Subject: Airmen get training in fighting on the ground, By Jessica Inigo,
Stars and Stripes
From: "Joe Osman"
Date: 6/4/04 10:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:04:39 GMT, Otis Willie
wrote:

Airmen get training in fighting on the ground, By Jessica Inigo, Stars
and Stripes

(EXCERPT) European edition, Thursday, June 3, 2004

CAMP VIRGINIA, Kuwait - All it takes is some Army weapons, several
classes and a group of National Guard soldiers from El Paso, Texas, to
teach airmen how to be "hooah!"

Nearly 300 airmen from the 732nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron
are learning major soldiering skills during a two-phase course,
designed to get the Army and the Air Force on the same fighting page.

The airmen are separated into four groups of abou...

Poor Jessica need to read some history.

Can she spell "Red Horse" and "Prime BEEF"?


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8

Ed:

Were USAF Red Horse and Prime BEEF units ever trained in combat skills
before? Did they see any action that you know about? The Seabees have been
trained for quite a while by the USMC.
In WWII during Operation Torch, a USAAF Aviation Engineer unit acting as
infantry took part on the attack on the "Casbah", an old Portugese fort in
Port Lyautey (now Kenitra) Morocco and helped defeat the 3rd Infantry
Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. Earlier at Bataan, a Pursuit Squadron
(the 10th, IIRC) fighting as infantry took part in an amphibious
counterlanding to defeat the Japanese landings in the Battle of the Points.
About a fourth of the infantry on Bataan and Corregidor were USAAF.

Joe


In WW II we all went through combat infantry training before we were sent to
flight schools. And we were always reminded that we were soldiers first and
fliers second. and many of us picked up rlfles and took our place in lines of
skermishers during the battle of the Bulge. And that included cooks, bakers and
mechanics.


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer