Thanks Dad...

My father (former JAG officer and VietNam Veteran) sent me this.  It's an article written by a French Infantryman regarding the American Service Member.  I'll have to make a few phone calls as it seems to be mentioning my old company.  The areas in parenthesis are 'commentary' from the translator, as the original blog was written in french and seems to be no longer available.  It seems to reflect the same sentiment that foreign militaries expressed during my 2 deployments.

  "We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a
  while - they are th e first and fourth companies of a prestigious
  infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military
  secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other.  But we
  live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have
  the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army -
  one that the movies brought to the public as series showing "ordinary
  soldiers thrust into extraordinary events".  Who are they, those
  soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they
  bring to the men of our OMLT every day?  Few of them belong to the Easy
  Company, the one the TV series focuses on.  This one nowadays is named
  Echo Company, and it has become the support company.
 
        They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of
  view the language they speak is not even English.  How many times did I
  have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious
  minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word?
  Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even
  admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties
  understanding each other.
 
        Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins
  and creatine (Heh.  More like Waffle House and McDonalds) - they are all
  heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of
  Rambo.  Our frames are amusingly skinny to them -- we are wimps, even
  the strongest of us -- and because of that they often mistake us for
  Afghans.
 
        Here we discover America as it is often depicted: their values
  are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the
  loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley.  Honor,
  motherland -- everything here reminds of that: the American flag
  floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post
  parcels.  Even if recruits often ! originat e from the hearth of
  American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than
  to hold high and proud the star spangled banner.  Each man knows he can
  count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the
  mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line
  location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in
  such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs
  him in his difficult mission.  And that is a first shock to our
  preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the
  group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.
 
        And they are impressive warriors!  We have not come across bad
  ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French
  people can be.  Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of
  them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how.  Beyond the
  wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet
  strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at
  the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest.  On the one
  square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five
  consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top,
  their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger.  No
  distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days.  At
  night, all movements are performed in the dark -- only a handful of
  subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the
  move.  Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered -- everything
  happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.
 
        And combat?  If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all --
  always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and
  always in the shortest delay.  That is one of their tricks: they switch
  from T-shirt and sandals to co! mbat rea dy in three minutes.  Arriving
  in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and
  disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride,
  they bomb first and ask questions later -- which cuts any pussyfooting
  short.
 
        (This is the main area where I'd like to comment.  Anyone with a
  passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan:
 
  "If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white
  remember it's ruin to run from a fight.
  So take open order, lie down, sit tight
  And wait for supports like a soldier."
 
      This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and
  Continental soldiers.  'In the absence of orders, take a defensive
  position.'  Indeed, virtually every army in the world.  The American
  soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training
  with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders:  Attack!  Where other forces,
  for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an
  attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go,
  counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.
 
        This is one of the great strengths of the American force in
  combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the
  Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly
  surprising. No wonder is surprises the hell out of our enemies.
 
        We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp
  chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent
  spirit.  A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle
  just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will
  rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is --
  joke from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a
  beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.
 
        To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat
  outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to
  those who pay the daily tribute of America's army's deployment on Afghan
  soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will
  always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say
  that we are all the same band of brothers".