Ok Mac,more info on me.You know how I got involved in using Shuriken Stars and Owned a Ninjato?As well as the climbing claws/Caltrops and my very own NInja suit to go with my Nunchukas?
While most kids wanted to be an "Army man"or a "fireman"or even a "Policeman",I wanted to be a Ninja!!!LOL!!!
I waws never able to get any formal training but I did my best to collect and learn to use any kind of Jappanese martial arts weapon I could obtain(I think my chucks were a Kungfu weapon however)

I also admire the Japanese martial arts and always liked reading about some of the skills. I enjoyed reading some of the Lustbader books such as Shan, Jian, and White Ninja which was one of my favorites. I was in my middle teens when the "ninja" craze hit made popular by some truely terrible movies like "Enter the Ninja" and "Revenge of the Ninja."

yeah,you are old enough to be my big brother I guess.I was about 12 ir so and I loved Revenge of the Ninja.lol!

Yeah I was 17 at the time and thought it was a decent movie. I still remember my younger brothers (I am the eldest by 4 years) arguing over white or black ninja suits, which was better 4 or 8 point stars, etc. Most of the ninja movies did pique my interest in the martial arts although I chose ones that were not so common. I understand from some of the uber-mommies in the day care on post that since "Kungfu Panda" came out attendence at kungfu schools has sky rocketed. I wonder how many of those kids are going to stick with the training. When I was in China I got to spar with some Shaolin priests and they trashed my ass like nothing. We have some S Korean SF as well as some Spetsnaz guys here for cross training and some of them are particularly good at martial arts. The Spetsnaz guys have a neat knife that launches the blade from the handle powered by a standard 12 gr CO2 cartridge!! Way cool!! They use it for quiet work by placing the knife under some poor bastard's ribs and firing the blade up into the body. Slight hazard of hitting yourself though because sometimes the blade comes through the target and tends to bounce off bones. Totally illegal in the States.

Ma,n.I know all about those Spetznaz guy's and their self propelled Knife missile!If you watch a show called "Deadliest Warrior" on Spike TV they just had The Spetznaz go up against our green Berets and the Spaetsnaz were the victors.(not saying I agree)But those Spetznaz guys have a30% Deathrate training and they are even taught to feel no pain as they are stood and beaten just like the Spartans were.They are also trained to literally eat one another if they have to!
Of course I vote for my boy's,The USA SF teams!!!

Sorry for my abscnese took my platoon in the field for some "corrective" training. Nice thing about having my own platoon if people mess up I get to fix it not have to wash it by the CO. Been a while since some of us fast-ropped Aussie style anyway, and we were able to hitch a ride on a CH46 and parachute into the training area which was a blast. Lately our heat wave here has made great conditions for jumping. Awsome thermals that give some serious hang time. We also got to zero weaps and requal on all various weapons. Of course I gave them the option of shoot the ammo or hump it back to post - guess what they chose? Yeah the Spetsnaz are some bad mo fos!!! They have a lot of problems with guys snapping (cue Psycho music), and they are not really known for being the most intelligent SF troops among our allies - but they are def some tuff bastards. I am surprised that they went against Green Berets should have been Commandos - they are more alike in training. Green Berets are linguistic, training, and psy ops pros - as well as some of the best intelligent-gathering forces - but they used to do a lot of snatch and run in Vietnam. Terrified the Viet Cong that they would find themselves snatched by an A team. Cant fault the Spetsnaz for heart though - I've seen them go on with some horrid wounds that would have stopped a lesser soldier. Met quite a few Russian soldiers in Afghanistan that defected and took Afghani wifes. We avoided those dirt bags - I am conversant in Russian and Arabic (can't read either for shite) so I can get by but I will never sound fluent. We had some GDR and Russian troops in Kabul with us and I understood that the Russian soldiers were telling the defectors that if they were caught out side at night they had better watch themselves.

firggin cool Mac....thanks for giving us an inside look at your life man...guys like you make me real proud to live in this country...can't thank yopu enough or express my appreciation enough...i don't care how unpopular a war is..you guys do what you are trained for an handle stuff as best you can..only people ot blame for some of the messes we are in are some of the politicians..our troops get my total support...

Well as professional soldiers we do as we are told. The Brits have a saying that when you take the Queen's copper - you do as she says. When I enlisted under Reagon in '86 I promised to defend the country against all enemies foriegn and domestic, and despite my disagreements with some of the presidents - I will serve them as diligently as I did the others.

Only mistake I made is I did not lug enough books in my ruck and ran out batteries for my Surefire mini light. I got to finish one book - A Rush of Wings by Adrian Phoenix and it is typical of the Goth/Vampire erotica drivel being printed. WIthin the first 20 or so pages my thought was "great just what we needed more bi-sexual French-speaking vampires in New Orleans - how original." Tried both editions of the Kindle but they are not quite soldier proof and need to be hardened to take the rigors of field life.

Do not take this wrong Mac,but I am envious of you.Not for the combat you have seen but for the knowledge and expertise that you have of all thing's millitary.You are now the 4th member of Dan,Andy and my "Kool Guy's club"lol!I am no coward but I sure as hell am not the soldier or man you are.

Posted By Scourge on 18 Aug 2009 12:00 PM
  The Brits have a saying that when you take the Queen's copper - you do as she says. 

Hey,

I guess you mean the Queen's shilling (or King's shilling depending which one we have on the throne at the time)

The Shilling was a silver coin (done away with in the early 1970's when we went over to decimal pounds and pence), worth 12 old pennies, which, if accepted from a recruiting officer obliged the recipient to serve in the British army.

Recruiting sergeants in the 18th century would ply likely young men with drink and then persuade them to take the shilling, by taking it they were in fact accepting army pay.

This ranked as a binding agreement from which escape was very difficult.

The British Army no longer offers a shilling to new recruits but it does have them swear an oath of allegiance to the Country and Monarch.

Thanks for the correction - I am not much of an Anglophile and since I am Irish-Catholic well just say it runs in my blood not to trust the Brits. ;{) My family left Ireland during the Great Potato Famine and settled in Missouri then moved to Idaho after that territory was opened to settlement. I have served with a few of Her Majesties troops but not close enough to catch all the differences. I am actually more familiar with the Canadians as they are our closest neighbors and we do a lot of inter-service training with them. Actually I am better on the Russians (Know thy enemy) and Arabs than the Brits. I have only managed to get to England once and hope to return on my own dime some day so I can explore more. Most of the Brits I have served with were either Royal Marines or SAS and they tend to be a little bit odd.

I can't say much on this Jim or Mac,except I thought that the SAS were among the first "Elite"Sf types(beside the Grermans under Otto Scorzney in WW2) and our own Delta force was based on them to some extent?Pls correct me if I am wrong,but I have read some accounts of their preferred weapons(Sig P226 9MM's over their old Browning HI power's) and The Mp5 and US M4,as well as them being way better at "Liberating" a Terrorist held Embassy than the Russian Spetsnaz who killed alot of civillians and lost some of their own when those Chechyen's took over that arts school in Russia years ago???
Just my 2 cents.

Actually the SAS and the OSS were developed about the same time the Rangers and the 101st AB were during WW2. If you want to get technical the Rangers were formed back during the War for Independence (on both sides) but were not codified as such until WW2 and were disbanded after WW2 but raised again for Korea. We draw heavily on the Roger’s Rangers although we are not officially decedents of that unit. I have been a Ranger since 1982 and first saw combat in Grenada.
SAS and Delta have much better records for freeing hostages and retrieving persons of interest. Spetsnaz have a better record of job achievement but they do seem to always have a high death rate and tend to lose a few of the targets. Some feel the Spetsnaz units are more inclined to the "acceptable losses" theory than others.
Delta, SAS and Rangers all cross train with each other although the SAS and Delta are a bit more secretive than the Rangers are so we do not have to blank our faces. A lot of times Delta units will hitch a ride with the Rangers and then get off somewhere to do their thing. Since we are all friends now, we are even starting to train with Spetsnaz units, but I still would not trust Russia.
A lot of the Delta guys are carrying Kimber .45s but there are a lot of the Sig 226s out there and even a few Glocks. One of the Delta operatives I had the pleasure of shooting with carried a Glock 20L with an attached suppressor. He said that he only got about 10 rounds or so through it before it needed a rebuild due to gas cutting of the baffles. There are even a few modern suppressed .45 ACP rifles much like the De Lissle carbine from WW2 – one of my favorite rifles which I was glad to see it in the OL series.

Thanks for the intel Mac,You just confirmed my theory about Spetsnaz too.

I know a little about you guy's but I am not a pro like you so I of course do not mind you correcting my factoids thet were off at all.

lol... Delta Force does not exist, Delta Force does not exist... when I was going into the army the Drill Sergeants said it like it was a mantra or something man... lol...

Sun

Yeah Andy I get ya.lol.

Doesn't the Army rangers sort of look up to or aspire to being Delta?That is the way it was portrayed in "BlackHawk Down"is all I am sayin'?

Anyway... getting back on track, I have recently decided to give James Rollins a try.

I bought Ice Hunt, and so far I am 220 pages into this 505 page novel.

This is really great stuff, I'm enjoying it. Rollins is a very talented writer, I can see why his books are popular. The pacing is a little slower than I would have liked, but there really isn't anything bad to say about this book. It keeps getting better, and I'm really hooked.

I'm considering getting more of his books.

Its been awhile since I posted here so an update...I will passingly recommend Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanly Robinson.  Very intelligent and scientifically sound reading but at times tedious (what trilogy isn't).  My biggest complaint is the blatant religious and political endorsement of the authors obvious choice.  Not a whole lot of objectivity IMO. All in all a GOOD read, 3 1/2 out of five stars or whatever. The Face and the Good Guy by Koontz are good.  Duma Key which i believe I was in the midst of my last post, is an above average SK offering. Was disappointed in Swan Song although for doomsday fans its worth a skim. Just starting "Just after Sunset" by Stephan King.

Lets see just started reading "Blood Noir."

I tried reading "Killing Johnny Fry" by Walter Mosley but just could not get into the book - not really my cup of tea I guess. Still trying to figure what put me off about the book - maybe the author's writing style?

I also started re-reading the Horseclans books - another guilty pleasure.

I read the Mars trilogy quite a while ago and I enjoyed them too. It was great, plausible science fiction Yeah, they did get too political and I find almost any trilogy drags at some point but it's good stuff. Right now I'm re-reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I just bought Dracula The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. The Authorized Dracula sequel. I'll be getting to that pretty soon. Happy reading, folks!