Jessica A Ellis, Combat Medic

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Jessica A Ellis was a combat medic who was killed in Iraq on Mother’s Day 2008.

Sunday is Mother’s Day. It made me think of her.

May 29, Monday, is Memorial Day. I will think of her again.

On Sunday, I want you to take a second and think about the price of freedom and who we ask to pay it. If a tear comes to your eye, all the better.

Jessica Ellis 3

Jessica A Ellis, combat medic, KIA 101st Airborne Division, Iraq, May 2008. Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, M4 Expert marksman.

Jessica A Ellis

Jessica was an extraordinary woman, an athlete, a good student, a soldier. At age twenty-four she was a combat veteran on her second deployment to Iraq with the prestigious 101st Airborne Division. She was in a hot spot.

Three weeks earlier, she’d been in a vehicle when it was damaged by an IED (improvised explosive device). She was scraped up, but not seriously wounded.

On Mother’s Day, she was killed when an IED destroyed her vehicle.

She was a combat medic and wore the Combat Medic’s badge. With her M4, she fired EXPERT on her last time at the range.

I have a special place in my heart for combat medics, people who treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

What price?

So, I ask you — what price do we pay for our freedoms?

The answer is some of us pay nothing. Not a damn thing.

We subcontract our payments to people like Jessica. Sure, we pay taxes and some folks went in harm’s way at other times. The Boss was a soldier in his day.

But, today, not very many of us see the price of freedom, let alone pick up the invoice.

Here’s who pays it for us

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So, on Sunday and on Memorial Day take a second and reflect upon the cost of being a free people. Think about the sacrifices made for our freedom.

Jessica Ellis 1

Godspeed, Rest in Peace, good and faithful warrior. A grateful Nation mourns your loss.

Corporal Jessica A Ellis was KIA on Mother’s Day 2008. She was on her second combat tour with the 101st Airborne Division. She was a combat medic and was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Meritorious Unit Citation, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Medal, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the Combat Medical Badge, and qualified Expert with her M4.

What the Hell do any of us know about freedom?

 

7 thoughts on “Jessica A Ellis, Combat Medic”

  2. Trump has said consistently, strong, and often that we need to honor our soldiers and veterans. On that, all I can do is agree.

    In high school and college, I was required to be in ROTC. The high school version was more professional than the college version. From that experience I was not highly motivated to join the military.

    During the years when I might have joined the military, my draft board and lots of people associated with US national security around DC very much thought that I should using applied math and computing to contribute to US national security. Okay: I worked on the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid flow in an effort to design better propellers and ship hulls for the US Navy. I worked in a wide variety of problems in applied math and computing for a time sharing company where maybe 50+% of its customers were more directly working for US national security. I got good with the fast Fourier transform, one of the better pieces of applied math for US national security and applied it and related topics, e.g., power spectral estimation, passive sonar beam forming, transfer function of the ocean, along with some computing to US Navy national security. I did some applied math and computing to evaluate the effectiveness of the US SSBN fleet under various game, saddle-point, or max-min scenarios. One related piece of work was to evaluate the survivability of the US SSBN fleet under a special scenario of global nuclear war limited to sea.

    If those women want to provide medial care to our soldiers under fine, I honor them. But there is something wrong here: Sorry ’bout that, but we don’t draft women and, really, a lot that we are fighting for is to protect the women. Lose a woman and lose both her and all the children she might have — not good. Uh, the bottleneck in having children is the women, not the men: A man can do his biological part in 9 minutes when the woman needs 9 months. A woman might be doing more for US national security being at home, back in the states, being a good mother. But I just believe that men should be protective of girls and women.

    All that aside, each of us, in uniform or not, has a responsibility as a US citizen to become an informed citizen, contribute to the policy debates in our democracy, and vote.

    E.g., there is now and has been since 9/11/2001, the issue of that semi-Eden of South Asia, Akrapistan, right next to its main buddy Pukistan. Now, in the last few days, at

    http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/05/11/exclusive-trump-has-less-kinetic-option-in-afghanistan/

    is in part

    The U.S. has spent a total of $783 billion on the Afghanistan war between fiscal years 2001 to 2016, and the Obama administration had requested $43.7 billion for fiscal year 2017, according to a Brown University study published in September.

    A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there, and after a while it begins to add up to real money. Were on the way to flushing $1 T of our treasure, plus a lot of our blood, in that South Asian sewer.

    I’m tired of being a slow learner about imprecise subjects. Instead, I see: (1) Akrapistan is essentially all Islam. (2) There Islam runs nearly everything from diets, social norms, architecture, and marriages, …, to media, the educational system, the legal system, national security, foreign policy, government, and religion. (3) Islam is almost entirely 500+ years out of date, very happy to be this way, closed, blocks any changes or modernization. (4) Islam comes in two versions, and each version wants to convert or kill everyone else in the world, including even the other version of Islam. (5) In Akrapistan, essentially the only culture they have is Islam plus some sheep, goats, and opium. (6) The Taliban have Islam on their side and also the powers in next door Pukistan also run by Islam. (7) For the US, killing Taliban is not difficult: With appropriate rules of engagement and just from the air, we can kill Taliban about as fast as we might want to, but the US has moral objections just to killing all the Taliban. (8) Without US and NATO help, there really is no force in Akrapistan that can effectively oppose the Taliban. (9) If the US has a surge against the Taliban, we will be able to get them to negotiate. (10) With or without negotiations, as soon as the US and NATO leave Akrapistan, the Taliban will take over Kabul and the rest of Akrapistan, just like Pukistan and lots of Muslims elsewhere want. (11) We can kill Taliban, about as fast as we might want to, but we can’t civilize them — they will stay 500+ years out of date and like that situation. (12) We can defend ourselves against the Taliban: We can have some intelligence resources there and, if they start to have another OBL training camp, bomb it. Generally, and enforced from the air, e.g., bomb any Taliban organization HQs., we can make the Taliban an offer they can’t refuse.” Otherwise we should do just what the heck the Russians did — leave. The place is not worth one more US dollar or one more drop of US blood.

    Some of the mountainous countryside of Akrapistan is breathtakingly, drop dead gorgeous. Up close see people tending herds. Just leave it that way. For economic development from a new Silk Road or hard rock mining, f’get about them.

    As a US voting citizen, that’s my contribution to US national security in Akrapistan. In more detail, for Mattis, McMaster, Petraeus, etc., sorry, guys: As soon as we leave, the Taliban will take over Kabul, etc., and there is nichts, nil, nada, NOTHING you can do to change that situation. All you can do to keep the Taliban out of power is to occupy and run Akrapistan, and that’s too much in US blood and treasure for essentially no gain because we really can defend ourselves from Akrapistan without that occupation, blood, treasure, etc.

    We’ve got MUCH better uses for the $783 billion and each drop of US blood.

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