For this passion post, I thought that I would write on a great inspiration to me, as well as many other members of the various ROTC units here on campus. If you’re a Penn State student (which I’m assuming you are since you are reading this blog), then you’ve probably heard the name “Michael Murphy” or “Murph” or “The Protector”. These are all names for Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who graduated from Penn State, and subsequently right after graduation accepted a commission to be an officer in the United States Navy in the hope of attending the school necessary to become a U.S. Navy SEAL. He completed officer school, attended and graduated from BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, and completed all necessary training to become a U.S. Navy SEAL. After completing his training, he was deployed to first Jordan, and several other locations within CENTCOM (CENtral COMmand, the Department of Defense’s code name for the Middle East area including Egypt) before he was deployed to Afghanistan with SEAL Delivery Team ONE. As an officer, he was deployed as a platoon leader within the team.

LT Murphy when deployed to Afghanistan

Once deployed to Afghanistan, LT Murphy was given a mission known as Operation Red Wings, which would be carried out as a reconnaissance mission to cover an area which was known to be hiding a HVT (High Value Target) member of the Taliban. He was given a team of 3 other SEALs to complete the mission. The SEALs reached their reconnaissance position, they found that the area actually was holding a higher number of insurgent forces than they were informed in the intelligence that they had been given about the area. But, they decided to stay anyways in order to continue the mission. However, after a little time a couple of goat herders who were moving through the mountains.  The SEALs knew that the goat herders would be sympathetic to the Taliban insurgents that were down below in the valley. The SEAL team grabbed the three goat herders and the team had three options: they could leave the goat herders tied up and have them possibly die to the elements, shoot the goat herders so that they will not have any chance of being exposed, or release the goat herders and risk alerting the insurgents below. LT Murphy, being the ranking SEAL on the team, decided for the team that they would let the goat herders go free. The SEALs had a pretty good idea that the goat herders would tell the insurgents down below that the SEALs are located in the mountains, thus the SEALs started moving out towards to the original location in order to run from the Taliban that they knew would be hot on their tail soon. After moving out for a while, the SEALs realized that they had been cut off by the Taliban. They are eventually spotted, and a firefight ensues. In the firefight, 3 of the 4 SEALs are killed, and LT Murphy is one of the 3 killed. LT Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor for an action on the mountain. He was awarded the Medal for moving onto an exposed location to use the satellite phone that had been given to them to contact the headquarters for support. In doing this action, LT Murphy was killed in action. After this action, reinforcements were called in, however the helicopter was shot down and everyone aboard was killed. The remaining SEALs retreated as far off of the mountain as the could with 2 other SEALs being killed in action during the retreat. Only one survived the retreat off of the mountain, Marcus Luttrell escaped the mountain, and was the only SEAL to be rescued. In the end however, LT Murphy will always be remembered for his heroic action to get his support and to help his men. He will always be remembered as a great Penn Stater with an indomitable spirit.

During the break, I decided that I would now focus my Passion blog posts on historical events from World War II, because I found it too hard to find historical events that happened to coincide with the day and that had an abundant amount of info online to support writing on it. Thus, for my continuation from my first passion blog post which was on the Battle of the Bulge, I decided to discuss D Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history. I will also discuss the airborne operation that was also behind D Day’s successful landings.

“Into the Jaws of Death” by photographer Robert F. Sargent. Arguably the most famous photo from the D Day landings.

After being postponed several times, the D Day landings finally took place on 6 June 1944. The landings were the largest in history and it was the invasion that broke through Hitler’s Fortress Europa. The invasion began with airborne and glider troops landing behind the beaches and sabotaging any efforts that might have been used to hamper the landings. The airborne troops were landed to cut off any reinforcement efforts that the Germans made to counterattack the beach landings. About 15,000 paratroops and glider troops were landed behind enemy lines to hamper the German defense effort.

A C-47, the standard workhorse which was used to deploy airborne troops into battle

As much resistance as the airborne units put up, the Germans were still able to bring some reinforcements up to the beaches. Before any of the landings occurred, the Allies launched the largest naval bombardment campaign that has been seen in history. Destroyers and other naval ships of war pounded the beach defenses with their guns. However, as the infantry that land would soon find out, some beach defenses were more sabotaged by the naval fire than others. The Allies also launched a massive bombing campaign against the beach defenses, using mainly fighter bombers to attack the targets.

Once the naval and air bombardment ceased on the beaches, the infantry finally made their landings. There were 5 beaches: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The Allies split up and covered each of the different beaches. The United States forces were responsible for Omaha and Utah, the United Kingdom’s forces were responsible for Sword and Gold, and finally Canadian forces were responsible for the landings at Juno. The landings at Utah had the lightest casualties, meanwhile Omaha had the heaviest casualties. Out of the British-Canadian forces, Juno, the Canadian landings took the second heaviest casualties out any beach.

Although the Allies would lose 10,000 casualties (dead and wounded) in the single historic day which was and is D Day, the Allies would prove victorious for the day in their valor and force of will in capturing each of the beachheads. These landings would prove the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Nazi Third Reich. From these landings, the Allies would continue to push forward throughout France, into the Low Countries, and eventually even into Germany where the Allied forces would force the unconditional surrender of Germany

I decided to go in a different direction for this week’s blog post and I will be talking about an event that happened in history today, February 11 in 1854. The event is when Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his two warships entered the Japanese port of Edo in order to sign a treaty with the Japanese which would allow the Americans to have a relationship of trading and friendship with the Japanese. This treaty would allow the United States to become the first Western power, besides the Dutch, which would gain a trading relationship with the “closed country” of Japan. (Japan had a policy of “sakoku” which means “closed country” in Japanese)

Commodore Matthew C. Perry

The talks with the Japanese began with President Millard Fillmore sending Commodore Perry on an expedition to Japan in 1852. The voyage embarked from Norfolk, Virginia for Japan in search of a trade treaty. Commodore Perry was armed with a letter from the President, informing the Japanese of the United States’ desire to have a trade alliance with Japan. Before his venture to the Land of the Rising Sun, Commodore Perry studied the Japanese from many sources. Commodore Perry even researched a German Japanologist who had lived at the Dutch trading post for 8 years. When Commodore Perry and his ships reached Japan, delegates from the Tokugawa Shogunate (the shogun administration which led Japan at the time) who directed Perry to the port of Nagasaki, which was the port open to foreigners at the time. Instead, Commodore Perry ordered his ships to steam past the Japanese lines towards the capital city of Edo and position their guns towards a smaller town nearby. This was a show of force to the Japanese that the American ships were a force not to be trifled with. He then demanded that he deliver the letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Shogunate, and that if the Japanese ships surrounding the American squadron did not disperse then he would be forced to attack. The American ships were equipped with new naval weapons which could fire shells that would explode on impact. With the Japanese being cut off from the rest of the world, they did not have the technology to combat such an advanced piece of military technology. After the Japanese agreed to receive the letter, Commodore Perry landed at Kurihama to deliver the letter to the delegates who were present. He then left for his ship, which he took to the Chinese coast, and he promised that he would be back for a reply. Meanwhile, the Japanese built fortifications outside of their capital city’s port in order to prevent any further American naval incursion. Perry returned in February of 1854 to receive the treaty with twice as many ships in his fleet to ensure that all demands were met in the letter that was sent by the President.

The Fleet Led by Commodore Perry in 1854

On March 31, 1854, Commodore Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa which gave the United States trading rights with the Shogun, the de facto ruler of Japan.

The German plan of movement on pushing through the Ardennes to the port of Antwerp

Since I did not emphasize very much last semester my love for studying military history, this semester I will be having more posts on various events in military history. For now, there will be no connection between the different events. But maybe in the future, I will connect the events into a more coherent series. To start off this first series, I will be talking about the “Battle of the Bulge”, which is often regarded as the German Wehrmacht’s (English: Defense Force) final counterattack in an attempt to stop the Allied forces advance into Germany. I chose this event because of how this battle between the Allies and the Germans took place in the January of 1945, when it is also January currently in the present in 2014. The objective set by Hitler himself was to push through the Ardennes forest, cut through the Allied lines which had become outstretched and comfortable in the relative peace that sets in during the winter, due to the fact that the cold prevents military action, and push far enough into Allied territory as to capture the Belgian port of Antwerp to the northwest of the Ardennes forest. The plan to cut through the Allied lines was elaborate. Germans had perfect English speaking German soldiers don American uniforms in order to infiltrate the Allied forces, and made other movements to gain as much info from the Allies while still leading the Allies to believe that no attack was coming due to the terrible weather of December 1944. The horrible weather also prevented the Allies from using aerial reconnaissance to cover the German lines in an attempt to decipher what the Germans may have been planning. At the beginning of World War II, the Germans had used the Ardennes forest (which the French had deemed as too difficult to traverse with heavy vehicles for an assault to pass through the forest), in a violent example of Blitzkrieg to strike through the French lines and to quickly cut through France. The Americans and British of the Allies made the same mistake at the end of the war. They believed the horrible winter weather, and the forest would protect them from a counteroffensive. However, the Germans proved the Allies wrong once again and broke quickly through the lines of the Americans. The Germans attacked with three armies formed by the most experienced SS Panzer units (elite mechanized infantry forces) in the Wehrmacht. The Germans were equipped with the most advanced equipment that the German armed forces had to offer as well as winter uniforms to survive the bitter cold environment. The Americans and British, both unsuspecting an attack, were unprepared through the soldiers on the line were quickly overrun, did not have enough ammo to defend themselves for a sustained defense, and were not given winter uniforms. The name, “Battle of the Bulge” was given to the engagement because the newspapers showed a bulge in their wartime news maps. Although the Germans advanced a significant amount, the Allies eventually rushed reinforcements quickly to the lines, and these reinforcements were better equipped than the initial defenders. Thus, these reinforcements finally stopped the German advance, held them at stalemate for about a month, and finally pushed the German forces back into Germany, as well as following them into Germany for the final assault on the German homeland which ended the War in Europe in April-May 1945.

German infantry advancing past hastily abandoned American equipment

As with last semester, I will continue my topic of the military, and military history. I focused mainly last semester on the military, its different branches, and each branches’ special operations units, and less on the history aspect of my passion. This semester, I will have more posts about my passion for studying military history and the knowledge that I have in that area. I have enjoyed learning about military history for as long as I can remember. And I will always love reading books, webpages, or other resources about famous battles, generals, political leaders, and the brave men who fight for their ideals on both sides. From the early battles of history between the Egyptians and the Hyskos (an African people from the Sudan area who eventually conquered the Egyptians and inserted their way of life into Egyptian culture) to the Hundred Years War and Joan of Arc, to the American Revolution, to the Civil War, to the World Wars, and finally to the modern conflicts of today, I am interested in every area of military history. Since I am an Army ROTC cadet, I have seen this knowledge and love for learning about how humanity has fought in the past as the key to understanding how to take the best principles of every fighting warrior in history (for example, the honor of the Japanese samurai and the chivalry of the European medieval knights), and mold them into the modern fighting man that I am training to become.