiritual strength, wherever needed, whenever required,” Stephenson said.

 

I Had I Busy Evening…

Two die and two airlifted after structural collapse.

ER 24:

Two men have sustained fatal injures while another two suffered critical injuries after a wall collapsed onto them at a residence on Adam Tas road in Somerset West.

The three construction workers and their manager were at the wall that was being constructed behind the pool at the private residence, when suddenly the wall collapsed onto them. The manager was crushed beneath the weight of the rubble, while one of the construction workers was pushed into the pool and he may have been drowned as he was pinned down by the weight of the bricks on top of him. The two men died at the scene and nothing more could be done to save their lives.

The other two men had also been crushed by the falling rubble and the Department of Health Provincial Government Emergency Medical Services Structrual Collapse Unit were immediately called to the scene to coordinate the rescue of the two men. The Structural Collapse Team set to work to free the man, meticulously removing the rubble from the area so as to not impact on the patient’s injuries but to free the two men as quickly as they could.

Approximately two hours later the patients were ready for transport and AER24 was called in. A private ambulance service brought the patients to a nearby field where ER5 had landed in wait. The first patient was loaded into the air ambulance and transported through to Mediclinic Vergelegen. After a comprehensive but quick handover of the patient, they booked airborne back to the scene to collect the second patient. Shortly after that the patient was safely on the way to Mediclinic Cape Gate.

Both patients, despite having suffered extensive injuries in the accident, remain in hospital in stable conditions.