It’s another new look Friday here on the website. The little minion that runs the joint — in a word, me — has updated the photos on the front page. The general theme is something akin to this photo.
And if you click that photo another tab will open in your browser and you can see all of the nice new art. Also, I’ve made minor changes to the text there. But, really, the pictures are the nicest part of it. They will stay on the front page for about three weeks, until it’s time to freshen the thing up once more.
A system is now in place, you see. A pipeline has been built. An efficient workflow has been developed.
Until one day when I forget to make the requisite changes. Then it’s simply c’est la vie.
Quiet day on campus. Everyone was in summer weekend mode already, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But this happened today:
And that’s big, substantial, news for the fall term.
Also, I did this:
And some other stuff, too, but mostly a quiet day.
Also, meet Col. Ralph Puckett Jr.
What you can’t get in a tweet: then-1st. Lieutenant Puckett was serving in an occupation garrison on Okinawa when the fighting in Korea broke out. He volunteered to join this new Ranger unit, the first since World War 2. He didn’t get the job, so he volunteered to serve in the unit beneath his status. He so impressed the brass that they gave him command of the company.
He drew his soldiers from the roster of cooks, clerks, and mechanics — people who’d gone through basic training, but generally served in non-combat capacities — and drilled them for five weeks, and then they were Rangers. He had 57 American Rangers and Korean soldiers with him when he took this little hill. As President Biden said in the ceremony today, “The intelligence briefing indicated that there were 25,000 Chinese troops in the area.”
They fought off battalion-sized attacks all night. He was wounded by mortars and grenades. His Rangers refused his order to leave him behind. It took about a year for Puckett to recover from his wounds, during which time Army doctors thought, for months, they’d have to amputate his foot.
You know that dramatic scene in war movies where the guy in charge calls in artillery right on top of his position? Puckett did that several times on that frozen November night in 1950.
He was offered a medical discharge, but he continued to serve, and even fought in Vietnam, where he earned his second Distinguished Service Cross. He also wears two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, two Bronze Stars with V device for valor, five Purple Hearts and ten Air Medals.
Also at the ceremony today was South Korean President Moon Jae-in, apparently the first foreign leader to attend such a service. He said “From the ashes of the Korean War we came back and that was thanks to the war veterans who fought for Korea’s peace and freedom. The Republic of Korea and the U.S. alliance was forged in blood from heroes (and) has become a linchpin of peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula and beyond. Col. Puckett and his fellow warriors are a link that thoroughly binds Korea and the U.S. together.”
And, to tell you what his fellow Rangers think of him, Col. Puckett was in their inaugural Hall of Fame class.
One of his soldiers was at the ceremony, as well, and yesterday he recalled the man that turned him into a Ranger. “Puckett impressed me. If you made a mistake, you would do 50 pushups, and he would do 50 with you. There is no telling how many a day he did.”
Many years ago now I decided to read all of these stories about men (there remains only one woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the equally admirable Dr. Mary Edwards Walker) who demonstrate such valor. It never disappoints, learning more about these people and their great personal courage and virtue toward their fellow service members. You can do that, too, right here.
