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Show Thursday, December 25, 2008 fag 8 0 R E M TIMES -.- .1. ''' J. . ,,,, n ii 1,1 ' ' ' fff'f A BE Mon-Fri 10 am 6 pm Sat 9 am 5 pm 2(8 West (enter Street Provo 374-5520 www.artista.net tnu I L - T. U n M I . .... - I mm modus v milium i - ?9 III .'it i k I 41 M i hiade-ih mi iTii nil J ALL MACHINES SOLD ARE FOLLY GOARANTEIED AND INCLUDE FREE CLASSES! Al si s t m m w v jr paw miimo&mmm wsmmm 30 OFF ALL GERNINA ACCESSORIES 'BUY 1 SET 1 HALF OFF ALL OERHiriil EnDROIDERY DESIGN PACKS 30QFFALLFADRIG m n deuei m i. Rigging the tow targets tf&qjpWZ:' (""'' 'Si ' ' WWOT' -'f.-; veterans ? 3 v v.f Doc Edmonds describes how. flying in a B-26 or B-29 out of Biggs Air Force Base, Texas, he operated a "tow reel." a device that let out a sleeve or banner target for target practice. The turret and hatch in the rear of the B-26 Invader were taken out, a window put in, and a tow reel installed inside the compartment. I sat on the top of the tow reel, with the window above me and nothing noth-ing below me except air. I did wear a backpack parachute. The reel, made of metal, was covered, and there was a brake handle on the left. We would rig our tow targets tar-gets down inside the airplane and hook them up to a harness. har-ness. We carried these targets wrapped up, and then just threw them out at the request of the pilot or the ground people. Then I controlled the target with the brake. The sleeves were about two feet in diameter, and the banners ban-ners maybe four to f ive feet tall and twenty or thirty feet long. Some days we flew for an hour and a half to two hours 1500 feet above the desert, while ground crews shot .50 caliber machine guns at the target as we came across the range. We'd go as high as 18,000 feet with the B-26s (that was pushing push-ing the B-26), then toss the target out. When we flew in the B-29s, the ground shot 20mms at us at 30,000 feet. I still remember re-member the white puffs coming from the guns as explosions passed by our tail. The gun ners sometimes used proximity fuses at the high altitudes. At tower altitudes, we'd let the targets out at about 1800 feet; at higher altitudes, we would let them out 7500 feet. The tow reel had a meter below the brake, so we could watch it click off the number of feet we let the target out. When we got to the number of feet we wanted to let out. we pulled up a little on the brake to lock it. The cable was made of quarter-inch strands of steel, wrapped in a steel coating, and it was very strong. We could put 10,000 feet of cable on the spool wheel. We'd fly our missions, our targets would be fired at. and sometimes radar would track us. Generally, the ground crew would put up a pattern behind the target, not on the target itself After an hour and a half or two hours, we'd be told. "We're through for the day. May we knock the target off?" The next time we came through the range, they would knock the target off. When the target was cut. the loose end of the cable would go round and round. Then I would do a reverse procedure and start reeling the cable in. When the cable came close, with no angle or stress, and not mixed up with anything. I'd reach down with cutters and cut the end of the cable off. If the cable took a hit and broke, we'd cut off the excess, rwl it back in and hook it on to the next target. It seems to me we would make a U in the cable, bring it round through a ring on the target, and then use a self-pinching self-pinching clamp to complete the U. Then we'd hook it on to the sleeve or banner target. I once went out on the range and watched the ground crews shoot at our targets as the targets came across. I had thought I'd rather be up in the airplane than down on the ground watching, but being on the ground scared me half to death the fact that the ground crews were following in the same direction as the airplane air-plane as it went down range. I'd say the guns were pretty accurate accurate enough that when the gun crews asked permission to knock the target off, the target got knocked off. t Editor's note: Doc Edmonds also sometimes flew to pick up airplane parts, or went on TDY (temporary duty), and he had a real scare in a B-29. The B-29, despite its performance over Japan, had been brought into service prematurely, and so it had its problems. t Don Norton, is a retired BYU professor of English, the former chairman of the Orem Heritage Commission, and currently a researcher for the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project and BYU's partner program Saints at War. If you have a question or comment on usage, e-mail Don Norton at donnortonbyu.edu. Commitment of today's draftees Staff Sgt. Brock Jones When I began looking into joining the Army in 2001, 1 felt like I was on my own in new territory. 1 was well past the age where parental permission was needed need-ed to join NOTES and hadn't FROM IRAQ yet tied any knots creating the need for permission permis-sion from any significant other. I talked to my parents and grandparents, friends and other relatives about my decision deci-sion to join, listened to their expressions of support and concern. But for the most part, the path leading up to the day I left for basic training was one I felt I traveled alone. That all changed the day I left Lehi, boarded a plane for Fort Sill, Okla., and shipped off to basic training. I didn't realize real-ize it then, but the day I joined the Army I unwittingly pulled many platoons worth of people with me into military life. The families and friends of military service members are the only "draftees" in our nation's all-volunteer all-volunteer military. Now nearly through my third year-long deployment to the Middle East I have seen just how much families and friends of service members are involved in the conflicts and battles and firefights that their soldiers endure. They hear of the hardships and difficulties of their soldiers, unable to do much more than attempt to understand. A soldier's family and friends find themselves in the role of concerned and often uninformed supporter, not because be-cause of anything they actively did, but because someone they loved and cared for decided to join the military. In the beginning of the war in Iraq we communicated only by letter and all news both to and from Iraq was at least a month old by the time it was received. Our loved ones back home were starving for word from us as much as we hungered hun-gered for word from them. As time went on, telephones and eventually the Internet became readily available for our use. The communication situation situa-tion in most cases has vastly improved since 2003, but even with the ability for near-daily communication, the difficulties placed on those who support service members is immense. The soldier remains busy and actively engaged, living the day-to-day rigors and dangers and doldrums of deployed life. Those back home, on the other hand, are left to watch and wait for word from the front. Even with the improvements in communication methods many loved ones awaiting news about their soldier have discovered the truth behind the words. "No news is good news." At last count there are currently around 180,000 service members in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. When we begin to talk about the total number of people personally person-ally affected by those deployments, deploy-ments, the numbers don't -begin to tell the whole story. The total number of people affected af-fected by the overseas service of so many American men and women, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters is impossible impos-sible to fully comprehend. For that matter, the total number of Americans affected by the deaths of over 4,000 fighting men and women will never be fully tabulated. We can never completely understand the impact our actions ac-tions can have on others. I will never know how much my decision to join the Army has not only affected me and my wife and daughter, but everyone every-one else in our lives. For my own sanity I probably wouldn't want to know how many "draftees" in the form of family fam-ily and friends I have dragged along with me through the deployments de-ployments and the years since I volunteered to serve. Therein lies a level of commitment com-mitment that will also likely never be fully understood. 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