The Monument at 97 12th Avenue: QMN059
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Monday, 9 September
(This week’s report is a short 6 minute read - more next week)
BLUF: The America’s Response Monument - also known as the Horse Soldier - has the significance of being the first and only Special Forces monument accessible to the general public. Built from inspiration and gradually-gained knowledge, it’s a unique monument among war memorials. It’s placed up high, supposedly overwatching the 9/11 Memorial, but it’s hard to know it’s there unless you’re looking for it. It’s got an interesting backstory, and from the media released over the past few years, you may already know some of it.
Brady here. As we come up on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks - an event that fully shaped my life for well over a decade - there’s a substory that’s worth looking at. The America’s Response Monument - also known as the Horse Soldier - located just steps from where the World Trade Center stood, has an interesting backstory. Built from inspiration and gradually-gained knowledge, it’s a unique monument.
The imposing 16-foot bronze statue itself is hidden behind an as-yet-unfinished Greek Orthodox shrine that was destroyed in the attacks, at the back of a small park, just southwest of the 9/11 Memorial South Pool. The monument is placed up high, supposedly overwatching the 9/11 Memorial, but it’s hard to know it’s there unless you’re looking for it.
The sculptor is Douwe Blumberg, a Lexington, Kentucky based artist with over 200 private and public commissions, who also spent 18 years as a horse trainer. In an article for the Special Forces Association’s The Drop magazine, Blumberg explained he first started the monument based on a grainy photograph shown by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in late 2001 that showed Green Berets from Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595 riding on horseback with the Northern Alliance in the Darya Suf Valley. Blumberg began the project of his own accord with a very limited knowledge of Green Beret equipment at the time, but with what you can imagine was an expert’s knowledge of horse physiology. Not long after beginning, Blumberg was spotted working on the project at an art show by a Vietnam era Green Beret, who eventually introduced him to the team he had seen on television, who’d just returned home.
Blumberg met the members of ODA 595 and got to find out personally what their equipment looked like - and not just the gear on the soldier but the gear on the horse as well. As he updated his sculpture to be more accurate, he built a few special details into the image - like a barely-visible wedding ring (all but one of the Green Berets on ODA 595 were married with at least 2 kids) and decided not to have the soldier bearded despite the reality of teams in Afghanistan to this day (Green Berets get special permission to grow facial hair well beyond what’s allowed in Army regulations in order to fit in with Afghan tribal leaders). Blumberg said he didn't want the soldier to look like a “hobo on a horse”.
Blumberg’s first bronze casting was 18 inches tall and weighed 70lbs. He sold copies privately including a more affordable 9 inch replica. But his work gained popularity and within a few years he was in talks with private benefactors about making a much larger statue in New York City. Eventually he worked to get it enlarged for installation in NYC, and incidentally one of the foundry owners who did the enlarging himself is the Gold Star Father of fallen Green Beret Sergeant Jason Palmerton, a communications sergeant from 3rd Special Forces Group.
The full size statue went up on Veterans Day in 2011 with a large contingent of Green Berets in attendance and was dedicated by Vice President Joe Biden and Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, commander of US Army Special Operations Command. It was placed in Liberty Park and re-dedicated on September 11th, 2016 with a similar crowd. It sees a commemoration event every year on the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, which you should be able to see on Wednesday the 11th if you check in at 7:30AM Eastern on the live cam.
The America’s Response Monument also has the significance of being the first and only Special Forces monument accessible to the general public. Others including the Special Warfare Memorial Statue (aka Bronze Bruce) and the Bull Simons Special Forces Memorial are both behind the gates at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and therefore off limits to most Americans.
Anyone who wants to learn more about the team that both inspired and informed the creation of the monument has a lot of media to which they can turn. ODA 595 was the focus of Robin Moore’s Hunt for Bin Laden book as well as Doug Stanton’s 2009 book Horse Soldiers, which inspired the movie 12 Strong. The website History Vs. Hollywood actually does an excellent job explaining the accuracy of the film. And as every retired Green Beret wishes he could, Detachment Commander Mark Nutsch and Assistant Detachment Commander Bob Pennington now own American Freedom Distillery in St. Petersburg, Florida and sell an award winning set of Horse Soldier bourbons. (BJM)
*****
RIDDLED: Green Beret Survives Multiple Gunshots, Escapes Death (7 min) “I have vivid memories of laying there almost helpless and being concerned about a building across the valley that had direct access to our team. If someone was to shoot from there, we were pretty exposed. I remember directing some people on the team and having them take that out with a large bomb,” he said. US air support then arrived to destroy attacking insurgents; shrapnel from a bomb mistakenly struck Behr, perforating his intestines. When confronting what he thought was certain death, Behr thought of his fellow soldiers and family back home in Illinois. “There was a point where I thought I was going to leave this world. At one point I thought I was not going to make it, so I said a prayer to myself and felt a calm come over me. Then, all of a sudden, Ron Shurer, the medic on our team, slapped me across the face and said ‘wake up you are not going to die today,’” he said. (BJM)
WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE?: Three SEAL Team Leaders Fired for Breakdowns in Discipline (2 min) “Friday’s action was spurred by how the leaders dealt with actions by Team Seven’s Foxtrot platoon, Commander Lawrence said. The platoon was abruptly removed from Iraq in late July after reports of serious misconduct during a Fourth of July celebration. Officials did not release any details at the time. But a senior Navy official with knowledge of the matter said the Navy was investigating reports that the platoon held a Fourth of July party in which a senior enlisted member of the platoon raped a female service member attached to the platoon, another SEAL made unwanted sexual contact with a second female service member and some team members consumed alcohol against regulations.”(BJM)
UNHEARD OF: On the Surprising Benefits of an Un-Mobile Phone (5 min) “In more detail, Brady leaves behind his phone each day when he heads off to campus to take classes and study, allowing him to complete his academic work without distraction. As Brady reports, on returning home, usually around 6:00 pm, “I will spend 20 minutes or so responding to emails, texts, and the like.” Then comes the important part of his plan: after this check, he leaves his phone plugged into the outlet — rendering it literally tethered to the wall. His goal was to reclaim the evening leisure hours he used to lose to “mindlessly browsing the internet.” Here’s Brady’s description of his life before he detached himself from his phone: “I would just rotate between Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube for hours. I was never even looking for anything in particular, I was just hooked on endless low-quality novel stimuli. I felt like there was so much wasted potential…I didn’t want to get old and realize that my life was spent scrolling on a backlit screen for 4 hours a day.”” (BJM)
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)