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F r i d a y , F e b r u a r y 2 2 , 2 0 1 3 T H E R E D 7 . n E T
Page 3
Beach runners break world records, raise money for SOWF
INSIDe
Briefs ...............4
Philpott ...........6
‘Band of Brothers’ contributor dies
Page 5
Off-road trainingPagE 2
Page 2 | THE rED 7 | Friday, February 22, 2013
Year No. 3 edition No. 8
The Red 7 is published by the Northwest Florida Daily News, a pri-vate firm in no way connected with the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) or the U.S. Army.
This publication’s content is not necessarily the official view of, or endorsed by, the U.S. govern-ment, the Department of Defense, the Depart-ment of the Army or 7th Special Forc-es Group (Airborne). The official news source for 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) is http://www.soc.mil/.
The appearance of advertising in this publication does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. govern-ment, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) or the Northwest Florida Daily News for products or services advertised. Ev-erything advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national ori-gin, age, marital status, physical handi-cap, political affiliation or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user or patron. Editorial content is edited, prepared and provided by the North-west Florida Daily News.
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Spc. Steven Young | U.S. Army photos
Off-road trainingA team of Green Berets from 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) perform off-road maneuvers with light tactical all-terrain vehicles (LTATV) at Fort Bliss, Texas on Feb. 11. Green Berets trained with LTATVs to gain familiarization with the vehicles during pre-mission training. The training prepares Soldiers for maneuvering through the terrain in Afghanistan.
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Friday, February 22, 2013 | THE rED 7 | Page 3
By LAuRen SAge ReInLIe
Northwest Florida Daily News
MIRAMAR BeAcH — Courtney Davwalter crossed the finish line Sunday after-noon Feb. 17, in front of a sparkling blue and green Gulf of Mexico and hunched over in the white sand to catch her breath.
She had been running for more than eight hours, crossing 50 miles of beach from Miramar Beach to Seagrove to the Destin Pass and back again. The 28-year-old from Denver was the fifth person to fin-ish the third annual Destin Beach Ultra.
“It was a good day. There was no wind, the sun was shining,” she said. “I can’t complain.”
And she did not, even as she pulled off her shoes, peeled off her socks and hobbled off on sore feet. Her friend who ran a 50K on the beach earlier wrapped his arms around her, and the two compared blisters before heading off for a celebratory beer and the hot tub at Tops’l Beach Resort.
Meanwhile, two runners
had smashed the world re-cord for the longest run in the sand in 24 hours, and an-other two were set to break it. At the end of Davwalter’s run, they still had five hours to go on the 2-mile loop they had been jogging since 7 p.m. Saturday.
The 24-hour run was a new addition to the Destin Beach Ultra event, which raises money for the Special Operations Warrior Foun-dation. The group provides
scholarships for children of special ops servicemen and women who are killed in the line of duty.
Zane Holscher, the race director and a special op-erations Airman, said they had raised $40,000 this year, and he hopes to be able to donate another $5,000 more.
Holscher and his broth-er convinced their friend Dustin Krajewski, 33, to at-tempt the 24-hour run this
year. As he rounded one of the checkpoints Sunday afternoon, he shouted, jok-ingly, that they both were officially off his Christmas gift list next year.
He sipped some water and headed back out.
By 7 p.m., Krajewski,
who lives in Colorado, and three other racers had bro-ken the previous world re-cord of 83.04 miles.
Krajewski ran 100 miles in 24 hours.
Joe Fejes, 47 from Geor-gia, took the title with 134 miles. Connie Gardner, 49 from Ohio, took the wom-en’s title with 116 miles.
Kelley Wells, 39 from South Carolina, also fin-ished with 84 miles.
Two of the runners had to drop out because of injury.
A dedicated team of vol-unteers manned a tent on each side of the 2-mile loop all night and day to docu-ment the runners in hopes that their accomplishment will be certified as official by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Holscher said he couldn’t have been happier with the results.
“I think we had an amaz-ing team of runners here and an amazing team of volunteers and great con-ditions,” he said.
Beach runners break world records
Devon RAvIne | Daily News
As the sun rises over the Gulf of Mexico in South Walton County Feb. 17, participants in the 50- kilometer portion of the Destin 50 Beach Ultra competition make their way down the beach near the start of the race at Tops’l Beach Resort.
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Coin Show sponsored byFt. Walton Beach
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10 am - 5 pm andSunday, February 24,
10 am - 4 pmIn the Atrium of Westwood Retirement Resort,
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Page 4 | THE rED 7 | Friday, February 22, 2013
From staff reports
Travel expo set for Feb. 26
Mark your calendar for ITT’s Annual Travel Expo, scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 26 at the Bayview Club. This information fair will be teeming with travel and recreation vendors repre-senting attractions, hotels, resorts, cruise lines, amuse-ment parks and vacation destinations throughout the Southeast United States and beyond. There will be valu-able door prizes, giveaways and special exclusive offers available to Expo attendees. 850-882-5930
Financial appsThere are many finan-
cial “apps” you can use with phones and other mo-
bile devices How do you find the right one? Which ones work? Discover more about those tools to help you spend wisely and save more money. Class meets from 11 a.m.-12 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 25 at the Air-man & Family Readiness Center. 850-882-9060
Talk to kids about money
Set your children up for success later in life! Teach your kids about money when they are young so they will learn how to spend and save it wisely, understand the habits of wealth and help them to make bet-ter choices in life. Class is offered from 1-2 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 25 at the Air-man & Family Readiness Center. Call to register. 850-882-9060
Saving at HomeLearn how living effi-
ciently can help you con-serve energy around the house and lower all your utility bills year-round in a class held from 8-9 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at the Airman & Family Readi-ness Center. Call to reg-ister. 850-882-9060
UFC Live at Legends
Rousey vs. Carmouche All fight fans are invited to join Legends Sports Grill on Saturday, Feb. 23 at 9 p.m. for the live pay-per-view showing of UFC 157- Rousey vs Carmouche. Doors open at 7 p.m. with no admission. Enjoy food and beverage specials from the Legends menu, plus a lucky prize giveaway. Other UFC PPV events coming to Legends include UFC 158, March 16, St-Pierre vs. Diaz, and UFC 159, April 27, Jones vs. Son-nen. All fights start at 9 p.m. with doors opening at 7 p.m. 850-885-4634
5th annual aSMC golf Tournament5th Annual ASMC Golf
Tournament will be held March 8 at the Eglin Golf Course. 4-Man Scramble 1030 sign-in/lunch, 1230 Shotgun start, $45 per player. Cost includes lunch, tournament entry, cart and greens fee. RSVP NLT March 1. Registration POC is Eric Alber (318) 540-5427
7th annual CIC Charity golf Classic
The 7th Annual CIC Children’s Neighborhood Charity Golf Classic will be held on Friday, March 1 at the Fort Walton Beach Golf Club, Pines course. The day will begin with at 11 a.m. check-in, lunch and shot-gun start at noon. All pro-ceeds will benefit Children in Crisis.
For information or to register a team, call Natalie (850) 864-4242. The cost per player is $100 and a four-some is $400. T-Box spon-sorships are only $100.
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Friday, February 22, 2013 | THE rED 7 | Page 5
By AngeL MccuRDY
Northwest Florida Daily News
MIRAMAR BeAcH — Roy Gates Jr. had his share of adventures, in-cluding some that were included in a famous book and television mini-series.
Gates was a second lieutenant with 101st Airborne Division’s Easy Company during World War II. His memories were included in Stephen Am-brose’s 1992 book “Band of Brothers,” which was be-came an HBO mini-series in 2001.
He died Feb. 7 in Mira-mar Beach at the age of 91, leaving behind a legacy of heroic actions and epic tales.
“We had a good time knowing him,” said friend Karen McGee, who has helped Gates’ family plan his memorial service. “He had a good run at it.”
As a child, Gates spent two years in boarding school in Paris while his father worked on films in Europe. He even became friends with the son of Er-nest Hemmingway.
“He liked to tell us that even though people thought Hemmingway was mean, to the kids he was nice and would make sure they knew about fishing,” McGee said.
Gates attended Texas A&M when the college was only male cadets. He graduated in 1943 before joining the military.
He was with Easy Company when it freed survivors at several con-centration camps near the end of the war. He also was one of the soldiers who went to Eagle’s Nest — Adolph Hitler’s private
retreat — in the final days.“His unit was in charge
of liquor,” McGee said, laughing. “There was all kinds stored there, fine wine, brandy. He used to joke that they put the right person in charge.”
“What did I do with it?” Gates said in an interview in 2011. “Drank it.”
After the war, Gates
had two daughters, Anne Dannaker and Hellen Jane Martin. He was a sales-man and made a habit even in his later years of knowing the name of every person he encountered.
“Even when we went to restaurants he’d make sure to know everyone,”
Contributor to ‘Band of Brothers’ dies
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Page 6 | THE rED 7 | Friday, February 22, 2013
Defense Department civilian and military leaders gave full details this week on the readiness crisis unfold-ing across America’s armed forces, and got back not a whit of reassurance from Congress that relief is on the way.
Members of the once-powerful House and Senate armed services commit-tees spoke as though they were resigned to the notion that U.S. forces could be hollowed out over the next several years because of political gridlock and a now infamous “sequestration” gimmick that made a hos-tage of the defense budget and then wounded it dur-ing failed debt reduction negotiations.
Despite hours of dark testimony by defense lead-ers and the Joint Chiefs
that force readiness, including individual and unit training, depot main-tenance, flying hours and ship steaming days, are
about to take the deepest budget hit since the end of World War II, lawmakers offered no solutions. Many committee members merely continued to carp at one another and at President Obama over who should bear the most blame.
“I used to say I was hope-ful and optimistic,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said. “Then I said I was just hopeful. Now I’m not even hopeful because
we are only two weeks away from” sequestration March 1, when the department will have to absorb another $46 billion in spending cuts through the final seven months of fiscal 2013, which ends Sept. 30.
Rather than propose a relief plan, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced that “now it ap-pears that this self-inflicted wound (of sequestration) is poised to cripple our military forces in just a few days.”
“The President is not blameless,” McKeon said. “His negotiators put sequestration on the table during the long fight over the debt ceiling. We are not blameless, either. Many of us voted for this terrible
mechanism in the naive hope the president and Con-gress could put our politics aside and fix our debt crisis. That was a bad bet.”
McKeon asked Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, if he stood by his statement last April that the services cannot accept deeper defense cuts than $487 billion over 10 years agreed to in 2011 and still carry out the current Asia-Pacific defense strategy.
“Do I stand by my state-ment of last year? No,” said Dempsey. “I am now jumping up and down. This is not about standing next to anything. We are on the verge of a readiness crisis due to an unprecedented convergence of factors … the prolonged specter of sequestration while under a
continuing resolution while we are just beginning to absorb $487 billion worth of cuts from 2011, and while we’re still fighting and re-sourcing a war.”
Dempsey said other factors also make this draw-down period for defense spending and force strength “more difficult and decidedly different than at any other point in our history. There is no peace dividend. The security environment is more dangerous and more uncertain. Most of our equipment is older and ag-ing fast. End strength caps (imposed by Congress) limit our ability to shape the force. And health care costs are reaching unsustainable levels,” Dempsey said.
So sequestration, which will cut defense by an-other $500 billion over the
decade, “will upend our defense strategy,” Dempsey warned. “It will put the na-tion at greater risk of coer-cion and it will require us to break commitments to the men and women in uniform and their families, to our de-fense industrial base and to our partners and allies.”
Gen. Raymond T. Odi-erno, Army chief of staff, called the fiscal outlook for his service “dire and … unprecedented.”
Because of budget grid-lock, the services already are operating under a “con-tinuing resolution” rather than a new appropriations bill, which freezes spending below fiscal 2012 levels. This on top of sequestration, and having to make up a short-fall in operating dollars for
Chiefs detail readiness crisis; Hill offers no relief
Tom Philpott
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Friday, February 22, 2013 | THE rED 7 | Page 7
Afghanistan, is forcing the Army to spend $18 billion less than planned on opera-tions and maintenance from March through September and to cut other programs by $6 billion.
Unless Congress acts, Odierno warned, train-ing will be curtailed for 80 percent of Army ground forces. About 251,000 Army civilians will be furloughed for up to 22 days through September. Depot main-tenance will be canceled, causing 5,000 skilled em-ployees, including welders and mechanics, to lose their jobs and impacting equip-ment readiness for six Army divisions.
The Army already plans to cut its active force by 60,000 through fiscal 2017. With sequestration, it must shed at least another 100,000 soldiers across ac-tive, Guard and Reserve units. Sequestration will be felt across every base and installation and will force delays to every one of 10 of major Army modernization programs, harming the service’s ability to “reset our equipment after 12 years of war” and causing “unac-ceptable reductions in unit and individual training,” Odierno said.
“I began my career in a hollow Army. I do not want to end my career in a hollow Army,” he said, noting that today’s volunteers deserve better.
“We simply cannot take the readiness of our force for granted. If we do not have the resources to train and equip the force, our soldiers … are the ones who will pay the price, potentially with their lives.”
The other service chiefs made similar dire warnings of swift and devastating declines in readiness from waves of budget cuts they are powerless to stop or even ease. Although pay, benefits and manpower accounts are exempt from sequestration this year, the
service chiefs said military families still would feel the impact as base support services and facility main-tenance dollars are rolled back.
Deputy Secretary Carter said the TRICARE program could find itself short as much as $2 billion this fiscal year, forcing delays in pay-ments to health care provid-ers until the next budget year Oct. 1.
Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., said it was “a sad day for this committee” to hear military leaders detail their budget emergency and to realize the committee plans to do no more than talk about it. The House this week focused on “trivial leg-islation,” he said, and next week plans to be in recess.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., asked Dempsey if he has told the president of the dire consequences to readiness from sequestration March 1.
“We have had that con-versation,” Dempsey said.
How did the president’s respond? Rogers asked
“He assured me he’s working on it,” Dempsey said.
CRISIS FROM Page 6McGee said. “At the nurs-ing center he was at (Grand Boulevard Health and Rehab), he knew ev-ery nurse, every adminis-trator and every resident.”
Gates retired in Santa Rosa Beach and joined the Camel Club and Bike Club. McGee said even into his early 80s, Gates would bike seven to eight miles
a day.A memorial service
for Gates will be at 2 p.m. today at the Camel Club at 247 E. Hewitt Road in Santa Rosa Beach.
“Roy was a charm-ing man and he was very proud of all his accom-plishments,” McGee said. “He’s been all around and he really loved this area.”
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Page 8 | THE rED 7 | Friday, February 22, 2013