No Purple Hearts at Fort Hood

View 763 Wednesday, February 20, 2013

I’ve been busy, but I have heard something on the radio that is infuriating.

The soldiers wounded at Fort Hood by the terrorist are not eligible for the Purple Heart, and their injuries have been rated as “workplace accidents” rather than combat wounds. They are thus denied the benefits of those wounded in combat. The shooting is an industrial accident not combat in the war on terror.  So has it been ruled and so the President decrees.

This is to save money.

Beware the fury of the Legions

We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.

We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action.

I cannot believe that all this is true and yet recent wars have shown how pernicious such a state of mind could be and to where it could lead.

Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.

If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!

Marcus Flavinius,
Centurion in the 2nd Cohort of the Augusta Legion,

The above appears as epigraph for Lartegy’s The Centurions. The Fort Hood horror brings it to mind. It may not be authentic, or it may have been rewritten; but it rings true.

Purple Heart

If what you are saying is true about Fort Hood killings is true, there should be a lynch mob outside of the Capitol and Pentagon tomorrow and we should both be joining it…..

Bill

Tar and feathers, perhaps.  It seems to be true enough.  The survivors of the Fort Hood massacre were not wounded in combat, those killed were not killed in action, and the Major was not a terrorist. It was officially an incidence of workplace violence, not an act of war against the United States. By that logic so was the attack on the World Trade Center.

http://www.examiner.com/article/president-s-policy-denies-purple-heart-to-fort-hood-terrorist-attack-victims

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_21917280/ruben-rosario-widow-fort-hood-massacre-feels-wounded