Collector’s Item Now: Panetta’s Chairborne Ranger medal

One of the last lame-duck strokes of DecDef Leon Panetta’s reign of error was the “Distinguished Warfare Medal,” a bauble for drone- and cyber-commando armchair warriors that would outrank the Bronze Star for Valor. As you might expect, this did not sit well with whole swathes of people, including those who get shot at, unlike the cyber heroes.

After pushback from Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has decided to roll back plans for the dronefare medal.

On Feb. 13, the Pentagon established of the Distinguished Warfare Medal to recognize the achievements of “a small number of service men and women who have an especially direct and immediate impact on combat operations through the use of remotely piloted aircraft and cyber operations.”

This is the first time Hagel showed that he learned anything as a combat vet — and what he learned was, don’t tangle with a superior force over a low-value objective. The superior force was Congress, which provides the dollars Hagel needs to feed his sprawling empire — or doesn’t, if he pisses them off. So he yanked the medal to make nice. (He could have simply placed it where it belongs, below the joint service commendation medal and the individual service commendation medals, the lowest awards given for valor).

Lawmakers were concerned about the proposed precedence of the new medal over combat medals including the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Production on the DWM was stopped after Hagel agreed to review the medal.

Hagel’s statement, though, showed that he had been long enough on Capitol Hill for any of the integrity of the combat soldier to leach out of him:

“While the review confirmed the need to ensure such recognition, it found that misconceptions regarding the precedence of the award were distracting from its original purpose,” Hagel said in a statement today.

The only “misconception” was that the medal was going to do what Panetta and Hagel said it was going to do. “Who are you gonna believe, me or the lying me last week?”

“The Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the concurrence of the service secretaries, have recommended the creation of a new distinguishing device that can be affixed to existing medals to recognize the extraordinary actions of this small number of men and women,” he continued. “I agree with the Joint Chiefs’ findings, and have directed the creation of a distinguishing device instead of a separate medal.”

So there’s gonna be some kind of drone pin for pushbutton warriors. That got one of the Congress’s most noble (just ask him) career non-warriors to praise Hagel effusively.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Hagel’s statement confirmed why he voted for his confirmation: “Simply put, he does the right thing.”

“Secretary Hagel’s commonsense approach to reviewing this important issue proves to our combat veterans that their sacrifices are valued,” Manchin gushed. “I truly am grateful for his leadership and for his willingness to listen to all who care so deeply about this issue.”

via The PJ Tatler » Under Pressure, Hagel Replaces Dronefare Medal with ‘Distinguishing Device’.

It’s puzzling why Manchin “cares so deeply.” While Hagel is a rarity in Washington, a Vietnam combat veteran, the anti-gun and usually anti-military Manchin is that commonplace DC panjandrum: a Vietnam-aged Baby Boomer who somehow never got his priorities right to shrug on a uniform coat or pick up a rucksack.

Chris Knight, formerly the Hermit at North Pond, now the inmate at the Kennebec County Jail.

We had another special-ops-related post for 1100 in mind, but real work (as in “work is a four-letter word. So is cash”) intrudes, so we’d like to give you a glimpse of the rural Maine equivalent of the Japanese soldiers who stayed off the grid in the Philippines and Guam for ridiculous lengths of time.

Not sure who the enemies in this character’s one-man war were, except for the good citizens whose stuff he survived by stealing — for nearly 30 years.

ROME, Maine (AP) — Authorities say a man who lived like a hermit for decades in the woods of central Maine and may be responsible for more than 1,000 burglaries has been captured.

Police say 47-year-old Christopher Knight was arrested last week while stealing food from a camp in Rome.

Authorities on Tuesday found the campsite where they believed Knight — known as the North Pond Hermit — has lived for 27 years.

via Hermit blamed for 1,000 burglaries caught after 27 years in woods | SeacoastOnline.com.

Knight’s UWOA. “A” is Pine Tree Camp, which he was caught burglarizing. We don;t have the grids of his camp. Center of Rome and most of its area is off map at lower left. Link.

That was the news story that flagged us to the event, but the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald reprints a story from the even smaller Kennebec paper that has a few more details of the man that Mainiacs and Maine vacationers knew as the mythical “Hermit at North Pond.” After fleeing to the woods at about age 20 (!), he spent his days “reading books and meditating;” his nights, committing burglaries. He told the game warden who arrested him that the arresting officer was only the second human he’d spoken to since 1986, and he led the warden to his camouflaged camp — with, the former Marine warden noted, excellent fieldcraft and anti-tracking skills. The State Trooper who interviewed him had what Knight says is his first in-depth conversation since going hermit. His health was good, although at Age 47 he was suffering from vision problems (routine presbyopia?) and slow wound-healing made him worry about diabetes. He would gain weight before winter, like a bear, but in his case it was to reduce foraging trips that would leave telltale tracks. The Press-Herald:

In June 2005, the Morning Sentinel published a story about the “hermit of North Pond,” who, it said, “for the last 15 years has been picking his way through dozens of the 300 or so camps around North Pond.”

“It’s been a myth, or legend, that a hermit was responsible,” Maine State Trooper Diane Perkins-Vance told the Kennebec Journal on Tuesday. “That happens to be the case.”

Rome, Maine in geo context. Rolling, wooded hills; summer vacation camps. Maps via Google. Link.

Why did he do it? Even Knight says he doesn’t really know. He had a lifelong fascination with hermits and loved the book, Robinson Crusoe. (Great book, we agree, but not enough to make it a model for our lives, eh).

The Press-Herald’s (republished) story by Craig Crosby is really, really in-depth and goes into great detail about how Knight lived and avoided capture. It also describes how repeated thefts from the same camp, and one ticked-off game warden who was ready to apply high-tech surveillance tools in a mechanical stakeout of crime scene, brought him to justice. Interestingly, Knight expresses shame about his thefts and does not appear to have been evasive with police (cop readers, how often does that happen?) Quite a remarkable case with a lot of lessons bound up in it. Read the Whole Thing™.

PS. Wonder what Knight hunted? He didn’t, he says. He stole everything he ate for nearly 30 years. Kind of admirable and repellent at the same time, innit?

Update 1700R (EST)

Apparently a whole coven of “homeless” Wealth Distribution Morlocks had gone underground, literally, in Kansas City, and lived through one of the 21st Century’s least prosecuted crimes: scrap-metal theft. Of course, the metal wasn’t scrap until these tunneling rodents ripped it off. Unfortunately for KC’s latter-day Freddie the Freeloaders, the authorities have filled in the Tunnels of Mooch Chi.

In our experience, the “homeless” are not, as one-time Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Dukakis touchingly thought, simply the salt of the earth, priced out of the mortgage market. Our fathers called them “bums,” which was rather more accurate. Most of them are mentally ill, substance abusers, and criminals. (Yes, all three, not “one of the above.”) Where’s Arkham Asylum when you need it? Oh, right, In freakin’ comic books. So Kansas City — and probably, your city – does less to protect its citizens from this scourge than a fictional cartoon city whose police are so pathetic that they need some billionaire in homoerotic tights to catch their criminals.