Good morning, I hope this email finds you well. This weeks email is packed full of news, short stories and a toilet bomb... Yes, you did read that correctly.

The most highly decorated officer of Vietnam

Robert Lewis Howard (July 11, 1939 – December 23, 2009) was the most highly decorated United States Army Special Forces officer in Vietnam.

He was wounded 14 times over 54 months of combat, was awarded the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, and four Bronze Stars.

He was nominated for the Medal of Honor three times over a 13-month period, but received lesser medals for the first two nominations, which were for actions performed in Cambodia where the U.S. was fighting covertly. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on December 30, 1968, his third nomination.

He retired from the US Army after 36 years of service as a full colonel. He was one of the most decorated soldiers in the Vietnam War and was "said to be the most decorated service member in the history of the United States".

He died as a result of pancreatic cancer, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on February 22, 2010.

Brothers in Arms

Brothers Ubert Terrell, 100, right, and L.C. Terrell, 98, were both invading Normandy on D-Day, one on the ground and the other by air.

L.C. took out two enemy machine gun nests with hand grenades that day. He knew he could throw accurately because he'd spent a lot of time catching and throwing balls with a minor league baseball player he'd known before the war. He successfully lobbed a grenade into the nest, but only after crawling up the beach on his belly.

Ubert, who was fluent in Cajun French, Spanish, and Italian, carried out five covert missions to gather intelligence for D-Day by parachuting into occupied France by night and meeting up with members of the French underground. That's in addition to him flying over Normandy to help deliver paratroopers onto the battlefield. Not bad for two country boys from Louisiana.

3x Super Bowl Champ, and US Air Force Pilot

Chad William Hennings not only a 3 x Super Bowl champion but also a former US Air Force pilot.

Graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in June 1988 he became an A-10 pilot and flew 45 missions in North Iraq, twice awarded the Air Force Achievement Medal, and promoted to Captain in 1992.

After the 1991 Gulf War, the United States military underwent a reduction in budget and Hennings was able to have the remaining four years of his active-duty commitment waived, which was unprecedented at the time. He continued service in the Air Force Reserve for nine years as a liaison officer to the Air Force Academy.

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Veteran News

• Marine changes name to Darth Vader and raises money for charity.

  The man formerly known as Eric Welch said he felt little association with the name he was born with…

• Sgt. 1st Class Melvin Morris: An honor overdue

  Army Sgt. 1st Class Melvin Morris waded through a blistering firefight in Vietnam to rescue a fallen comrade and keep crucial information out of the enemy's hands…

• War hero recounts lives saved in Afghanistan

  A sniper bullet just whispered right by my head,” he said. “I could have kissed it, that's how close it was...

• Vietnam-era Army officer to receive Medal of Honor

  One of the first Black officers to lead a Special Forces team in combat will receive the Medal of Honor…

Did you know?

November 4, 1965. This was the day that Vietnamese fighters first encountered a pretty unusual weapon that was used as a 'weapon' by a US Navy fighter. The aircraft that threw the toilet was an A-1 Skyraider from the VA-25 squadron. The plane took off from an aircraft carrier base, that was located in the South China Sea and flew with CDR Clarence ‘Bill’ Stoddard as its captain.

But why a toilet? The answer is simple as it gets: the members of the squadron wanted to throw something special to celebrate the use of 6 million pounds of ordnance in the ongoing war. But, being on an aircraft carrier during a war doesn't leave you with many available options, so they had to be great creative and innovative.

When they found out about a damaged toilet that the crew of the ship planned to throw away, some fighter pilots came up with the idea of the toilet bomb immediately. After that, they rushed to add fins and a nose to it, in order to make the toilet look and function (almost) like a bomb. Then, they put it on a hard point of an A-1 Skyraider aircraft and threw it in the sky.

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Thanks for reading,

Rob 🫡