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“I don’t have a fear of heights. I do, however, have a fear of falling from heights.”
Comedian George Carlin
Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina. (July 1, 2024): Acrophobia, or simply a fear of heights, is a form of anxiety disorder that causes an irrational sense of doom when one encounters high places for some people. In this photo by Lance Corporal Ayden Cassano, Marine Corps Recruit Jhevon Smith descends a 47-foot rappel tower with a look of both terror and determination on his face.
While a certain amount of fear around heights can be expected, such as the uneasy feeling one gets standing on a bridge or looking down from a tall building. This is normal as most people experience a certain amount of anxiousness around heights. But people with acrophobia experience intense and unreasonable fear when they’re faced with heights, including everyday tasks such as climbing a flight of stairs, standing near a balcony, or parking a car in a multiple-floor parking garage. Sufferers experience rapid heartbeat, dizziness, shortness of breath and a queasy feeling when encountering high places to the extent they can be life limiting.
The military teaches recruits to overcome these fears, and in the bargain, they gain confidence in the equipment and training. That is why rappelling is taught in Basic Training to instill just such confidence.
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Orlando, Florida. (July 4, 2024): Worse than the physical damage of an illness or injury is the sense that future participation in sports is beyond your reach. This is particularly true for America’s injured warriors on their road to recovery. One such warrior is Technical Sergeant (retired) Jessica Derhammer, seen here hugging her kids after medaling in the 2024 Department of Defense Warrior Games (Credit photo by Anthony Beauchamp). Derhammer competed in eight individual sports—powerlifting, cycling, shooting, archery, track and field, swimming, and indoor rowing—for the title of Ultimate Champion. Derhammer has had a long road to recovery after being diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in January 2021.
The Department of Defense Warrior Games is an annual event, first held in 2010, that celebrates the resiliency and dedication of wounded, ill, and injured active duty and veteran service members. This year, the DOW Warrior Games will return to ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida.
The Warrior Games feature “Adaptive Sports,” recreational competition with minor modifications to allow athletes to participate despite their illness or injury. Events and equipment are modified to allow warriors to compete in archery, cycling, volleyball, swimming, track, field, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, shooting, indoor rowing, and powerlifting.
Teams include those with upper-body, lower-body, and spinal cord injuries, as well as warriors suffering from traumatic brain injuries, visual impairment, serious illness, and post-traumatic stress. The U.S. military views adaptive sports as one of many tools to help troops heal and return from injuries. Each service sponsors Care events to help educate injured warriors on adaptability, resiliency, and making the necessary transitions to participate fully in life. Often, these warriors return the favor as ambassadors, care givers, and advocates for adaptive sports.
This year marks the 14th anniversary where athletes from the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Special Operations Command, and the Australian Defense Force come to compete in this adaptive sports competition.
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Baltic Sea. (July 3, 2024): For the first time, Sweden has joined Baltic Operations 24 as a full-fledged member of NATO. In this photo by MC2 Jesse Turner, Marines with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit Special Operations Capable file across the flight deck of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS New York. The 24th is part of the USS Wasp Amphibious Readiness Group that is taking part in this premier exercise for the Baltic region.
Led by U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, twenty NATO nations contributed thirty warships that sailed together in one of the largest maritime formations in history. Allies trained together in a diverse array of operations at sea, in the air, and on land.
The sheer size of the war games is striking. The event was the largest coalition of amphibious forces ever assembled in the Baltic Sea and involved task forces from Latvia, Sweden, Poland, and Germany. The exercise involved more than fifty ships, eighty-five aircraft, and some nine thousand personnel.
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Okinawa, Japan. (June 25, 2024): The Marines have a brand-new vehicle to get from ship to shore and it does so much more. In this photo by Lance Corporal Peyton Kahle, the Marines’ latest Amphibious Combat Vehicles (AAV) attached to Alpha Company, Battalion Landing Team 1/5, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, conduct waterborne operations at White Beach Naval Facility here. Designed to replace the Corps aging AAVs that went into service in 1972, this updated version will be the primary means of tactical mobility and direct fire support for infantry battalions into the future.
The new transports come in four configurations: personnel carrier, command and control, recovery, and a 30mm gun variety.
The Personnel Variant (ACV-P) can carry three crewmembers and up to thirteen Marines with two days of combat equipment and supplies. It has the latest armor to protect against blasts, fragmentation, and kinetic energy threats.
The second configuration is designed for combat Command and Control (ACV-C)
that features multiple workstations and advanced digital communications capabilities. This variant provides a modernized, armor protected tactical command post for the regiment or battalion.
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Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. (July 5, 2024): It has been twenty-eight years since the shock and horror of the Khobar Towers bombing but the sense of loss remains. In this photo by Senior Airman Briana Beavers, Airman 1st Class Bobbie Mills places a rose to honor a fallen Airman during a memorial ceremony held here this week. According to Air Force tradition, placing a flower at the feet of the service member’s boots recognizes and honors their lost lives.
On June 25, 1996, Hezbollah terrorists detonated a truck bomb outside the gates to Khobar Towers, a residential housing complex used by the U.S. Air Force. Personnel belonging to the 4404th Wing, a rescue and fighter squadron, were participating in Operation Southern Watch that operated a no-fly zone operation in southern Iraq. The attackers were reported to have smuggled explosives into Saudi Arabia from Lebanon and then loaded them onto a sanitation truck. The explosion contained the equivalent of 30,000 pounds of TNT creating a blast so powerful it was felt twenty miles away in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.
In all, nineteen Airmen were killed, and another 498 personnel of many nationalities were wounded. In 2006, a U.S. court found Iran and Hezbollah guilty of orchestrating the attack and in 2020 ordered Iran to pay $879 million to the Khobar bombing survivors.
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Colony Glacier, Alaska. (June 4, 2024): It’s a guarantee to every servicemember; America will never quit looking for you if you are missing… ever. In this photo by Technical Sergeant Don Hudson, Captain Travis Lockwood, Operation Colony Glacier deputy ground forces commander, and Lieutenant Colonel Crystal A. Glaster, Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations deputy commander, trek across the site of a 1952 crash of a C-124 Globemaster II aircraft that took the lives of all fifty-two people on board. Captain Lockwood leads Operation Colony Glacier, an annual summer expedition seeking the remains of the crash victims. Colonel Glaster coordinates Air Force search efforts while collaborating with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command that is charged with recovery of missing servicemembers. Teams of military and civilian personnel defy the elements to uphold our nation's pledge to leave no service member behind.
On a stormy night on November 22, 1952, a Douglas C-124 Globemaster II military transport aircraft issued a distress call which was received by a nearby commercial pilot. The Globemaster was flying without visual references and was using altitude readings, a radio beacon, and a stopwatch for navigation. There was no further communication from the C-124, and it failed to arrive at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage. The plane had a crew of 11 and 41 Army and Air Force passengers.