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KIA bracelet found at Crab Island

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Happy 237th, ArmyPage 3

Page 2 | THE RED 7 | Friday, June 22, 2012

Year No. 2 edition No. 26

The Red 7 is published by the Northwest Florida Daily News, a pri-vate firm in no way connected with the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) or the U.S. Army.

This publication’s content is not necessarily the official view of, or endorsed by, the U.S. govern-ment, the Department of Defense, the Depart-ment of the Army or 7th Special Forc-es Group (Airborne). The official news source for 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) is http://www.soc.mil/.

The appearance of advertising in this publication does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. govern-ment, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) or the Northwest Florida Daily News for products or services advertised. Ev-erything advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national ori-gin, age, marital status, physical handi-cap, political affiliation or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user or patron. Editorial content is edited, prepared and provided by the North-west Florida Daily News.

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By Staff Sgt. MarcuS Butler

USASFC (A) Public Affairs

fOrt Bragg, N.c. – Two Green Berets from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in a ceremony held at the John F. Ken-nedy Auditorium June 12.

Chief Warrant Officer Jason W. Myers and Staff Sgt. Corey M. Calkins received the U.S. Army’s second highest award for valor for two separate missions in Afghanistan in 2010. The Distinguished Service Cross is second only to the Medal of Honor.

“I am extremely honored and humbled to receive this award,” said Calkins, a senior weapons sergeant and native of Midland, Mich. “I was just the one called on that day but I know any other guy on my team would have done the same thing.”

Calkins distinguished himself on Feb. 18, 2010 as part of a dismounted patrol consisting of U.S. Army, Marines and Afghan National Army Soldiers. During this patrol Calkins faced a formidable size enemy force in forti-fied positions. Facing this threat, Calkins as-saulted his way through the area successfully suppressing the enemy force to allow the safe evacuation of three injured Marines.

“Corey Calkins constantly exposed him-self to effective PRG, PKM and mortar fire as he almost single handedly routed the entrenched Taliban in order regain the vital terrain and to save the lives of his fellow Americans and Afghan partners,” said Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

During the ceremony, vignettes were pre-sented describing the actions of Myers and Calkins. McRaven referenced the vignette when describing Calkins’ ability to rally troops to action.

“The ANA, spurred on by Sergeant Calkins’ undaunted drive towards the enemy, hurled themselves against the enemy in an appar-ent effort to match their mentor’s bravery and aggression,” said McRaven. “Undaunted drive…that says it all.”

Only two months after Calkins’ valorous actions Myers distinguished himself along a single lane road in the mountains of Af-ghanistan March 27 where his patrol was am-bushed by an enemy force of approximately 75 to 100 insurgents. During this ambush Myers took command of the situation by

directing movement, returning fire and pro-viding medical aid all while exposing himself to enemy machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.

“There are so many heroes on my team and I am just so honored to be here,” said Myers. “I just did what needed to be done and I know that anyone else would have done the same.”

“Chief Myers did what no normal man would do,” said McRaven. “Chief Myers did what only a very small percentage of Soldiers in the history of the U.S. Army have done - he fought his way out of a deadly ambush by con-stantly exposing himself to RPGs, and PKM fire and rallying his force, saving the lives of his Afghan and American partners and then taking the fight to the enemy until victory was assured.”

Towards the conclusion of the ceremony McRaven put into perspective the actions of both Myers and Calkins and what it means to be a Green Beret.

“The Green Beret isn’t just a piece of headgear; it is a symbol of all that is good and right about America. It represents the vfinest Soldiers ever to take the battlefield. Jason Myers and Corey Calkins represent all that is good about the men who wear the Green Beret,” said McRaven. “For those that witnessed the actions of Chief Jason Myers and SSG Corey Calkins on those fate-ful days in Afghanistan, they will forever be in awe.”

“I want to thank you again for your in-credible service to the Regiment, the Army and this great Nation. To the men of 3rd SFG, your reputation continues to grow. Your legacy will be found not in the wars that you fought, but in the men that fought them,” said McRaven. “You, and the families that give you strength, have earned the respect and admiration of an entire nation.”

Green Berets awarded Distinguished Service Cross for Valor

u.S. arMy

Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command pins on the Dis-tinguished Service Cross on Chief Warrant Of-ficer Jason W. Myers, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) for his actions on March 27, 2010.

u.S. arMy

Staff Sgt. Corey M. Calkins, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) shakes the hand of Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command after receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on Feb. 18, 2010, as part of a dismounted patrol cosseting of U.S. Army, Marines and Afghan National Army Soldiers.

By JuStIN HeINZe

Florida Freedom Newspapers

eglIN afB — Black and yellow Army balloons lined the dining facility at the Army 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) canton-ment. Dozens of pairs of large warrior hands hold-ing small paper plates with cake weaved between the balloons, grinning all around.

They had gathered with several community leaders, veterans, and ac-tive-duty families to com-memorate the Army’s 237th birthday.

“These people are the backbone of our communi-ty,” said Lt. Col. Lawrence Henry, commander of the 7th Special Forces Group’s 3rd Battalion. “We’ve been drawn together and we’re going to forge ahead together.”

Henry gave the opening remarks at the ceremony, which was followed by the introduction of the young-est and oldest soldiers in attendance, Pvt. Justin Rydlun and Chief Warrant Officer 5 Miguel Pagani.

The dining hall had a full buffet and a massive Army birthday cake that was formally cut at the on-set of the gathering.

Among the non-active duty guests were Okaloosa County commissioners, lo-cal businessmen, and even candidates for political of-fice, including Okaloosa County Sheriff hopeful Tony Taylor.

The gathering was sym-bolic of the national unity which Henry said defined the Army tradition.

“This is all about unit-ing everyone all together on one trajectory,” he said. “We depend on each other. What makes us a great Army is people that are

committed to us and to our objectives … It’s not just an Army solution, it’s an our solution. We all have a part to play.”

The celebration was mirrored at countless places around the world, including Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where de-

ployed service members took a moment from their duties to commemorate the anniversary with their own cake-cutting.

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cHIef MaSS cOMMuNIcatION SpecIalISt JOel B. ceSar | U.S. Navy

Soldiers from Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A), take part in a cake cutting ceremony as part of the Army’s 237th birthday celebration at Camp Vance in Bagram district, Parwan province, Afghanistan, June 14. The birthday event served as a reminder of the commitment Soldiers make to defend and honor their country.

Happy 237th, Army

Spc. SteveN yOuNg | U.S. Army

Pvt. Justin T. Rydlun (from left), Lt. Col. Lawrence Henry and Chief Warrant Officer 5 Miguel Pagani cut the Army birthday cake at the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) dining facility on June 14.


By JuStIN HeINZe


creStvIeW — Army Brig. Gen. Michael Calhoun said the children running around and playing in the National Guard Armory could not understand what their mothers and fathers and siblings were leaving home to do.

But they would, one day.“They’re too young,”

said Calhoun, commander of the 83rd Troop Command with Crestview’s 870th En-gineering Company. “They can’t really taste it. Dad’s going off to protect them

… It’s so much bigger than just that. They sense some-thing, but children don’t even know what they are a part of.”

Calhoun and more than 90 other soldiers from the company had gathered with family and well-wish-ers in anticipation of their deployment, a nearly year-long odyssey which will see countless changes back home — some subtle, some not so much.

“Football season will come and go. Basketball season will come and go. Christmas will come and go,” Calhoun said. “You leave your kid, there’s a

year gap and you don’t even know how to talk to them. You come back and you have to relearn your family.”

Following a brief cere-mony, soldiers mingled with the crowd. Some posed for pictures. One man held a toddler on each shoulder. A mother was crying.

The soldiers were in good spirits, joking and ea-ger for the long-anticipated deployment.

“It’s great to have this support,” said Sgt. Wendell P. Slater, a squad leader in the company’s 2nd Pla-toon. “You can tell the 870th

Crestview sends off national Guard unit

More than 90 Soldiers left June 16 for a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan

NIck tOMecek | Daily News

Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Loken of the Army National Guard’s 870th Engineer Company poses for a photo with family members Saturday, June 16, following a deployment ceremony at the National Guard Armory in Crestview.

See uNiT Page 7

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By JuStIN HeINZe


It was October 2011 when the Army Ranger known as Tyrant-22 was killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It was his 14th deployment.

Months later, a brace-let bearing that call sign and the name of Sgt. 1st Class Kristoffer B. Domeij was hooked by the toes of some locals wading at Crab Island. It wound up in the hands of Harvey DeMaio, who had no idea he’d recov-ered a relic of a hero until he did a Google search and found out who Domeij was.

“I just kept thinking, whoever lost this has to get it back,” said DeMaio, who quickly posted about the lost bracelet on his own Facebook, the Daily News’ page and across the Interne to ask others to spread the word. “It has to be pretty important to them.”

What DeMaio found out about Domeij made him even more motivated to return the bracelet to its owner. Domeij spent more than 48 months in the Mid-dle East during his 14 tours of duty. He even helped in the world famous rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in 2003,

the first American prisoner of war rescued since World War II.

There was one thing De-Maio left out of the descrip-tion: on the inside of the bracelet were the words “Tyrant-22.” The owner of the bracelet, Army 7th Special Forces Group Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Bajuk, described that detail per-fectly when he responded to a post, and DeMaio knew he had found the owner.

“Kris was an all around amazing person,” said Bajuk, who spent nine de-ployments with Domeij in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He was my brother, my men-tor … He lived the Ranger creed to the fullest. If it wasn’t for Kris, I would not be the person I am today.”

Bajuk and DeMaio plan to exchange the bracelet Friday. Bajuk lost it while playing Frisbee at Crab Island.

Only 15 had been made, DeMaio noted.

“He loved his wife and his daughters and was tired of leaving them to go on deployments,” said Bajuk,

who added that Domeij’s 14th deployment was to be his last before transition-ing to a position that would allow him more time with his family.

Bajuk said it was the one thing which he could carry with him daily to remind himself of the sacrifices made to protect comrades and families back home.

“I was just like ‘wow,’ ” DeMaio said of discover-ing the owner. “It felt re-ally good. You just gotta know how good it must feel for him to get that back. I felt like I knew what those people on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” felt like when they had a new house built for them. The bracelet’s not a house, but it’s something really meaningful.”

“I find it amazing to know how some people un-derstand the importance of a piece of metal with some-one’s name on it,” added Bajuk. “For the person who found the bracelet, you have my fullest gratitude and are a new friend of mine. I can-not thank you enough.”

KIA bracelet found at Crab Island to be returned

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As congressional in-action on the debt crisis deepens the threat of in-discriminate axe wielding on defense programs by next January, advocates for base grocery stores hope to emboss a “hands-off” sign on military commissaries and their $1.3 billion annual appropriation.

In particular, they want Congress to ignore a “dan-gerously flawed” cost-sav-ing option presented last year by the Congressional Budget Office, to merge the commissary system and the three military exchange services into a single base resale operation.

The CBO idea is to phase out all taxpayer sup-port of commissaries, allow grocery prices to rise by at least 7 percent and then soften the blow for active-duty families by paying an annual grocery allowance

of $400.Retirees

and other store pa-trons would get no such allowance. They would just see shopping discounts decline un-

der what CBO has labeled “Discretionary Spending—Option 6” in its 2011 Reduc-ing the Deficit report.

Like a can of beans on a grocer’s shelf, the cost-sav-ing option is among many already priced and en-dorsed by CBO, which gives them credibility with deficit hawks and with congressio-nal leaders who might be pressured by approaching deadlines to slash federal spending fast.

Patrick Nixon, president of the American Logistics

Association, which rep-resents manufacturers, brokers, distributors and service companies that do business with the military resale system, aggressively attacked the CBO military store consolidation option during a June 7 hearing of the House armed services subcommittee on military personnel.

Later, in an interview, Nixon said he had good reasons for doing so. First, although CBO has a reputa-tion for objectivity and solid research, in this case its assumptions on cost-sav-ings and the after-effect of consolidation on store op-erations simply “unravel” on inspection, he said. Yet the consequences, if the option were adopted, likely would include over time the demise of discounted grocery sales on military bases, Nixon said.

“The reason we attacked it is that an uninformed reader is going to say ‘This looks like it might work,’ ” Nixon said. “But when you look at it, line item by line item, you want to put Con-gress and anybody else on alert. … This is not a pana-cea. This is a hodgepodge of recommendations. A lot of them are catastrophic and some of them make no sense at all.”

A second reason that the ALA, the Armed Forces Marketing Council and other lobbyists for military stores want flaws in the CBO option exposed is the debt crisis, a “perfect storm … with extreme implica-tions for every American,” Nixon said, and which a bitterly divided Congress seems unable to address.

Suspicions and parti-sanship resulted last year in a mindless “sequestra-tion” tool being inserted in

the 2011 Budget Control Act. So if Congress fails to reach a fresh compromise on spending cuts and tax increases by Jan. 1, seques-tration would be triggered automatically and begin to lop nearly $600 billion off defense programs over the next decade. Witnesses agreed that would be “catastrophic.”

The fresh cuts would be atop $487 billion in defense cuts over 10 years that Re-publicans and Democrats agreed on as part of last year’s budget deal. So far, commissaries would be fully funded under both the Obama administration plan to implement the first wave of cuts and both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2013 defense authori-zation bill.

However, if sequestra-tion occurs, every major program could be cut 8 to 12 percent, according to one estimate of the complex sequestration formula. And whether sequestration oc-curs, or some alternative deficit reduction package is adopted, lawmakers might be tempted to pull CBO op-tions off the shelf to protect more favored or vital de-fense programs.

As Nixon reminded the House subcommittee, one debt reduction panel already included the CBO option on military store consolidation in its final report. And last year Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., ranking member on the veterans affairs commit-tee, persuaded colleagues to adopt that option so the commissary system’s $1.3 billion annual subsidy could be used instead to provide health care to veterans and families exposed years ago

Base grocers want store consolidation idea shelved

Tom Philpott

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to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Strong reaction to that effort from military fami-lies and retirees has stalled Burr’s bill, S. 277. His staff has assured ALA they are looking for alternative savings to cover for health care for former Lejeune residents.

“So you can see what can happen if you don’t challenge” the CBO cost-saving option, Nixon told me.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., chairman of the military personnel subcommittee, got more than 60 House colleagues to sign a letter opposing the Burr amend-ment. But he said risks to base shopping are still growing.

“Unfortunately, we can-not declare victory in this battle as the continuing pressure to shift budgets within (DOD) will ener-

gize the people who do not fully appreciate the value of these programs,” Wilson said. “This pres-sure can only be expected to increase in the coming months as the Congress debates the devastating reductions to defense ac-counts that are associated with the sequestration process scheduled to begin next year.”

Joseph H. Jeu, director of the Defense Commis-sary Agency, testified that although commissaries are a highly prized benefit for service families and provide taxpayers a 2-for-1 return on their invest-ment, critics still raise the notion they’ve become “antiquated.” They have not, Jeu said.

“Last fiscal year, the commissary provided di-rect savings to customers of $2.8 billion for a taxpayer cost of $1.34 billion … With

260,000 patrons visiting a commissary every day, buying $16 million in goods, there is no doubt that the commissary remains rel-evant and an invaluable element of the non-pay compensation package,” he said.

Robert L. Gordon, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military com-munity and family policy, assured Wilson that DOD “has no plan at this point to examine exchange consoli-dation.” He said seven past studies “have basically shown that consolidation of our exchanges actually can do more harm than good in terms of cost savings and innovation.”

tom philpott is a syndicated columnist. you may write to him at Military update, p.O. Box 231111, centreville, va 20120-1111; or at [email protected].

grocerS FroM Page 6will not be forgotten in the prayers of these people.”

Slater stood with his son and fellow company mem-ber Pvt. Wendell A. Slater. The younger Slater was not deploying, but planned to keep in touch with his fa-ther through Skype.

The company embarked Saturday evening for Fort Bliss, Texas, for additional training before heading to Afghanistan.

Well-wishers lined U.S. Highway 90 from the ar-mory to State Road 85, waving flags and signs in support of the departing warriors.

Immediately after the morning ceremony, retired Army chaplain Marvon

Newby spoke to a huddle of soldiers in the dusty yard behind the building.

“You all have what it

takes,” he said. “You have the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to do what you need to do.”

NIck tOMecek | Daily News

Members of the Army National Guard’s 870th Engineer Company stand in formation.

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fOrt Bragg, N.c. (USA-SOC News Service) – The United States Army Special Operations Command wel-comed a new senior enlisted Soldier during a change of responsibility ceremony at Meadows Field, June 14.

Command Sgt. Maj. George A. Bequer assumed responsibility of USASOC from Command Sgt. Maj. Parry L. Baer. Bequer be-comes the ninth command sergeant major to serve as the USASOC highest senior enlisted Soldier. Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr., pre-sided over the ceremony.

“It has been my privlage to not only serve in the Unit-ed States Army for the past 35 years, but it has to have been in the ranks and serve next to what I consider that true he-roes of this force and this na-tion,” Baer said. “(Command Sgt. Maj. Bequer) you are the right person to come in a fol-low behind me and continue to lead the enlisted force into the future. ”

Bequer comes to USASOC

after serving as the command sergeant major of the Special Operation Command Central since 2009.

He has served in Special Forces for the last 28 years, the majority of which were with the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C. Bequer also served as the Combined Joint Spe-cial Operations Task Force – Afghanistan command sergeant major in support of the Overseas Contingency Operations.

“A man will make three choices in his life: who he marries, if he will have chil-

dren, and what calling he will pick,” Bequer said. “If you’ve decided to be a Soldier in the United States Army and wear a beret, if you’ve decided to be a Soldier in the United States Army and serve in the USA-SOC family, then you have made a phenomenal choice. I am honored to have been selected as the new sergeant major, and I am honored to be allowed to serve you as new CSM.”

Baer, the USASOC com-mand sergeant major since December 2007, will be retire-ing after more than 34 years of military service.

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Youth tour 7th group compoundChildren from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Youth Week look inside a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) during a tour of the facilities on June 13. The children toured several areas of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Compound.

USASoC welcomes new senior enlisted Soldier

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Page 5 Happy 237th, Army - The Red 7