A US Army Major on Camp Walker has unfortunately passed away after doing PT:
About 200 people gathered in the Camp Walker Chapel on Friday afternoon to bid farewell to a fallen comrade, according to a news release.
Maj. Timothy Patrick Auvil, a 42-year-old transportation officer with the 19th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), died Monday after attending a physical fitness event at Camp Carroll.
“We have all lost a comrade this week but I believe it is our soldiers who have suffered the greatest loss,†said Capt. Byron Kemp, company commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 20th Area Support Group. “For them, he was a friend, a mentor, a father figure and a refuge from the storm.â€
This unfortunately is not a rare occurrence. Every year I read about soldiers dieing after PT. I don’t know the particulars of the Camp Walker case, but the cases I have read about happen generally when someone who has maybe been on leave or reserve soldiers getting called up and in both cases are older soldiers and they take a PT test. Or the soldier is put on too challenging of an exercise for their fitness level; the soldier pushes themselves to much and ends up having a heart attack or over heating.
That is why it is important during PT to have ability groups to let soldiers work they way up in fitness. At Camp Stanley I once saw an NCO almost die after he had been with the unit one week and was on leave for 30 days and he was put on a 6 mile run that week and completed it but over heated and nearly died afterwords. Daily PT is another dangerous aspect of being a soldier that risk management needs to be used before executing to ensure everyone is doing PT to their ability level.
Korea has beaten Japan in a dramatic win in the World Baseball Classic:
Lee Seung-yeop, South Korea’s leading slugger and a professional in the Japanese baseball league, didn’t miss an opportunity every Korean fan wanted but few expected. Lee, 30, belted a two-run home run in the eighth inning to lift Korea to a 3-2 win over the Asian powerhouse Japan in Group A competition at the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo, Sunday.
“I was just trying to stay focused,” said Lee. “Japan is a very strong team and hopefully we’ll be able beat them again in the United States.”
Major League pitcher Park Chan-ho sealed the come-from-behind victory, also South Korea’s top spot in Group A competition, by retiring the final three Japanese batters for his second save in the inaugural tournament. The San Diego Padres hurler finished the Japanese team by retiring Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle mariners with a pop-up to the shortstop.
South Korea and Japan will move to Anaheim, Calif., for the quarterfinals, which will start on Sunday. The Asian representatives will vie for the two berths to the semifinals with the qualifiers from Group B, where the United States, Mexico, Canada and South Africa compete.
Lee Seung-yeop is proving to be on clutch hitter. He was also clutch last year in the Japanese League where he helped his team the Chiba Lotte Marines win the Japanese championship. Park Chan-ho also appears to have found a new niche for him by being a reliever. I wonder if the Padres will consider using him as a reliever now as well? Both teams move on to the quarterfinals but I would love to see a Japan vs. Korea final.
The US military is giving props to the ROK Army contingent in Iraq:
The U.S. military in Iraq plans to model its reconstruction efforts on the humanitarian and rehabilitation work being undertaken by South Korean troops in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, South Korea’s top commander said on Sunday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week directed his generals in Iraq to seek ways to conduct a “Zaytun-like operation,” particularly the Korean troops’ vocational training program for local residents, Maj. Gen. Jung Seung-jo, commander of the Zaytun Division, said during a meeting with reporters.
“The U.S. military now has a keen interest in our civic affairs operations focusing on `leading a horse to water,’ not `making it drink’,” Gen. Jung said.
“U.S. military leaders agree that kind of mission concept is what they need to take in the future,” he said.
I would like to see General Jung try his theory of leading a horse to water and not making it drink, in hot spots such as Anbar province where people seen getting the vocational training would be beheaded or killed. The Zaytun unit is in the peaceful Kurdish region of Iraq where the ROK Army has no security responsibilities and can focus exclusively on medical and vocational programs.
This is not the case for the US military. In the article the US military said they would establish the vocational programs beginning in Mosul and Kirkuk. I suspect because those two cities have large Kurdish populations that help keep the cities now more peaceful than other areas of Iraq these programs may be successful. I seriously doubt the ROK Army’s program would be very successful if it was tried in a city like Ramadi. However, as the ROK Army has proven it is a good program to implement once the security situation in a city has improved.
This is interesting, an American soldier down in Daegu has been selected to star in a reality TV show documenting his every day life with his Korean wife:
Not an uncommon tale of love and marriage but theirs will be one a lot of people will soon become intimate with. From Monday through Thursday, South Korean TV station KBS2 will chronicle their married life in its regularly scheduled program “In Gan Geuk Jang,†starting at 8:50 p.m.
It began with a January phone call to Yu-sung from a woman at KBS2 in Seoul, who said a “neighbor†— the Largents never have learned who — had suggested the couple as a possible TV subject.
The woman asked Yu-sung to e-mail her the same day with her and her husband’s photos and a summary of how they met. A day later, a Daegu-based video crew on contract to KBS2 all but moved in with the Largents and filmed their mealtimes and housework, their shopping trips, visits to her parents, time at work. They spent about 18 days, 16 of them in actual filming.
Nomad has more on this as well.
More smooth sailing for team Korea in the World Baseball Classic as the made quick work of China 10-1:
South Korea beat China 10-1 in the World Baseball Classic on Saturday and advanced to the second round of the 16-nation tournament.
Lee Seung-yeop homered twice, drove in five runs and finished with four hits for South Korea, which improved to 2-0 in the inaugural WBC. South Korea shut out Taiwan 2-0 Friday behind pitchers Jae Seo of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chan Ho Park of the San Diego Padres.
“We just try to do our best each time,” South Korea manager Kim In-sik said. “We try to give our opponents a lot to think about and I think we did that today.”
Japan, which beat Taiwan 14-3, also advanced to the next round, to be played in Anaheim, Calif., from March 12-16.
Could you imagine the hype of Japan vs. Korea championship in the WBC here in Korea?
Just when you thought the Hines Ward story had finally died out, Nomad provides this must read post about how Hines Ward is helping people in Korea and his upcoming meeting with President Roh Moo-hyun. I can’t say it any better than Nomad so go check it out.
Things are getting interesting with the Pat Tillman case, as the Army has announced that it will begin an investigation into his death:
A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the new investigation has not been formally begun, said it would focus on possible charges of negligent homicide.
A second Pentagon official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said no specific soldier is under investigation at this point. He said the CID will conduct an overall death investigation and “let the facts take them where they may.”
The official said that the CID’s probe — the fifth formal investigation into the incident — will focus on the cause of Tillman’s death, not necessarily on whether the previous investigations were done correctly. It is the first criminal probe.
Tillman’s mother, Mary, told the Washington Post Saturday that the criminal investigation should have been launched at the onset. “The military has had every opportunity to do the right thing and they haven’t,” she said. “They knew all along that something was seriously wrong and they just wanted to cover it up.”
With the Army announcing a criminal probe I think it is clear that something really embarrassing to the Army and the Rangers happened in Afghanistan in regards to Pat Tillman’s death. He was reportedly killed by friendly fire during an ambush, but if that was strictly the case then there wouldn’t be a criminal probe. I beginning to think that maybe he was killed by an accidental discharge or people fooling around with their weapons and being negligent. How else could you explain a probe for negligent homicide? This could become very embarrassing for the Rangers once this investigation is complete.
South Korea has gotten off to a strong start in the World Baseball Classic:
Jae-Weong Seo pitched two-hit ball and Chan Ho Park worked three effective innings for a save to lead South Korea past Taiwan 2-0 on Friday in the opener of the inaugural World Baseball Classic.
The 16-nation tournament started at 11:30 a.m. local time and was played before a sparse crowd of 5,193 at Tokyo Dome. Japan was scheduled to play its first game later Friday against China.
Seo started and struck out three in 3 2-3 innings. The Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander threw 61 pitches — under tournament rules, starting pitchers are limited to 65 pitches in the first round.
“I felt good starting,” Seo said. “I didn’t worry about the pitch count. I knew we have a lot of good pitchers on our team and as long as I did my job we would be fine.”
Forget about the US ports fiasco, if terrorists want to enter the United States they can just sign up to go to college instead:
“In some ways,” Mr. Rahmatullah told the New York Times. “I’m the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale.” One of the courses he has taken is called Terrorism-Past, Present and Future.
Mr. Rahmatullah used to be the spokesman for the Taliban government but is now attending Yale. If this guy could get in, who else has gotten in the US that we don’t know about?
For more about Mr. Rahmatullah’s past, read this PBS interview given by him before 9/11 where he claims there are no terrorists in Afghanistan and Bin Laden is a hero.
Japanese researchers in an effort to find sources of domestic gasoline have invented a process to extract gasoline from cow dung:
Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, said his team has successfully extracted .042 ounces of gasoline from every 3.5 ounces of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.
“The new technology will be a boon for livestock breeders” to reduce the burden of disposing of large amounts of waste, Shibusawa said.
Gasoline is not the only thing scientists have been able to extract from cow dung:
In a separate experiment revealing another unusual business potential for cow dung, another group of researchers has successfully extracted an aromatic ingredient of vanilla from cattle dung, said Miki Tsuruta, a Sekisui Chemical Co. spokeswoman. The extracted ingredient, vanillin, can be used as fragrance in shampoo and candles, she said.
Some how I don’t think cow dung shampoo is going to go over to well, but in Japan weirder things have happened.
