by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Euro Revolution in Kiev Sunday 1st of December 2013

No Movement without Provocation

Owned since 1979, my first Ducati single, affectionately known as ‘The Piranha’ – will bite with no provocation whatsoever.

photo by Alan Kempster for Ayr Classic Motorcycle Club.

This marker is a reminder that although the hostilities have stopped on the Korean peninsula, skirmishes continue to occur for the slightest provocations.

On August 18th, 1976, a group of American and South Korean soldiers showed up to trim a poplar tree standing on this spot that had blocked visibility to a nearby southern watchpost. The trimming was scheduled, and North Korea had been notified. Nevertheless, North Korean commander demanded the stopping of the trimming, claiming that the tree had been personally planted by Kim Il-sung. When Captain Arthur Bonifas, in charge of the trimming, ignored the demand, 20 North Koreans crossed over the Bridge of No Return in a truck, attacked the southern soldiers, and using the dropped axes, murdered Capt. Bonifas and First Lt. Mark Barrett and injured the rest of the party.

In the wake, the US and South Korea launched Operation Paul Bunyan to cut the tree down to stumps; the stumps, initially left as a reminder of the incident, were finally removed in 1987 and replaced with this marker.

Further changes to the JSA included concrete barriers on Bridge of No Return to disallow vehicular passage, as well as regulations prohibiting the soldiers of each side from crossing over into the jurisdiction of the opposing side, which had been tolerated until then. This also necessitated that as North Korea had been using the Bridge of No Return and going through the southern sector to staff its JSA checkpoints, it had to build a new bridge, the 72-Hour Bridge, to access its sector from that point on.

The axe used to kill Capt. Bonifas is now exhibited at DPRK Peace Museum, a kilometer into North Korean territory. And the forward US Army base leading to the JSA, previously named Camp Kitty Hawk, was renamed Camp Bonifas. Capt. Bonifas was also given a posthumous promotion to the rank of Major.

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

xelivisation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/provocation-nurse-dre...

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”

Philipp Gartlehner of the Ars Electronica Center planted barley with the heilp of the Life Support system and after three months, the harvest was ready to be brought in. The cost for growing one square meter of barley indoors accounted for the massive amount of 430 Euro. Another reason why we really have to take care for our ecosystem.

Photo: Ars Electronica - Martin Hieslmair

Looking over those in the smoked-glass hall as they look over Mapplethorpe's "Magic" selections.

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

.seen @ public provocations*

Call me Snake offers an optimistic provocation – ‘imagine what could be here’ by Judy Millar. On a walk into the city October 3, 2015 Christchurch New Zealand.

The work is comprised of vibrant graphics of Millar’s looped paintings, which are adhered to five intersecting flat planes, and draws inspiration from the forms found in pop-up books. The colourful piece will add a dramatic and rhythmic counterpoint to the city’s current urban landscape — a mix of flattened sites, construction zones and defiant buildings that have stood through the quakes. The work employs theatricality, playfulness and visual trickery, whereby the viewer is unsure about the work’s flatness or three-dimensionality; and it has been designed to offer a different perspective from each angle. The bright colours interrupt the grey of the work’s surrounds, and as buildings pop up around it,

SCAPE 8, New Intimacies curated by Rob Garrett was a contemporary art event which mixed new artworks with existing legacy pieces, an education programme, and a public programme of events. The SCAPE 8 artworks were located around central Christchurch and linked via a public art walkway. All aspects of SCAPE 8 were free-to-view.

The title for the 2015 Biennial – New Intimacies – came from the idea that visually striking and emotionally engaging public art works can create new connections between people and places. Under the main theme of New Intimacies there are three other themes that artists responded to: Sight-Lines, Inner Depths and Shared Strengths.

For more Info: www.scapepublicart.org.nz/scape-8-judy-millar

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Provocation against "Femen" that says: "let's bomb femen-cunts' assholes with spunk". It comes after a member of that organization called for bombing Dresden again for being place of huge right-wing demonstrations for months on. Dresden has been bombed in 1945 by British and other allied air forces after the WW II has already been decided, for taking revenge on German civilians. More than than 25,000 were killed in indiscriminate shellings at night.

This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. It is common to use economic metaphors, which entail specific understandings of value, to describe our relationships with society, the world, and the biosphere. Today’s prevailing economic conventions are unable to recognize the intrinsic value of the ecosystems on which all life depends. In cultures overdetermined by concepts from economics, we are left without adequate discursive instruments to socially or politically address the importance of ecosystem contribution to life on Earth. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over exploited “work of the biosphere.”

Credit: Life Support System, artwork and photo: DISNOVATION.ORG

All sides in the Northern Ireland peace process should refrain from “dangerous mutual provocation” urged European Parliament President Martin Schulz in his opening address at its October session.

Mr Schulz urged all parties to the Northern Ireland peace process to continue contributing to a peaceful solution and thus to the new round of talks launched on 16 October. He said that the European Parliament is willing to act as an honest broker to support the process of building stable institutions and a thriving economy, so that all the people of Northern Ireland can look forward to a safe and prosperous future.

www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20141016...

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

.

.

STUDENTS' FEDERATION OF INDIA ALL INDIA STUDENTS' FEDERATION .

24 09 2002 .

DOWN WITH ABVP GOEBBLESIAN PROPAGANDA ! .

DOWN WITH THE OPPORTUNISM OF NSUI & AISA II .

.

The s_FI-~ISF condemns in strongest p~ssible ~erms. the _infiltration and indiscriminate firing by 2-3 terronst m Akshar Dham Temple, Gandhmagar m wh1ch SIX persons have been killed, 40 injured and another hundred expose to life threatening condition within the premise of the temple as per the latest reports available on News Channel. The army has moved in and all efforts need to be made to prevent any further casualty of innocent people. We urge upon all to remain vigilant and maintain .

peace and communal harmony in the face of such provocation. .

.

Friends, ABVP-the organisation which has time and again exr0sed itself as an organisation of lumpens and communal, .

casteist and patriarchal elements, has once again embarkei; upon rabidly misleading campaigns among the student comn:unity. They have been shamelessly absent. from all legltir;:ate democratic activities of the JNUSU throughout the year -be 1t the UGBM on 27.2.02, the 4-day long stnke on the Xth Plan and the JNUSU charter of demands in April-2002, the struggle against the deliberate delay in the appointment of JNU's Vice-Chancellor by the HRD Ministry, or the numerous .

protests, processions and demonstrations against the JNU Administration throughout the last and this semester. .

True to the nature of their ancestors and bosses from the RSS-BJP who have always played the role of saboteurs and disrupters of the united struggles of the common Indian people, right from the days of the freedom struggle where the RSS supported the British and the likes of A. B. Vajpayee wrote submissive letters to the British Courts; to the Emergency where their leaders wrote letters apology to Indira Gandhi from jail; to the present times where the BJP-Ied NDA government represents nothing but the unapologetic loot and plunder of the country's resources through successive scams and the state-sponsored spread of communal violence and ideology among the people of our country; the ABVP, too, has not missed out on even a single chance to try and disrupt the unity of the student community against the onslaught of anti-student policies of privatisation and saffronisation of education. .

In the last semester, just a day after the UGBM on the X Plan proposals where students unanimously condemned the killing of 59 people in the Sabarmati Express in Godhra and the JNUSU brought out a silent march to condemn the brutal killings, the ABVP brought out an extremely provocative and communal procession in the campus and completely exposed the1r barbaric and violent character befc.te the student commun1ty. They even went to the extent of shouting abuses outside of houses of faculty members belo~1ging to the minority community. They agam opposed the movement by the JNUSU against the delay by the HRD-Ministry in appoint1ng a long overdue Vice-Chancellor to JNU, thereby, showing their connivance with the politically motivated designs of their RSS-BJP bosses 1n the government against JNU. In this semester, they indulged 1n the most brazen attack on the JNUSU office bearers and girl students on the night of 1oth August, 2002, at the behest of the1r VHP-Ieader Ashok Singhal, who has been spreading communal venom in different parts of our country. Subsequently, the cour'lcilcr« from SES deliberately absen.ted themselves from three successive Council Meetings called on 21/8/02, 25/8/02 and 5/9/02 in order to consciously prevent any formal council .

meeting from taking place on the issue of violence and saffronisation-privatisation of JNU through the X Plan proposals. .

However, 1t is to the credit of the student community of JNU, that inspite of all these disruptive efforts by the ABVP on campus, the students of JNU have time and again risen in defense of our secular culture under the banner of the JNUSU and united to build democratic students' movements against anti-student policies and measures. The bankrupt policies and ideology of the ABVP stands completely exposed before the student community today, and it is only in order to hide their complete inactivity and isolation among the common students of JNU that the ABVP is now desperately trying to create imaginary enemies out of institutions like the GSCASH and do shadow-boxing against "imagined" statements allegedly made by GSCASH members. Such crude attempts to spread confusion among the student community by successively repeating the same lies about GSCASH members who were not present in the JNUSU Public Meeting or who did not speak in the same would even put Hitler's propaganda minister Goebbles to shame. We warn the ABVP against taking the consciousness of the student community for granted. Such diversionary tactics cannot hide the fact that the ABVP has been completely inactive on students' issues on campus except for occasions of inc1t1ng or indulging in violence or spreading communal-patriarchal and reactionary ideology among the student community. .

While the ABVP understandably cannot understand the significance of the advances made by the recent JNUSU agitation against the saffronisation-privatisation of JNU through the X Plan Proposals and on several other issues like the Mahi-Mandavi Mess, better library-internet facilities, scholurshlps, transportation etc., the opportunism of organizations like the NSUI or AI SA in trying to misguide the student community about the recent JNUSU agitation shows the extent to which these organizations are prepared to go to undermine the gains made by the student community for scoring narrow political points. The NSUI has comfortably forgotten its absence from all struggles led by the JNUSU for the last several years and is now trying to apologise for its absence from the JNUSU agit::~tion for the umpteenth time by calling this agitation an .

.

" elect1on g1mmick. The NSUI, 1s effectively strengthening the hands of the ABVP on campus, as 1t has done in the recent DUSU elections in Delhi University. The AISA on the other hand, participated in the agitation but has started its old refrain of "compromises" and "betrayals" by the JNUSU. We would advise the AISA to behave more responsibly in the face of the serious attacks by the forces of obscurantism and communalism. We would also advise the AISA not to trivialise the significant achievements made by the JNUSU in the fight against saffronisation and refrain from confusing the student community through the jugglery of semantics and semiotics. .

The SFI-AISF once again congratulates the JNUSU for launching a determined agitation against saffronisation and privatization of JNU and making significant advances in defence of the academic character of JNU and for students' rights. .

.

LONG LIVE STUDENTS' STRUGGLE ! .

Sd/- Sdi- .

lndranil Chowdhury Shamshad A . Khan .

Secretary, SFI-JNU Secretary, AISF-JNU .

.

.

.

.

.

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Nikon D200, nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 D

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Photo de men underwear

Networked Fabrication for Urban Provocations.

Shifting Paradigms from Mass Production to Mass Customization

Computational architecture and design course

amorphica.com/networked.html

Conventional construction methods all depart from the basic premises of mass production: standardization, modulation and a production line. What these systems developed during the last two centuries fail to take into account are the evolutionary leaps and bounds the manufacturing industry has taken over the last decades. With the introduction of CNC technologies and rapid prototyping machines have altered the paradigms of fabrication forever. It is due to these new tools that it is now possible to create (n) amount of completely unique and different pieces with the same amount of energy and material that is required to create (n) identical pieces. The possibilities for implementation of new forms, textures, materials and languages are infinite due to the versatility that these new tools offer a growing network of architects, designers, fabricators that are integrating them into their professional practices to generate unique and precise objects that respond to countless data and real-life conditions.

Instructors:

Monika Wittig [ LaN, IaaC ]

Shane Salisbury [ LaN, IaaC ]

Filippo Moroni [ SOLIDO, Politecnico di Milano ]

MS Josh Updyke [ Advanced Manufacturing Institute, KSU, Protei ]

Aaron Gutiérrez Cortes [ Amorphica ]

All sides in the Northern Ireland peace process should refrain from “dangerous mutual provocation” urged European Parliament President Martin Schulz in his opening address at its October session.

Mr Schulz urged all parties to the Northern Ireland peace process to continue contributing to a peaceful solution and thus to the new round of talks launched on 16 October. He said that the European Parliament is willing to act as an honest broker to support the process of building stable institutions and a thriving economy, so that all the people of Northern Ireland can look forward to a safe and prosperous future.

www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20141016...

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For bigger HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Nikon D200, nikkor 180mm f/2.8 AF D

The artistic provocation "Life Support System" seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes.

This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored, and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over-exploited “work of the biosphere.”

Photo: Ars Electronica - Robert Bauernhansl

Networked Fabrication for Urban Provocations.

Shifting Paradigms from Mass Production to Mass Customization

Computational architecture and design course

amorphica.com/networked.html

Conventional construction methods all depart from the basic premises of mass production: standardization, modulation and a production line. What these systems developed during the last two centuries fail to take into account are the evolutionary leaps and bounds the manufacturing industry has taken over the last decades. With the introduction of CNC technologies and rapid prototyping machines have altered the paradigms of fabrication forever. It is due to these new tools that it is now possible to create (n) amount of completely unique and different pieces with the same amount of energy and material that is required to create (n) identical pieces. The possibilities for implementation of new forms, textures, materials and languages are infinite due to the versatility that these new tools offer a growing network of architects, designers, fabricators that are integrating them into their professional practices to generate unique and precise objects that respond to countless data and real-life conditions.

Instructors:

Monika Wittig [ LaN, IaaC ]

Shane Salisbury [ LaN, IaaC ]

Filippo Moroni [ SOLIDO, Politecnico di Milano ]

MS Josh Updyke [ Advanced Manufacturing Institute, KSU, Protei ]

Aaron Gutiérrez Cortes [ Amorphica ]

If this is how your lovely lady acts out her inner Bettie Page while she's busy doing house cleaning, then perhaps you'd do well to bring your lovely lady to the Las Vegas Strip where she can more appropriately 'Get Notorious.' This nifty lingerie shop at Caesars Palace would be an excellent fashion pit-stop for Lusty High Adventure and Hot Action. What do you think...

You must not be bashful of encouraging your very lovely lady to explore or to re-discover her inner Bettie Page or Vesper Lynd for perhaps she may in turn inspire you to explore or re-discover your inner Elmer Batters or Ernest Hemingway. Can You Dig It!!

by Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Rojek

Defense Media Activity

5/4/2012 - FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Walking almost 90 miles, 36 Airmen completed the Air Advisor Memorial Ruck March from New York City to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., April 26-27.

The march, which started at One World Trade Center and ended at the Air Advisor Academy, was in remembrance of the deaths of nine U.S. air advisors in Afghanistan.

On the morning of April 27, 2011, an Afghan Air Force lieutenant colonel walked into the Afghan Air Command and Control Center at the Kabul Air Command Headquarters and, without warning or provocation, opened fire, killing eight active-duty U.S. Airmen and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. Those nine service members came from various bases and specialties, but were working together for a common mission: advising the Afghan military.

"It was a unique situation," said Lt. Col. J.D. Scott II, the march coordinator and chief of core knowledge at the Air Advisor Academy. "It didn't happen for a particular base. It didn't happen for a particular squadron or base or even for a particular (Air Force Specialty Code).

"Because of that, remembering their sacrifice may not have been captured as a whole," Scott continued. "The individual would have been honored at their base, but the mission of the entire of the team would not have been recognized."

Since all of the nine went through the Air Advisor Academy, Col. John Holm, the academy's commandant, decided that would be the place to honor their sacrifice as a team, Scott said. Holm made plans to create a physical memorial, but a plethora of obstacles made it impossible to complete the memorial by the one year anniversary of the tragic event. One of the obstacles was funding.

Holm and his team came up with idea of a ruck march to both honor the fallen air advisors and act as a fundraiser to help build the physical memorial. Scott was put in charge of organizing the march and, in just two weeks, succeeded in gathering people from Dover AFB, Del., to Eielson AFB, Alaska, for the march. Each marcher knew at least one of the nine fallen air advisors in some way.

"Master Sgt. Tara Brown and Maj. Phil Ambard both lived three and four doors down from me in the dorms," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Christiansen, a photographer with the 145th Airlift Wing in Charlotte, N.C., who was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan at the same time as the air advisors. "Both were incredibly friendly people. And I met several of them (the morning of the shooting) as I walked into my building and opened the door and they walked out."

Those personal connections to the fallen service members and their families drew the 36 marchers together, Scott said.

"They were coming in from all over," he said. "That's kind of representative of the nine that we lost. They came from all over the Air Force to serve a single mission as an air advisor. So the marchers that were honoring them came from all over the Air Force to remember them."

Each paid their own way to New York City to honor their fallen friends and show their families that they haven't forgotten their loved one's sacrifice. The event also drew in another 14 volunteers to help with everything from transportation to food to health and care coverage.

The marchers were broken up into four teams, each set to march three legs of 7.3 miles. During their leg, each marcher carried a ruck sack with a paver stone inside, each stone engraved with the name of a fallen air advisor and to be laid at the memorial on JB MDL.

Holm and his nine-person team kicked off the march at 9:11 a.m. April 26. However, rather than just start off near ground zero, the colonel wanted to do something more for his fallen comrades.

"We wanted to honor them by doing something significant, and to me starting at the top of the World Trade Center was it," Holm said. "We had those ruck sacks on the entire tour. It was all symbolic and important to us in our own personal, different ways. For me, it was probably the biggest single gesture we could do short of opening up (the academy's) memorial ourselves."

The significance of the march touched a lot of people along the way, starting with the One World Trade Center steel workers, who gave the Airmen a standing ovation as they marched through the structure. Other people along their route also showed their appreciation by stopping to give hugs, encouragement, thanks and even money toward the memorial.

As they traveled by foot from New York to New Jersey, state and local police departments provided escort, each district calling the next to inform them of what the Airmen were doing, Holm said. The marchers were even given a chance to rest and eat at the fire departments in both Elizabeth, N.J., and Jersey City, N.J. It was a sign of support of both the Airmen marching and the fallen air advisors, he said.

When the fourth team finished their last leg, the marchers were 1.1 miles from the construction site of the Air Advisor Memorial on JB MDL. All 36 marchers gathered together in formation and made their way through the base gate. What met them there was surprise to all.

"Security forces closed down the road and gave us police escort in," Scott said. "There were numerous amounts of people from the front gate to the memorial lining the street on both sides, just cheering us on in.

"The fact that the base community just embraces us and cheered us in on those final steps, it's very inspiring," he added.

It was an emotional moment for Christiansen as well. He was present at the base when the air advisors were killed and attended their dignified transfer ceremony. However, each person was laid to rest in different locations around the U.S., so he never got to have closure.

Christiansen said the real impact came when he saw the road signs leading to the installation. "That's when it really started to hit in not that we're all going to do this, but this is for real. We've done this for the families, we've done this for our fallen brothers and sister. It was pretty easy to get caught up in the emotion there.

"The ceremony of laying the bricks down was really powerful," he added. "It brought some serious closure."

For Chaplain Maj. Eric Boyer, who said the opening prayer for the stone laying ceremony, it was a bittersweet chance to pay tribute to two of the officers that he had a connection to.

"It makes me proud to know that their sacrifice will be honored and will be remembered," he said. "Every Air Advisor who comes through the academy here is going to recognize the price that has been paid by their predecessors."

Prior to entering military service, Boyer knew Lt. Col. Frank Bryant from their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., where he served as Bryant's wrestling coach.

Boyer also served as squadron chaplain for Maj. Jeffery Ausborn while at Joint Base San Antonio in 2011, but had already changed duty station's to JB MDL when he got the word about Ausborn's death. His biggest regret was not being able to preside over his funeral service.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to say something to honor his memory here, since I wasn't able to speak at his memorial ceremony back at his home station," he said.

While the ruck march and stone-laying ceremony brought some closure for Christiansen and others, the construction of the memorial itself is still ongoing. However, between the pledges for the marchers, donations received during the march as well as T-shirt and brick sales, Holm estimated that the team has raised almost $10,000 toward the memorial just through this one event.

"We have that feeling that we did the right thing just by honoring our comrades, regardless of what money we raised," Holm said. "That was a tremendous feeling."

The Air Advisor Memorial is scheduled to be unveiled July 27. For more information on the memorial, visit www.airadvisormemorial.org

Otra foto de está misma serie

Mikel Uzkudun Carrizo

Multimedia Designer

contact@mikeluzkudun.com

www.mikeluzkudun.com

On golden rod covered in pollen eating another insect. These hornets are aggressive and will sting repeatedly with little or no provocation - thankfully something I didn't know when I was photographing this one. If you have time please view in large and/or original for more detail.