The General.

I am watching Band of Brothers again. It is such a well made mini-series and it makes me appreciate everyone in the armed forces. If you haven't seen it, you should. It gives you such a good picture of what the 101st Airborne went through throughout the course of WWII.

I love listening to the personal interviews before each episode and hearing the real "boys" tell their personal account. It's crazy to me that all of those young men were so ready and willing to fight when the war started. One young man was denied from the Airforce and Navy because of eye problems so he jumped at the chance to be in the Airborne.

Airborne forces are military units, usually light infantry, set up to be moved by aircraft and 'dropped' into battle. Thus they can be placed behind enemy lines, and have an ability to deploy almost anywhere with little warning. The formations are limited only by the number and size of their aircraft, so given enough capacity a huge force can appear "out of nowhere" in minutes, an action referred to as vertical envelopment.

I jacked this definition from wikipedia. The crazy thing to me is that they are trained to be dropped into enemy lines at any time. In Band of Brothers, at one point another commander is hesitant to have the men stationed in an area where they will be surrounded by the enemy. Richard Winters who is one of the great commanders of Easy Company replies, "We're Paratroopers, we are supposed to be surrounded." They were such a tough group of men. I hope there are still boys out there today with that same courage and patriotism.

Last night BYU was lucky enough to have General Patraeus come and speak about the middle east. I don't know a lot about him, but I have seen him in the news and from what I have heard he is an honorable man and a great General, a four star General to be exact and the current commander of the U.S. Central Command. After listening to him last night I felt so proud to be an American and I felt so at peace with knowing that this man was protecting our country. I loved seeing the Airborne patch on his shoulder and thinking about the young men under his command.

'Some Iraqis gave Petraeus the nickname 'King David', which was later adopted by some of his colleagues. Newsweek has stated that "It's widely accepted that no force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds than the 101st Air Assault Division led by Petraeus."'

I wish I could have met him. He's on my list.