by me, Kerry Burgess, 09/06/2026 07:50 AM
Formally inducted US Navy enlisted on 05/15/1984, I was in basic-training until 07/16/1984
Among all the other activities during basic-training was also the role sometimes as a watchstander
The very first occurrence for me was a midwatch over at another barracks
From midnight until two am that day I sat in a chair at a desk and with a logbook.
Another guy roamed around the building and checked in with me periodically.
I do not now recall if we had any sort of slang term for the people in that barracks.
The way I remember it now we were told they were in that barracks because they were being discharged for mental problems.
Discovered they could not cope with the (slight) adversity of US Navy basic-training and I was in there that midnight-watch to monitor the room as they were all sleeping in the very dim light of that barracks room.
Another time I had to escort one of the guys from that barracks to some appointment somewhere.
Years later I would encounter those types again as I was in charge of a work detail and I could see at least one of them that did not like being told what to do.
Weeks after finishing basic-training in Orlando in 1984, I was traveling on civilian airliner to visit the town where I grew up for an extended weekend holiday, must have been Labor Day. We had been told by instructors what to expect if we were dismissed from US Navy during basic-training. Sitting there in my seat in my summer dress white uniform, I observed a guy in the aisle approaching and he looked just we had been told. One of the bags they gave us was called a ditty bag. They told us anyone dismissed during basic-training, and with probably a less-than-honorable discharge, would travel back where they came from and they would have a ditty bag, a pair of denim dunagaree pants, the boondocker shoes, a white t-shirt. That must have been difficult for that guy, I must have vaguely thought at the time, seeing me sitting there, probably still with the "grinder tan" on my head and face and in my white US Navy uniform.
Those of you following along may read me repeating the same content, many times over.
My suspicion is that people are being directed towards specific blog-posts here my blog and those new readers may be completely unaware of extremely relevant content by me in my previous notes.
Whatever any of this means, it means one fact for certain: this is my duly-appointed mission.
It stops only when I agree that I have legitimate orders to stop.
From 6/17/1987 ( premiere USA film "Full Metal Jacket" ) To 9/1/2026 ( Tuesday ) is 14321 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/17/2005 ( premiere USA TV series "Battlefield Diaries" ) is 14321 days
From 4/21/1988 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: Qualified M-14 Rifle, USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy - primary-duty: CF-division, Missile Plot - while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2) ) To 9/1/2026 ( ) is 14012 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 3/14/2004 ( premiere USA TV series episode "Extreme Machines"::"Helicopters" ) is 14012 days
From 1/17/1991 ( ) To 9/1/2026 ( ) is 13011 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/17/2001 ( ) is 13011 days
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/acting-navy-secretary-tells-marines-191850537.html
Yahoo! News
Task & Purpose
Patty Nieberg
Thu, September 3, 2026 at 12:18 PM PDT 6 min read
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told a gathering of officers and senior enlisted Marines in North Carolina that they need to do more as front-line leaders to address the rate of suicides. The comments came during Cao's first public appearance after being formally nominated as Navy secretary Tuesday, a role he has held in an acting role since April.
Cao traveled to Camp Lejeune Wednesday with Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith and other senior leaders. The group spent close to two hours in two town halls focused on suicide prevention and mental health.
"It's a leadership issue, and I'm not blaming you for anything. I'm saying you need to know your Marines really well," Cao said to a crowd of several hundred Marines stationed at the base. "I need for you guys to know your Marines so well that you know how they smell, when they breathe, and when they walk up, you can hear them behind you. But also when they're hurting, to be able to pull aside and say, 'Come here, Marine. Let's walk for a second here.'"
At Camp Lejeune, Cao and Smith were joined by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz, Pentagon special assistant and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, and Cao's senior advisor for mental health. Cao said he is planning other town halls with senior leaders at major Navy and Marine Corps bases in the coming months.
A Task & Purpose reporter traveled with the group to the events.
Though suicide numbers across the military dipped in 2024, the long-term rates have trended upwards since 2011. Pentagon officials say that 472 service members died by suicide in 2024, the most recent year for which data has been released, a decline from the previous year. The Pentagon's official 2025 report is scheduled to be released this fall, but a quarterly report from the final months of that year showed an increase among active-duty and Reserve sailors and Marines over the year before.
Commandant urges 'intrusive leadership' as prevention
At Lejeune, Gen. Smith urged the room of officers and NCOs to practice more "intrusive leadership," charging the group to learn more about their Marines, their spouses and children, financial needs, stressors, and histories, and to "take risks."
"No one is going to fault you for being intrusive and getting into the lives of your Marines and your sailors. No one is going to fault you for that. If you get an [Inspector General] complaint, fine. Get an IG complaint. It will be the first of many as a leader," Smith said.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninfa_Laurenzo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_Cao
Hung Cao
From Wikipedia
On September 1, 2026, Trump nominated Cao to serve permanently as Navy Secretary.
by me, Kerry Burgess, 03/29/2026 4:08 PM
Just like my proposed Cowards-class of US Navy capital-warships (for Trump and Clinton, et al.) those Iran flying-drones should be named T.A.C.O.
USA military technology should be so formidable that cowards such as any Donald J. Trump's or Bill Clinton's are not needed - or wanted.
From 6/29/1995 ( official documents State of South Carolina - sale recorded - as me, Kerry Burgess, the house I owned {then sold and no longer care about} on Country Club Drive in South Carolina, United States of America ) to 9/8/2004 ( ) is 3359 days
From 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 commissioned-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 ) to 9/8/2004 ( ) is 3359 days
From 5/26/1992 ( Charles Geschke kidnapped at gunpoint for ransom ) To 9/8/2004 ( ) is 4488 days
4488 = 2244 + 2244
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 12/25/1971 ( George W. Bush the purveyor of illegal drugs strictly for his personal profit including the trafficking of massive amounts of cocaine into the United States confined lawfully to federal prison in Mexico for illegally smuggling narcotics in Mexico leading to his desertion and conspiracy to desert from his military obligations, of which he and fellow traitors had already falsified his record of flight, of which he was never qualified or capable of controlled flight in any USA jet-aircraft ) is 2244 days
From 2/17/1953 ( premiere USA film "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" ) To 12/25/1991 ( an aviator in non-aviator related duties boots on the ground as United States Marine Corps chief warrant officer Kerry Wayne Burgess I was prisoner of war in Croatia ) is 14190 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/8/2004 ( ) is 14190 days
From 2/16/1960 ( illustrated reference below here ) To 9/8/2004 ( ) is 16276 days
16276 = 8138 + 8138
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/13/1988 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Petty Officer Second Class Fire Controlman (FC2), with my personal participation and commendation my official enlisted United States Navy documents includes: Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal - CF-division, Missile Plot - USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy, Operation Earnest Will, Middle East Force, including Operation Praying Mantis ) is 8138 days
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5441380/
IMDb
60 Minutes Wednesday: Season 6, Episode 44
For the Record (8 Sep. 2004)
"60 Minutes II" For the Record (original title)
TV Episode 60 min Documentary, News
Release Date: 8 September 2004 (USA)
Cast
Dan Bartlett ... Self - White House Communication Director (segment "For the Record")
https://archive.org/details/COORNAP/COORNAP%2005/page/n19/mode/2up?view=theater
by me, Kerry Burgess: 11:24 AM January 28, 2021 Astro_Spook @Kerry_W_Burgess
What this makes me think of is a point that applies to The Real World.
You cowards have already stopped reading so, at best, I am preaching only to the choir, my genius is lost on the deaf-ears of the Jesus Christ bible-thumper and your cowardly inability to cope with reality.
Is easy to scoff at the notion of The Space Lizards
A race of extraterrestrials arriving from points distant in the galaxy
Is easy to scoff simply at the possibility of intelligent life beyond this planet
And that is my point.
You're too ignorant to grasp your own galactic ignorance.
From 6/17/1987 ( ) To 5/14/1990 ( scheduled from 05/21/1983 - departing as enlisted US Navy Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2)(paygrade E-5) Kerry Wayne Burgess my Honorable Discharge from US Navy active service ) is 1062 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/29/1968 ( ) is 1062 days
From 10/1/1962 ( premiere USA TV series "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" ) To 5/15/1984 ( officially accepted for enlistment US Navy on 05/21/1983 for the Advanced Electronics Field, as Kerry Wayne Burgess I began active service for an enlistment period of six years as US Navy enlisted seafarer as scheduled for this day ) is 7897 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/17/1987 ( ) is 7897 days
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/releaseinfo/
IMDb
Full Metal Jacket
Release info
United States June 17, 1987 (Beverly Hills, California, premiere)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Carson
Johnny Carson
From Wikipedia
John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, and writer best known as the host of NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992).
Carson joined the United States Navy on June 8, 1943, and received V-12 Navy College Training Program officer training at Columbia University and Millsaps College. Commissioned an ensign late in the war, Carson was assigned to USS Pennsylvania in the Pacific. He arrived on the Pennsylvania on August 14, 1945, the same day Imperial Japan announced its surrender. The ship was sent to Guam after a torpedo bomber attack damaged its stern prior to Carson's arrival.
Once in drydock, Carson, assigned to damage control, was given the task of supervising the removal of the bodies of 20 servicemen and their effects. He recounted the experience in an unpublished 1967 Time interview, stating "Jesus, that was an awful experience. They'd been down there for 18 days by the time, and I want to tell you, that was a terrible job." Carson returned stateside with the Pennsylvania to Seattle and was assigned to command a troop train for returning servicemen. He finished his service in Guam, decoding encrypted messages.
Carson later said that the high point of his military career was performing a magic trick for U.S. secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal. In a conversation with Forrestal, the secretary asked Carson if he planned to stay in the Navy after the war. In response, Carson said no and told him he wanted to be a magician. Forrestal asked him to perform, and Carson responded with a card trick. Carson discovered that he could entertain and amuse someone as cranky and sophisticated as Forrestal.
While in the Navy, Carson was an amateur boxer, with most of his bouts fought on board Pennsylvania.
The Michigan Daily
The bombing of the A2 CIA office
by CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK
October 24, 2006
Former Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny didn’t rest well the night of September 29, 1968. Asleep in his home more than two miles from downtown, Krasny awoke shortly before midnight, his sleep interrupted by the blast of an explosion on Main Street.
There was a CIA recruitment office at 450 Main in those days, although its staff liked to keep quiet. A secretary would inform visitors who walked into the inconspicuous, unnamed office that the manager was out of town. That statement was probably even true from time to time; the agent running the office, John F. Forrester, was charged with recruiting students both from our University and from that farm school over in East Lansing.
On that night in late September, someone set off four to six sticks of dynamite in front of Forrester’s office. The explosion blew a three-inch deep hole in the sidewalk, shattered windows and overturned furniture, causing thousands of dollars of damage, though no one was hurt. The bombing was interpreted as a political act; Krasny was quick to tell the press he suspected “anti-establishment militants” and said that “hippies of a college age” were the focus of the investigation.
By itself, the CIA office bombing might be a footnote, a particularly explosive illustration of the unrest in those days. Indeed, Ann Arbor experienced two more bombings within a year. Two weeks after the CIA bombing, the Institute of Science and Technology on North Campus was targeted, presumably for its role in military research. The following June, a bomb went off under a car outside North Hall in an apparent attempt to disrupt the ROTC program.
A court case that arose out of the Ann Arbor CIA bombing, however, went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dealt the Nixon Administration a solid defeat.
ordered the government to turn over the contents of the wiretap. It refused, and the resulting lawsuit, United States vs. United States District Court, made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the justices ruled 8-0 that the Nixon Administration couldn’t just ignore the Fourth Amendment whenever it felt like carrying out some domestic surveillance, no matter what it said about national security.
IMDb
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Quotes
Private Joker: Are those... live rounds?
Private Gomer Pyle: Seven-six-two millimeter. Full metal jacket.
Private Joker: Leonard... if Hartman comes in here and catches us, we'll both be in a world of shit.
Private Gomer Pyle: I am... in a world... of shit!
[Pyle starts executing the Manual of Arms]
Private Gomer Pyle: [shouting] Left shoulder... hut! Right shoulder... hut! Lock and load! Order... hut! This is my rifle! There are many like it, but this one is mine! My rifle is my best friend! It is my life!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Get back in your bunks!
Private Gomer Pyle: [still shouting] I must master it as I must master my life!
[Hartman storms into the latrine]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: What is this Mickey Mouse shit? What in the name of Jesus H. Christ are you animal doing in my head? Why is Private Pyle out of his bunk after lights out? Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon? Why aren't you stomping Private Pyle's guts out?
Private Joker: Sir, it is the private's duty to inform the Senior Drill Instructor that Private Pyle has a full magazine and has locked and loaded, sir!
[Hartman and Pyle look at each other]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Now you listen to me, Private Pyle, and, you listen good. I want that weapon, and I want it now! You will place that rifle on the deck at your feet and step back away from it.
[Pyle points his rifle at Hartman]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: What is your major malfunction, numbnuts? Didn't mommy and daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?
excerpt
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/speeches/clark-usna2002.txt
Admiral Vern Clark Remarks
United States Naval Academy Commencement
Annapolis, Maryland
24 May 2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Graeme_West
Arthur Graeme West
From Wikipedia
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)
excerpt
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 enlisted US Navy Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2)(paygrade E-5) Kerry Wayne Burgess my honorable discharge from United States Navy active service ) is 26704 days
26704 = 13352 + 13352
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/24/2002 ( ) is 13352 days
From 12/24/1951 ( premiere USA TV series "Hallmark Hall of Fame" ) To 5/24/2002 ( ) is 18414 days
18414 = 9207 + 9207
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/17/1991 ( Operation Desert Storm begins and for me after 05/10/2006: date of record of my US 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 ( an aviator in non-aviator related duties boots on the ground in Bosnia as Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps captain this day is my US Navy Cross medal date of record ) To 5/24/2002 ( ) is 2712 days
2712 = 1356 + 1356
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/20/1969 ( disguised, 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 - his 1st of his 6 Earth-Luna lunar-landings with USA Project Apollo, strictly in planning and preparation for his personal activities in this solar-system's deep-space 1975-1977 ) is 1356 days
From 6/29/1995 ( the Mir space station docking of the United States space shuttle Atlantis orbiter vehicle mission STS-71 and for me after 05/10/2006: includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps commissioned-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 ) To 5/24/2002 ( ) is 2521 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/27/1972 ( premiere USA film "A Separate Peace" ) is 2521 days
excerpt
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: Congratulations, Ensigns.
I have one last thing to say. Go write some history.
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 1:46 PM Pacific-timezone USA Sunday 09/06/2026
