From: Nigel Hay MILWEB (nigel@milweb.net)
Date: Mon Jan 23 2006 - 08:30:09 PST
Her Brittanic Majesties armed forces have of course for many years used non
British nationals in their own regiment - the Ghurkas (from Nepal)- I
believe thay have won more Victoria Crosses than any other regiment since
the inception of the honour. Many of these fearless warriors have settled in
the UK and prove to be a shining example of courtesy in civilian life. Their
exemplary "out of camp" behaviour (and inherrent inability/refusal to get
into fights in bars) puts the average squadie to shame. Shorter than
average, I have several times watched platoons of gurkas getting inot the
high cargo bed of Bedford and AWD trucks and thought they must have it off
to an art form, as the trucks were designed with taller chaps in mind.
(...impressive turnaround of posting to include relevant military vehicle
comment you may think!)
NIGEL HAY
Publisher
www.milweb.net
Used by over 12,500 military collectors and dealers each week!
-----Original Message-----
From: Military Vehicles Mailing List [mailto:mil-veh@mil-veh.org]On
Behalf Of Sarge
Sent: 23 January 2006 15:41
To: Military Vehicles Mailing List
Subject: Re: [MV] non-Americans serving in our Armed Forces
Sarge of course has another story along these lines.
Back in the very late 70's I worked on top of a mountain in what was then
called West Germany.
In our post office (APO) we had two USAF enlisted Jamaicans working as
postal technicians.
Because of the possibility of "NATO Secret" information coming through the
APO system, these Jamaicans were booted out of the country. At the same
time, all US enlisted members who had citizenship in non-NATO countries were
kicked out of all NATO countries and sent back to the USA to serve out their
enlistments.
I'm not making a judgement here, I'm just reporting the story.
-Sarge
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave J" <sd0044@gwtc.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 1:08 PM
Subject: [MV] non-Americans serving in our Armed Forces
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sonny Heath"
> > I didn't realize one had to be an American to serve in the American
Armed
> > Forces.
> ==============================================
> Hi Sonny,
> One doesn't.
> However currently one does to get a security clearance - even at the
> relatively low level of "secret".
>
> This can lead to some interesting concept and conflicts.
>
> Desert Shield, August 1990, I deployed to the Doha Airport, Emirate of
Qatar
> with a pretty big bunch of other folks to help set up a functional base
and
> supply the needs of an F-16 fighter wing that was gonna be operating out
of
> there. Now the fact that "we" were in ~Qatar~ at all was classified
> "Secret" and we were not to discuss who we were (what organization/unit)
> with ~anybody~ (including our families) not so cleared.
>
> OK, No big deal -- As you all prolly know, this is a standard practice in
> wartime.
>
> Here's the rub -- one of my troops was a Austrian citizen serving in the
> US Air Force while clocking down the required time to get her US
> citizenship. She of course, not being a US Citizen, had absolutely no
> security clearance. So theoretically she also couldn't know that she was
> TDY to our unit and in Qatar ...... Duh !!
>
> So would you believe that of all the people there, hers was the only set
of
> orders ~that I knew of~ whereon her "personal copies" that had "unit of
> assignment" and "duty location" blanked out. Even though we had big
signs
> all over the area "Welcome to the XXX Tactical Fighter Wing
(Provisional)"
> and "Welcome to Doha Air Base" all over the area. (BTW, the Iraqi Embassy
to
> Qatar is line of sight with the Airfield - we could observe them -
observing
> us with binoculars from their embassy's rooftop.).
>
> Sometimes our rules, or the implementation of same, are sooooooooooo
stupid.
>
> BTW, she worked harder and smarter than most of the troops in my section
of
> the unit
> and stood up as well as any during our daily early morning incoming scud
> attacks during the "storm" portion of the operation. I hope she got her
> citizenship with honors. She earned it.
>
> Dave J
> ===============================
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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