https://c8.alamy.com/comp/HFEDGT/050527-n-6077t-013-annapolis-md-may-27-2005-chief-of-naval-operations-HFEDGT.jpg
from my private journal as Kerry Burgess: 05/09/08 3:31 PM
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/speeches/clark-usna2002.txt
Admiral Vern Clark Remarks
United States Naval Academy Commencement
Annapolis, Maryland
24 May 2002
ADMIRAL CLARK:
First of all, my congratulations to you Marines who just received your commission. Well done.
To you future Ensigns in the Class of 2002, make the Marines your friends. They are our number one joint partners. If there's anything that I say to you today that is a directive, I direct you to never forget that.
From 4/3/1917 ( Arthur Graeme West killed during World War I ) To 5/14/1990 ( departing as United States Navy Fire Controlman Second Class Petty Officer Kerry Wayne Burgess my honorable discharge from United States Navy active service for commissioning as chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps and continuing to Kerry Burgess the United States Marine Corps general ) is 26704 days
26704 = 13352 + 13352
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/24/2002 is 13352 days
From 12/24/1951 ( premiere US TV series "Hallmark Hall of Fame" ) To 5/24/2002 is 18414 days
18414 = 9207 + 9207
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 1/17/1991 ( the date of record of my United States Navy Medal of Honor as Kerry Wayne Burgess chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps circa 1991 officially the United States Apache attack helicopter pilot ) is 9207 days
From 12/20/1994 ( in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 5/24/2002 is 2712 days
2712 = 1356 + 1356
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 7/20/1969 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the United States Navy Commander circa 1969 was United States Apollo 11 Eagle spacecraft United States Navy astronaut landing and walking on the planet Earth's moon ) is 1356 days
From 12/20/1994 ( in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my United States Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 5/24/2002 is 2712 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/6/1973 ( Ron Blomberg becomes the first designated hitter in the history of Major Leaque Baseball ) is 2712 days
From 2/1/1943 ( premiere US film "The Fighting Buckaroo" ) To 5/24/2002 is 21662 days
21662 = 10831 + 10831
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 6/29/1995 ( the Mir space station docking of the United States space shuttle Atlantis orbiter vehicle mission STS-71 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-71 pilot astronaut and my 3rd official United States of America National Aeronautics Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) is 10831 days
From 8/11/1953 ( Hulk Hogan ) To 3/2/1990 ( premiere US film "The Hunt for Red October" ) is 13352 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/24/2002 is 13352 days
From 8/11/1953 ( Hulk Hogan ) To 3/2/1990 ( as Kerry Burgess my the official United States Navy documents includes: departing overseas from USS Wainwright CG 28 anchored in Monaco I returned to the continental United States and to Charleston South Carolina Naval Base for processing and honorable discharge from active duty United States Navy ) is 13352 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/24/2002 is 13352 days
From 2/19/1997 ( as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps officer and United States STS-82 pilot astronaut and my 4th official United States of America National Aeronautics Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall I begin repairing the US Hubble Telescope while in space and orbit of the planet Earth - the Hubble Space Telescope placed back into its own orbit of the planet Earth ) To 5/24/2002 is 1920 days
1920 = 960 + 960
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 6/19/1968 ( the 1st United States Navy Medal of Honor date of record of my biological brother Thomas Reagan the United States Navy officer and Thomas Reagan is the only United States of America military fighter jet ace-in-single-day during United States involvement in the Vietnam War ) is 960 days
From 8/18/1973 ( The Killian Document ) To 5/24/2002 is 10506 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 8/8/1994 ( premiere US TV series episode "Biography"::"W.C. Fields: Behind the Laughter" ) is 10506 days
https://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/clark/speeches/clark-usna2002.txt
Admiral Vern Clark Remarks
United States Naval Academy Commencement
Annapolis, Maryland
24 May 2002
ADMIRAL CLARK: Thank you, Colonel. Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, Secretary and Mrs. England, my good friend the commandant of the Marine Corps, Admiral and Mrs. Ryan, graduates of the Class of 2002, all of the families here celebrating this event and the faculty and staff who have invested their lives in these young men and women, I bring greetings and am extraordinarily proud and privileged to be a part of this ceremony today.
First of all, my congratulations to you Marines who just received your commission. Well done.
To you future Ensigns in the Class of 2002, make the Marines your friends. They are our number one joint partners. If there's anything that I say to you today that is a directive, I direct you to never forget that. I want to also say thank you.
Two hundred and twenty six years ago, future Ensigns, the founders of the United States Navy did not create a Navy so we could cut a fine silhouette on the horizon. That's not what we are about. They built a Navy to defend this nation, to defend the values, and the principles, and the ideals that we hold dear in this nation. They created a Navy to defend the principles of the Constitution of the United States, the oath that you will take in just a moment. They created a Navy to take the fight to enemies. Sometimes we deter, sometimes we dissuade, and sometimes we just strike fear in their hearts. And that's what we're about. Our mantra has become, since 9/11, life, liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it.
We are a global force. We are about being around the world, around the clock, anywhere and anytime. We do this with an awesome global naval force. We operate from the maritime domain. We are about taking the sovereignty of the United States of America to the far corners of this earth, and we do it in places where we don't need a permission slip from anybody. And that's why the Vice President was talking about our role today, and the importance of our role in the future.
As Ensigns in the United States Navy, you are going to focus first on this; mission accomplishment and victory. Everything that you have done in your life, everything that you have learned up until now, your upbringing, the education that you have gleaned here at the United States Naval Academy, everything has led you to this moment and has prepared you for this moment.
Your country and your leaders are placing special trust in your abilities and your character. We are vesting authority in you along with your commission, and that is authority to lead. Let me assure you, that you are getting ready to lead the most awesome enlisted force I have ever seen in my career.
This is about a sacred trust – and we are confident – I am very confident – that you are ready. You are ready to assume the weight, the full weight, and responsibility of your commission. You are ready for the challenges of naval leadership.
These days, I never perform a commissioning or a reenlistment without stating the oath to this country and our Navy. Your oath of office is a tremendous promise of service. You are taking the oath, as the Vice President said, at a time of war against an enemy who is persistent and determined. The President said, "We are going to keep them on the run" – and the Navy-Marine Corps Team, that's what we're all about, and that's why we are out and about. And with your service, we are going to prevail.
It's a true honor for me to welcome you into the ranks of the commissioned officers of the United States Navy, and I look forward to seeing you in the Fleet.
Graduates to be commissioned in the United States Navy, rise.
All Midshipmen entering the United States Navy please raise you right hand.
Having been appointed an Ensign in the United States Navy Reserve to rank from 24 May 2002, do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic? That you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same? That you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion? That you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which you are about to enter, so help you God?
Midshipmen: I DO!
ADMIRAL CLARK: Congratulations, Ensigns.
I have one last thing to say. Go write some history.
-USN-
https://www.hallmark.com 299s1333_1470_1.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Graeme_West
Arthur Graeme West
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arthur Graeme West (1891 – 3 April 1917)
Arthur Graeme West (1891 – 3 April 1917) was a British writer and war poet. West was born in Eaton, Norfolk, educated at Highgate School, then Blundell's School and Balliol College, Oxford, and killed by a sniper in 1917.
Military service
West enlisted as a Private with the Public Schools Battalion in January 1915.
Writing
West is principally known for one book, The Diary of a Dead Officer (1919), which presents a scathing picture of army life and is said to be one of the most vivid accounts of daily life in the trenches.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57293/god-how-i-hate-you-you-young-cheerful-men
Poetry Foundation
“God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men”
BY ARTHUR GRAEME WEST
God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men,
Whose pious poetry blossoms on your graves
As soon as you are in them, nurtured up
By the salt of your corruption, and the tears
Of mothers, local vicars, college deans,
And flanked by prefaces and photographs
From all you minor poet friends—the fools—
Who paint their sentimental elegies
Where sure, no angel treads; and, living, share
The dead’s brief immortality
Oh Christ!
To think that one could spread the ductile wax
Of his fluid youth to Oxford’s glowing fires
And take her seal so ill! Hark how one chants—
“Oh happy to have lived these epic days”—
“These epic days”! And he’d been to France,
And seen the trenches, glimpsed the huddled dead
In the periscope, hung in the rusting wire:
Chobed by their sickley fœtor, day and night
Blown down his throat: stumbled through ruined hearths,
Proved all that muddy brown monotony,
Where blood’s the only coloured thing. Perhaps
Had seen a man killed, a sentry shot at night,
Hunched as he fell, his feet on the firing-step,
His neck against the back slope of the trench,
And the rest doubled up between, his head
Smashed like and egg-shell, and the warm grey brain
Spattered all bloody on the parados:
Had flashed a torch on his face, and known his friend,
Shot, breathing hardly, in ten minutes—gone!
Yet still God’s in His heaven, all is right
In the best possible of worlds. The woe,
Even His scaled eyes must see, is partial, only
A seeming woe, we cannot understand.
God loves us, God looks down on this out strife
And smiles in pity, blows a pipe at times
And calls some warriors home. We do not die,
God would not let us, He is too “intense,”
Too “passionate,” a whole day sorrows He
Because a grass-blade dies. How rare life is!
On earth, the love and fellowship of men,
Men sternly banded: banded for what end?
Banded to maim and kill their fellow men—
For even Huns are men. In heaven above
A genial umpire, a good judge of sport,
Won’t let us hurt each other! Let’s rejoice
God keeps us faithful, pens us still in fold.
Ah, what a faith is ours (almost, it seems,
Large as a mustard-seed)—we trust and trust,
Nothing can shake us! Ah, how good God is
To suffer us to be born just now, when youth
That else would rust, can slake his blade in gore,
Where very God Himself does seem to walk
The bloody fields of Flanders He so loves!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57292/the-night-patrol
Poetry Foundation
The Night Patrol
BY ARTHUR GRAEME WEST
France, March 1916.
Over the top! The wire’s thin here, unbarbed
Plain rusty coils, not staked, and low enough:
Full of old tins, though—“When you’re through, all three,
Aim quarter left for fifty yards or so,
Then straight for that new piece of German wire;
See if it’s thick, and listen for a while
For sounds of working; don’t run any risks;
About an hour; now, over!”
And we placed
Our hands on the topmost sand-bags, leapt, and stood
A second with curved backs, then crept to the wire,
Wormed ourselves tinkling through, glanced back, and dropped.
The sodden ground was splashed with shallow pools,
And tufts of crackling cornstalks, two years old,
No man had reaped, and patches of spring grass.
Half-seen, as rose and sank the flares, were strewn
The wrecks of our attack: the bandoliers,
Packs, rifles, bayonets, belts, and haversacks,
Shell fragments, and the huge whole forms of shells
Shot fruitlessly—and everywhere the dead.
Only the dead were always present—present
As a vile sickly smell of rottenness;
The rustling stubble and the early grass,
The slimy pools — the dead men stank through all,
Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before,
And as we passed, they stank: then dulled away
To that vague fœtor, all encompassing,
Infecting earth and air. They lay, all clothed,
Each in some new and piteous attitude
That we well marked to guide us back: as he,
Outside our wire, that lay on his back and crossed
His legs Crusader-wise: I smiled at that,
And thought on Elia and his Temple Church.
From him, at quarter left, lay a small corpse,
Down in a hollow, huddled as in a bed,
That one of us put his hand on unawares.
Next was a bunch of half a dozen men
All blown to bits, an archipelago
Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three,
Who had no light to see by, save the flares.
On such a trail, so light, for ninety yards
We crawled on belly and elbows, till we saw,
Instead of lumpish dead before our eyes,
The stakes and crosslines of the German wire.
We lay in shelter of the last dead man,
Ourselves as dead, and heard their shovels ring
Turning the earth, then talk and cough at times.
A sentry fired and a machine-gun spat;
They shot a glare above us, when it fell
And spluttered out in the pools of No Man’s Land,
We turned and crawled past the remembered dead:
Past him and him, and them and him, until,
For he lay some way apart, we caught the scent
Of the Crusader and slide past his legs,
And through the wire and home, and got our rum.
Source: The Diary of a Dead Officer (1918)
- posted by Kerry Burgess 09:04 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Sunday 28 October 2018
