Comments by Ted McDonald | Eastern North Carolina Now

$540 Million Black History Museum. OK now to have CSA History?

Commented: Sunday, September 25th, 2016 @ 7:40 am By: Ted McDonald

All my technical training is obsolete.

Commented: Friday, September 23rd, 2016 @ 8:09 pm By: Ted McDonald

All Metro Police need these non-lethal weapons.

Commented: Friday, September 23rd, 2016 @ 9:46 am By: Ted McDonald

You can buy Nature DVDs for sleep background sounds.

Commented: Tuesday, September 20th, 2016 @ 11:03 am By: Ted McDonald

You have shown a non-lethal attachment to police pistols. The criminal will not care about grammar.

Commented: Monday, September 19th, 2016 @ 5:48 pm By: Ted McDonald

Deep Thoughts with coffee before Nectorene breaks the silence.

Commented: Monday, September 19th, 2016 @ 7:24 am By: Ted McDonald

Your article adds variety to the BCN menu.

Commented: Thursday, September 15th, 2016 @ 7:12 pm By: Ted McDonald

Email from a Vet: You will get plenty of disdain from combat soldiers for the ARVN soldiers, but I think it may be overdone. South Vietnam was under invasion from the North and the internal Viet Cong. At the same time, it had a corrupt government that most of the citizens of the South did not like.
There are numerous stories about them being cowards but I never had a problem with them. They were not the best trained and many were conscripted from villages.
When we did a Medcap at a village, you rarely saw boys or young men there. They would be conscripted for the ARVN.
I think some of the disdain was anger over us being there fighting for them instead of them fighting for themselves, but it would require a more balanced research project to see how effective they were without the emotion.

Commented: Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 @ 5:58 pm By: Ted McDonald

EMail from a Combat Vet.
It is interesting that the MP in the picture is wearing the old Pineapple grenades that were phased out during late fifties and sixties. It was notorious for unpredictable fuse timing. The timing was between 4 to 5 seconds delay from pin to explosion but frequently it would be shorter and sometimes longer or never explode depending on the age. That puts a new meaning into "cooking a grenade" before throwing it. Because there were so many left over, they were in use for many years by other countries and eventually became paper weights for desk warriors because they looked so cool when John Wayne wore them.

The second thing is the MP is wearing a flak jacket, which is an anti-shrapnel armor vest. It consisted of several layers of ballistic nylon, which was hot as hell. Our joke was that it helped the medic and doctors to see where you were shot when they were working on you. It was good for shrapnel but not bullets.

I never wore one in the field but did wear one after I was assigned to base camp when I went out to the field. It provided a measure of mental comfort kind of like a pacifier and also made me the butt of jokes as another REMF afraid of his shadow.

Commented: Tuesday, September 13th, 2016 @ 8:10 pm By: Ted McDonald

Does punctuation make a story interesting?

Commented: Tuesday, September 13th, 2016 @ 10:27 am By: Ted McDonald

I prefer road trips to flying. No experience yet with bus trips.

Commented: Friday, September 9th, 2016 @ 8:25 pm By: Ted McDonald

Order a truckload for the gangs in Chicago.

Commented: Monday, September 5th, 2016 @ 5:15 pm By: Ted McDonald

BT: The only White guy in the photo is the diversity?

Commented: Monday, September 5th, 2016 @ 11:07 am By: Ted McDonald

Ammo sensitive. Talk to an expert. Learn to fix malfunctions.

Commented: Sunday, September 4th, 2016 @ 1:35 pm By: Ted McDonald

Walther P22. Correction in progress. Walter is incorrect.

Commented: Saturday, September 3rd, 2016 @ 11:21 am By: Ted McDonald

Knowing what you are writing about slows the process. Can you smoke Mimosa?

Commented: Wednesday, August 31st, 2016 @ 4:24 pm By: Ted McDonald

One Reader makes you a Writer. Lower you standards.

Commented: Sunday, August 28th, 2016 @ 10:52 am By: Ted McDonald