MCAS Miramar Airshow and the people I worked with

Part of being attached to Third Marine Air Wing for a corpsman is the annual airshow work drive, last year, we ran a food booth. This year, we actually did medical coverage and I was the LPO (leading petty officer) for the Mini-ambulances on the east side of the flight line. Each year, months before October, we let everyone know that they can’t take leave during that this time period. Other units get to volunteer but we’re hosting it, so in the end, it falls back on us and the clinic. Three days of getting to work at 5:30 and getting home after dark. Saturday is even worse with the night show, I didn’t get home till 11 last night. Even with the crazy hours, I’d take working medical any day over roasting hot dogs.

We’re also supported by medical commands hundreds of miles around, without them, things could have got ugly. I took some great pictures and below are the pictures of the people I had the pleasure of working with (I told them I would post some pictures so they could get copies of them). And hopefully over the next few days, I be posting the flying pictures of the show itself.

Books for Soldiers might close

Out of all of the military support sites out there, there is one that I hold near and dear to my heart (well two if you consider Soldiers Angels, but they’re more family because I know many of the key players), Books for Soldiers. My first trip out to Iraq in 2004, one of my buddies on a message board told me about this website that you put your info down on and they would send you free books and DVD’s just for being deployed. Being a book nerd, I had to check this out and so I did. Several weeks later, I had a couple of boxes of books, magazines and DVD’s including the exact books that I requested and some recommendation books that they thought I might like. Can't beat that.

Two days ago, I got an email from Ellen helps run the site, I guess with the election going on this year and the financial trouble many businesses are in, corporate donations have been drying up and they are short this year. So short in fact that they might have to close shop if they don't get over the hurdle this month. These guys do a great job in supporting the troops forward and I would bet every library in Iraq and Afghanistan gets a large percentage of their inventory from BFS totally free of charge. Monetary Donations go directly towards postage, care package items, rent and bandwidth. If you want to help, go to their donation page, I for one, do appreciate everything that they do.