What are /r/MilitaryStories' favorite Products & Services?

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I read Chickenhawk, the account of a helo pilot in Vietnam. The scam was that every time a cargo copter went down, quartermasters would claim their missing equipment was on board. This pilot served on an accident investigation team, and they calculated that the listed cargo was something like twice the weight of the aircraft.

That MilPsych played Sun Tzu, even if he might not have known it. The Art of War details that any supplies stolen from the enemy are worth twice as much as whatever your equivalent would be, simply because it's free. You get to keep your own stuff, the enemy gets shot at anyways, and they're out some toys to boot.

I was intentionally just sticking to their most recent deeds in Afghanistan. Over the years, there are a lot of stories. There was even the story of one retired Gorkha (Indian style), Bishnu Shrestha who fought off something like 20 or so bandits on a train.

Laser barrel inserts and light sensitive target for the win!

It would look something like this(Need I say NSFW?)

i bet you know what a battleship shell can do to a Destroyer Escort or Destroyer.

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I damn near cried reading that book. Those men were some of the bravest the Navy ever put to sea. Can you imagine, putting your bow straight at an entire IJN battlefleet and attacking? With naught but 5" cannon and torpedoes? Fuck.

Such a thing was never even wargamed prior to that.

U wot M8? and the rest...

Call me names... You make me sound like that goddamned DI in basic who used to wake us with "Drop yer cocks and grab yer socks. It's another day in the Are Oh Kay." Dude knew everything and had seen everything just because he had been in Korea when I was 3 years old. Now he was a cunt.

I still say that every morning, even now - "Another day in the ROK." No idea why.

Not as bad as you might think (NSFW obviously)

Thanks much!
The storyline sort of tracks most of that and goes into the war against Journalists and other things.

That author looks pretty prolific, too bad only 4 of her books have been translated. Thanks for the recco.
( US link here )

My girlfriend is a hospital based MD and recently listened to Five Days at Memorial (maybe you're indirectly mentioned in the book?). We talked about how horrible the conditions at the hospitals were and how poor the communication was to get patients evacuated by the USCG and other agencies. In the past year or two I started volunteering for a veteran-led disaster response organization, so she convinced me to start listening.

It's interesting to read through the stories from the other side. Looking at the response to Ian compared to the response to Katrina - we have gotten sooo much better at these hurricanes. Life was shit, and still is, for a lot of people in South Florida, but I think a good number of human lives were preserved due to the nation's improvements over the years.

Katrina taught us some lessons in blood (quite literally) and we've learned from them.

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748/ref=asc\_df\_0143127748?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80608063550931&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=...

>Enraged, XO, out of the blue, shouted at Cpl Shaw, “It’s your fucking fault your friends died in Iraq!”

This alone should have gotten him command of windsock observation duties in the most remote parts of Greenland.

I actually wonder if XO wasn't angling to provoke the Cpl into violence, in order to hit him up with a criminal charge.

This whole thing reminded of Lt. Col Thomas Kunk, commander of the 2/502 (101st ABN) as described in Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death. Dude was practically a study from the Capt. William Bligh School of Leadership, who continually exploded with rage and contempt for those under his command. According tot he book, he even showed up after the deaths of a respected Lt. and Sgt to berate them all for being scumbags, that they were all getting killed for not doing their jobs correctly, and basically that the two dead men had deserved it.

https://www.gimp.org/

The heal tool is the one that looks like crossed bandaids. Ctrl-click to set a source, then click to heal a damaged spot. It works best if you pick a source that looks similar. For example, where there was a white spot on the bamboo, I found a parallel pole that had similar color and brightness, I ctrl-clicked the most similar spot on that pole, the clicked the white spot.

You can click-drag to paint to heal larger areas, but the heal tool is based on the clone tool, so you'll end up basically painting a copy of the source area, and the eye will notice it. I try to paint only small areas, or use multiple sources to cover a larger area, so that it looks unique.

The only other thing to know is the brush. Stick to the round fuzzy brushes. The fuzzier ones will use more blur, the darker ones will have sharper edges. Tweak the size depending on the picture's size and the size of the image you're working on.

In this image, the trickiest parts were the guy on the left's hand and pants creases. I had to borrow bits from elsewhere in the image that had a similar color and light-shadow shape patterns.

That's the only trick to it. Once you have that down, it's easy. You can also heal defects in the print or creases, but that gets a bit harder because you have to cover more area, and if you heal in a straight line, you just end up with a blurry line that stands out.

Sorry man, not sure what the rules are here for that sort of thing. Since you asked though:

Tequila Vikings

If you read on an e-reader, its actually on sale this week.

And sometimes, you can <a href=https://www.amazon.com/Debriefing-President-Interrogation-Saddam-Hussein/dp/0399575812/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2FNWQEYEVBFOJ&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=debriefing+the+president+the+interrogation+of+saddam+hussein&amp;qid=1617687077&amp;sprefix=debriefing+%2Caps%2C352&amp;sr=8-1&gt;write a book about your Secret Squirrel Shit</a>.

>Design engineers should've been able to design that in a more intelligent way. That is flat out poor design at that point.

Let me chime in with a civilian worker rant about that.

My family business growing up was in a chemical concern that would package some of the product in 1 gallon jugs, that for transportation would be packed into 4 gallon rigid plastic totes, of about a quarter inch thick. like this

Now, given the lovely skinny knife-like edge of the space one is to shove their fingers in to shift the tote, with it weighing roughly 40 pounds, one needs to wear decent work gloves.

WTF designers, with my dainty FEMALE hand in a workhorse glove, I could just barely fit my 4 fingers in the slot, how do they expect a man to follow OSHA guidelines for moving said totes by putting the 4 fingers in said hand area.. .

Considered it, yes.

I actually worked toward a degree in Journalism while I was still active duty. Got out and had to switch majors because the local college near my home didn't have a Journalism program.

Wrote some fiction. Mostly mystery and crime. Mickey Spillane private detective type stuff. Got a nice stack of rejection letters from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

Self published a short story collection and one novel on Amazon. It's still there. I think it's sold somewhere around 30 copies (so I doubt I'll ever get rich off the royalties) not counting the one sitting on my bookshelf.

You can have a look-see if you want, but be warned that it's a work of fiction and has nothing to do with the military. While it has my writing style, it's a PI novel, so dont expect it to be like my reddit posts.

http://www.amazon.com/Creep-Charles-Loar-ebook/dp/B00IK5B42U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1453576369&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=charles+loar

I'll write another one someday. Not an if, but a when. Simply havent had the time to create a decent plot. Anyway, that's a whole nother conversation.

Thanks for the compliment