Truth, Lies and In Between

Way to go Army. This is compassion for a warrior.

Soldier dying of brain cancer promoted early

CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Jared Brissette had earned a promotion to sergeant in the Army but wasn’t expected to live long enough for the ceremony. So the Army came to his parents’ home to promote the paratrooper in his bed.

Brissette is dying of brain cancer. Army commanders from Fort Bragg, N.C., visited Brissette on Thursday to promote him and present the new medals he earned this year.

Doctors say the 22-year-old likely has only days to live.

Brissette decided to enlist after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division in 2005.

He married his high school sweetheart after returning home. He had been training for a deployment to Iraq when he was diagnosed with cancer in January.

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Finding an old buddy is really something special. This makes it even more so.

Dying vet reunited with WWII buddy by son

LUMBERTON, N.C. — Alan Wironen listened as his ailing 82-year-old father talked about a friend he hadn’t seen since World War II, when they were treated in adjacent beds at a military hospital in France.

Francis Wironen, a Massachusetts man recently told he had only weeks to live after fighting colon cancer, told his son that he wanted to know what happened to his friend, Charlie Baxley, before he died. The men last saw one another as they recovered from wounds they suffered when German mortar shells struck their vehicle.

Francis Wironen had looked for Baxley, but Army records offered no clues. He knew Baxley once lived in Lumberton, a small town in southern North Carolina, so he skimmed the phone books when he and his wife passed through along Interstate 95 during trips to Florida. None of the numbers was right.

“After 62 years, the relationship he formed with Charlie was still strong as ever,” Alan Wironen said.

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Rest in peace. A life well lived.

Oldest WWI vet dies, 2 remain

NORTH BALTIMORE, Ohio — J. Russell Coffey, the oldest known surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. He was 109.

Coffey, one of only three U.S. veterans known to survive from the “war to end all wars,” died Thursday, according to a funeral home.

The obituary released by Smith-Crates Funeral Home in North Baltimore, about 35 miles south of Toledo, did not say where Coffey died or the cause of death. He had been living in the Blakely Care Center, a nursing home.

Although he never saw combat, Coffey was one of the U.S. military’s last representatives of that era. More than 4.7 million Americans joined the military from 1917-18.

Coffey was the last World War I veteran in Ohio. Harry Richard Landis, 108, of Sun City Center, Fla., is now the oldest surviving U.S. veteran of the war. Also living is Frank Buckles, 106, of Charles Town, W.Va., according to the Veterans Affairs Department.

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This is what awaits those that prefer to do nothing about Islamofascists.

Torture chamber shows that horrors remain

BAGHDAD — Blood splotches on walls, chains hanging from a ceiling and swords found on the killing floor of a suspected al-Qaida in Iraq torture chamber are the latest horrors discovered by U.S. soldiers pushing into a province that remains an extremist stronghold.

Scrawled in white paint on one wall above a bed used for torture was a Quranic phrase normally used to welcome a guest, but given the horrific surroundings, conveyed only sadistic mockery: “Come in, you are safe” was the message in Arabic.

The filthy dirt floor of the torture complex — found near nine mass graves containing the remains of 26 people — was littered with food wrappers, plastic soda bottles and electric cables that snaked to a metal bed frame, presumably where detainees were shocked.

Villagers nearby knew about the torture complex, but did not tell authorities as they were afraid of reprisals from the militants, a local policeman on Thursday told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was afraid of being targeted by extremists. He said he thought the chamber had been used for a year.

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