Flak Quotes

Flak accounted for far more air crew casualties than German fighters and took down more American planes than the fighters.

Yet, all armor—from a lobster’s shell to a Navy SEAL’s flak jacket—ultimately reveals the same truth. All armor highlights vulnerability. It trumpets the fact that below that hard exterior lies an interior that is soft, fragile, and in need of protection.

That will be her undoing," gasped Artemis, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. "Artemis Fowl will never be secondary." "I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?" said Holly.

She can't afford to commit more troops,' Holly whispered. 'The gate is her priority, and she needs to have as many Berserkers watching her back as possible. We are secondary at this point.' 'That will be her undoing,' Artemis gasped, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. 'Artemis Fowl will never be secondary.' 'I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?' said Holly.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died.

I was stuck back on “you can’t have two maids of honor” and therefore fighting back hyperventilation at the same time flashing pictures filled my head of a commando-style wedding; Hawk in black cargos, me in a white flak jacket festooned with lace. The picture of me carrying a bouquet of flowers and Hawk carrying an automatic weapon. The picture of me admiring Hawk’s huge-ass hunting knife. The picture of Hawk carrying me out of the reception in a fireman’s hold while bullets flew and flames caused by Molotov cocktails danced on the dance floor.

Tell me about your boyfriend. He must be pretty special. You’re taking a lot of flak for being with him.

The crucial thing here is not to listen to your mind. Your mind has got its basic communication lines crossed. If you try to fly in this flak you will shoot down your own aircraft. Keep close to yourself...fly under your own radar. Let the anti-aircraft guns discharge their ammunition into the plaid sky. Steal home, undetected even by yourself. Whatever you do, in this state, don't think.

Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar.

Just take your flak jackets and some gear because we’ll be back for dinner.

What are you, some kind of bullet magnet? You two ever consider wearing flak jackets 24/7?

Structural factors are those such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means. The propaganda model also incorporates other closely related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment of news (that is, produce “flak”), to provide “experts” to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.1 In our view, the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers of the news, and that produce flak and proper-thinking experts, also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies. We believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis. These structural factors that dominate media operations are not allcontrolling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results.

Himara Lagur syt' i zu qepalla, s'kanë të hapen në jetë, se në ato vise të rralla fluturon shpirti shigjetë! Atje, ah! gjelbëron fryma; n'ato male ar të lara ku mbi re shkrep vetëtima, shkruan me zjarr: -Flak' është Himara!

One advantage to being a despised species is that you have freedom, freedom to be any crazy thing you want. If you listen to a group of housewives talk, you'll hear a lot of nonsense, some of it really crazy. This comes, I think, from being alone so much, and pursuing your own odd train of thought without impediment, which some call discipline. The result is craziness, but also brilliance. Ordinary women come out with the damnedest truth. You ignore them at your own risk. And they are permitted to go on making wild statements without being put in one kind of jail or another (some of them, anyway) because everyone knows they're crazy and powerless too. If a woman is religious or earthy, passive or wildly assertive, loving or hating, she doesn't get much more flak than if she isn't: her choices lie between being castigated as a ball and chain or as a whore.

The radar directed flak intensifies. Like swarms of angry red-and-yellow-eyed snakes slithering up invisible ropes in the sky. The sky around them is a glittering maelstrom of light. The stars pale into insignificance. Down below the city is lit up in sections as shockwaves fan out in kaleidoscopic bursts. Shell smoke rising up from the ground. On his right a burst of flame and a thick guttering of black smoke lit up by the geometry of the searchlights.

The press in New York has tended to favor New Society in every period, and to take it seriously, if only because it provides "news.

It got to be an American custom, like talk shows, Face the Nation, marriage counseling, marathon encounters, or zoning hearings.

Hvorfor snakket de egentlig høyt om dette? Uansett, det var flaks for meg som ikke visste all bakgrunnshistorien deres fra før. Ehe.

For some, a hero wears a spandex suit and a cape. My heroes wear flak jackets, flight suits, and combat boots.

The people closest to you routinely catch the flak thrown off by the explosive stuff you normally work so hard to keep hidden.

Pappas was so affected by this sudden horror that he never again took off his flak jacket. It was reported to me that he always wore his jacket and hard helmet even while showering.

Rule two: The angrier an expert becomes, the more likely they are to be wrong (when the flak is at its greatest you know you are nearing the target). An angry expert is a wrong expert.

The Playboy Foundation provided $10,000—and the use of Playboy’s offices as an assembly line, where volunteers, mostly senior citizens, were provided with foldout tables and free coffee and sandwiches while building the first of these revolutionary kits. “I took a lot of flak from the women’s movement—but too bad,” Goddard says. “If it was Penthouse or Hustler, no. But Playboy? Please, give me a break.

There was nothing green left; artillery had denuded and scarred every inch of ground. Tiny flares glowed and disappeared. Shrapnel burst with bluish white puffs. Jets of flamethrowers flickered and here and there new explosions stirred up the rubble. While I watched, an American observation plane droned over the Japanese lines, spotting targets for the U.S. warships lying offshore. Suddenly the little plane was hit by flak and disintegrated. The carnage below continued without pause. Here I was safe, but tomorrow I would be there. In that instant I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.

The Afghans and their international guards made a show of clearing a patch of poppies right outside the base gate--a patch they had been saving to show off for the media and top Kabul luminaries, a patch with limited risk of attack. A man from the U.S. embassy, thrilled to be outside, wore a patch on his flak vest: AMERICA, FUCK YEAH, it said, quoting the movie Team America. Was there a better description for what we were trying to do here? If so, I had yet to hear it.

That was where he wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some goddam cantilevered goldfish in some goddam cantilevered goldfish bowl while the goddam foul black tiers of flak were bursting and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire.

The Afghanis converted from Buddhism and some of the greatest Muslims came out of that Buddhist tradition. In fact Balkh was a center for Buddhist logic and those logicians became Muslim and introduced interestingly enough into Islamic theology some Buddhist logical formations that dont exist in Greek logic. Greek logic does not have a "neither A nor B" type scenario whereas Nagarjunian logic which is Buddhist logic does. In traditional Islamic theology you have situations where they do have that "neither A nor B". [...] I can't say "definitely" but I really believe that it does come out of the influence that the Buddhist logicians had on Islam. I actually wrote a paper “how the Buddhists saved Islam” which was about that but somebody said [...] [do not submit it] as you will get too much flak. (audio)

Four years of occupation, and the roar of oncoming bombers is the roar of what? Deliverance? Extirpation? The clack-clack of small-arms fire. The gravelly snare drums of flak. A dozen pigeons roosting on the cathedral spire cataract down its length and wheel out over the sea.

This past soccer season, the league in which my son and daughter were playing had to make up two games due to rain (the price of living in Houston). The consensus in the league was that Sunday was the only available day, so the makeup games were scheduled for Sunday afternoon. My family and I sat down to discuss the matter, but no discussion was really necessary. There was no way we were going to participate. Sunday is the Lord's Day, and playing youth soccer games on Sunday makes a definite statement about the priorities in a community. Interestingly, the most flak from our decision came not from the irreligious people involved but from Christians! “You can go to church, then run home and change for the game,” one man said. One of my children's coaches added, “I'd be glad to pick them up if there is somewhere you have to be.” Nobody seemed to get it. We weren't making a decision based on the hectic nature of our Sunday schedule, nor was it a question of our adhering to a legalistic requirement handed down from our denomination. It was a matter of principle. Sunday is more than just another day. Youth sports leagues are great, but they are not sacred; Sunday is! Again, I do not believe that there is a legalistic requirement not to play games on a Sunday. Nor do I believe that the policeman, fireman, or airline mechanic who goes in to work on Sunday is out of the will of God. I do, however, think that there is a huge difference between someone whose job requires working on Sunday and a soccer league that just doesn't care.

...and now, in the season of the Radical Chic, the Black Panthers.

It's hot as a barbecue the smog is pressed up against the foothills so that you can't even see them. everyone is irritated, but noone argues because noone can breathe. i laid on the couch in my bikini and watched His Girl Friday. I have decided that i will be a journalist like Josland Russel (in the movie) and not take any flak for anyone unless they look and act like Cary Grant.

I carried 12 magazines for my AK. Eight of these I carried in a four-pocket combat vest. I put two magazines in each pocket. That was my body armor. I carried an additional magazine on my back, directly covering my heart and another on my side protecting my kidney. I carried six hand grenades strapped across my stomach. So my arsenal was also my flak vest. It wasn’t perfect, but good enough.

Earl ‘Blue’ Archer, the Kalinin Bay VC-3 Avenger pilot who suffered a serious back injury amid the brambles of flak over Kurita’s fleet, went home and kept quiet about his infirmity. He soon realized that he had a choice to make: he could take an eighty or ninety percent disability benefit from Uncle Sam and begin a life of inactivity, or he could take three or four aspirin twice a day and continue flying planes in the naval reserve.

Look up there, in the trees on the left,’ he yelled. I squinted up through the hatch. ‘Scheisse,’ Kurt said. ‘Is that someone’s head?’ Lodged in the fork of two branches above the track was a severed human head, pale and staring, looking straight down at us. ‘I thought it was another sniper,’ Helmann laughed. ‘But it’s just a partisan who was caught in the Flak cannon. See how high his head flew off? That must be ten metres at least. Move on, Faust.

You can't wear those, I say. He strips and I do too...I take off my flight suit and give it to him. I put my PPE back on, roll up Dyer's suit under my arm, and walk back out into the main room wearing just my boots, my flak, my skivvies shorts, and my Kevlar. My legs and arms haven't seen the sun in a while and are pale as pigeon shit. Moore sees me and starts smiling. McKeown sees Moore smiling and starts cracking up. I'm like, f*** you, I look sexy.

The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters,", fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.

Our two Tigers checked ammunition and fuel: we had thirty rounds between us, and enough fuel for ten minutes driving, and then to reverse across the bridge. Our four surviving Panthers had similar reserves, we learned over the radio, and the PAK officers ran down from the bunkers for a brief consultation beside our hull. They still had substantial reserves of armour-piercing, and the mortar battery behind the bunker line had not yet fired a shot. The Flak guns had reasonable reserves, but the infantry in their slit trenches were low on everything – ammunition, spirit and strength.

During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. (A fifth team member, the top turret gunner, was not part of the pact.) The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plane hit the ground and exploded. They all died.

So the real question for me as an educator is, if I go out and tell people that I think they are eating too much sugar, if I go out and tell mothers I think they should stop their kids from eating so much sugar because it is bad for them, am I going to get flak from the scientists? Or am I going to be allowed to make that statement without travail, on the grounds that even though we do not have hard evidence to link sugar with a specific disease, we do know that a dietary pattern containing considerably less sugar, in which sugar is replaced by a complex carbohydrate, would be a much healthier diet? JOAN GUSSOW, chairman, Columbia University nutrition department, 1975 I

At night the wind moaned. The gnarled and stunted tree trunks creaked and groaned and forced Yossarian’s thoughts each morning, even before he was fully awake, back on Kid Sampson’s skinny legs bloating and decaying, as systematically as a ticking clock, in the icy rain and wet sand all through the blind, cold, gusty October nights. After Kid Sampson’s legs, he would think of pitiful, whimpering Snowden freezing to death in the rear section of the plane, holding his eternal, immutable secret concealed inside his quilted, armor-plate flak suit until Yossarian had finished sterilizing and bandaging the wrong wound on his leg, and then spilling it out suddenly all over the floor.

The typical load was 25 rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something - just boom, then down - not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle - not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down.

Bible translations succeed or fail based on Christian trust, because only a vanishingly small percentage of Bible readers can, and even fewer do, go through the laborious process of checking their English translations against the Greek and Hebrew. The vast majority of Bible readers simply take—they have to take—the word of others that the translations in their laps are faithful. When scholarly Christians and ministry-leading Christians go to battle over Bible translations, in dog fights far above the it’s-all-Greek-to-me heads of people in the pew, some of the flak falls on the flock. The sheep today have many resources—like this book—and can do some good homework, but if they can’t read the original languages of Scripture they must still take sides based largely on whom they trust.

We'll all be jokers, in the pack, Just go harder, in attack. Dealing's fun, so hurry back, Enjoy the game, avoid the flak." But one by one the card players at their fateful table were taken away. The cards were last used when the platoon was down to just four soldiers. [...] They were spooked by their cards, not at all liking how the hands fell as they played the game called 'Advance. "Slow down a bit" kien suggested. "If we leave this game unfinished heaven will grant favours, keeping us alive to return and finish the game. So slow down and we'll survive this battle and continue the game later. " "You're cunning" said Thanh grinning. "But heaven is not stupid. You can't cheat him. If you play only half the game the old chap up there will send for all four of us and we'll torment each other.

What was captured on tape sounded apocalyptic. 'Eruption' (first titled 'Guitar Solo,' according to the song’s track sheet), takes flight after a quick drum fill and a power chord. Edward sends notes and harmonics soaring before diving down with some gravity-defying tremolo bar bends. Alex and Michael then fire off a flak burst of three chords. Edward maneuvers again, twisting and turning, strafing and bombing before turning on the jets and heading skyward with a flurry of notes. He recedes again, leaving only a descending low note in his wake. After another pause, he attacks again, faster than ever. He weaves and twists and then unleashes his secret weapon: his two-handed tapping technique that would astound and confound guitarists across the world. Finally, an atomic blast, courtesy of Edward’s Univox echo chamber, concludes this minute and forty-three seconds of open warfare on the guitar world.

I spent my afternoons forming a government. A new administration brings less turnover than most people imagine: Of the more than three million people, civilian and military, employed by the federal government, only a few thousand are so-called political appointees, serving at the pleasure of the president. Of those, he or she has regular, meaningful contact with fewer than a hundred senior officials and personal aides. As president, I would be able to articulate a vision and set a direction for the country; promote a healthy organizational culture and establish clear lines of responsibility and measures of accountability. I would be the one who made the final decisions on issues that rose to my attention and who explained those decisions to the country at large. But to do all this, I would be dependent on the handful of people serving as my eyes, ears, hands, and feet—those who would become my managers, executors, facilitators, analysts, organizers, team leaders, amplifiers, conciliators, problem solvers, flak catchers, honest brokers, sounding boards, constructive critics, and loyal soldiers.

Maggie swung her head from side to side, checking the high scents first, then dipped her head to taste the smells close to the ground. The humans behind her might be able to identify five or six distinct smells if they concentrated, but Maggie’s long shepherd’s nose gave her an olfactory picture of the world no human could comprehend: She smelled the dust beneath her feet and the goats that had been herded along the road a few hours earlier and the two young male goatherds who led them. Maggie smelled the infection that one of the goats carried, and knew that two of the female goats were in heat. She smelled Pete’s fresh new sweat and the older sweat dried into his gear, his breath, the perfumed letter he kept in his trousers, and the green ball hidden beneath his flak. She smelled the CLP he used to clean his rifle, and the residual gunpowder that clung to his weapon like a fine dust of death. She smelled the small grove of palms not far from the road, and the trace scents of the wild dogs that had slept beneath the palms during the night and defecated and urinated before moving on. Maggie hated the wild dogs. She spent a moment testing the air to see if they were still in the area, decided they were gone, then ignored their scent and concentrated on searching for the scents Pete wanted her to find. Smells

If I could wave a magic wand and have one wish granted, I’d wish for an end to world hunger; the small shit could wait in line. If, however, the god or genie who bestowed the magic wand told me my one wish had to do with American politics, I think I’d wave it and make the following proclamation: “Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year, and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year.” (Middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI.) Can you imagine what that would be like? For the first month, the screams of “What IS this shit???” would echo high to the heavens. For the next three, there would be a period of grumbling readjustment as both sides of the political spectrum realized that, loathsome politics aside, they were still getting the weather, the sports scores, the hard news, and the Geico Gecko. During the next four months, viewers might begin seeing different anchors and commentators, as each news network’s fringe bellowers attracted increasing flak from their new captive audiences. Adamantly shrill editorial stances would begin to modify as a result of tweets and emails saying, “Oh, wait a minute, Slick, that’s fucking ridiculous.” Finally, the viewers themselves might change. Not a lot; just a slide-step or two away from the kumbayah socialists of the left and the Tea Partiers of the right. I’m not saying they’d re-colonize the all-but-deserted middle (lot of cheap real estate there, my brothers and sisters), but they might close in on it a trifle.

The artillery and mortars had been silent for at least the past few hours. After awhile the rabbi stopped initiating new songs. He took a few more sips of wine and sat for a time, almost shining in obvious pleasure, and yet reflective and silent. All watched him, and after a few minutes he spoke again in his odd Moroccan/Brooklyn accent. "The weapons of a Jew are prayer and mitzvot. Tonight we are arming ourselves with mitzvot like the finest suit of armor ever made. Better than a ceramica," he said, referring to the bullet-proof flak vests worn by many Israeli soldiers by their street name. "By the mere act of sitting and eating and drinking, because we are doing so in a sukkah at the time that our Creator told us to do so, we acquire for ourselves a heavenly shield more powerful than any missile or tank." He let those words settle in as he beamed at all present at the table and standing in the sukkah. "A mitzvah—carrying out HaShem's commandment or doing a good deed, such as an act of kindness towards your fellow human being—creates a heavenly smell, a wonderful odor that is both spiritual and physical. When the Creator of the whole universe commanded the Jewish people to bring sacrifices upon His holy altar, and they did so exactly as he had instructed them, the Torah says that it created a Re-ach Tov, a good and wonderful scent, that pleased the Ribbono Shel-Olam. And in those moments when the Jewish people acted on the instructions of their Creator, there was a kesher and a devekus, a tie and a drawing closer, between the Jewish people and their Creator.

Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again. Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.

Few grown humans can normally survive a fall of much more than twenty-five or thirty feet, though there have been some notable exceptions—none more memorable perhaps than that of a British airman in World War II named Nicholas Alkemade. In the late winter of 1944, while on a bombing run over Germany, Flight Sergeant Alkemade, the tail gunner on a British Lancaster bomber, found himself in a literally tight spot when his plane was hit by enemy flak and quickly filled with smoke and flames. Tail gunners on Lancasters couldn’t wear parachutes because the space in which they operated was too confined, and by the time Alkemade managed to haul himself out of his turret and reach for his parachute, he found it was on fire and beyond salvation. He decided to leap from the plane anyway rather than perish horribly in flames, so he hauled open a hatch and tumbled out into the night. He was three miles above the ground and falling at 120 miles per hour. “It was very quiet,” Alkemade recalled years later, “the only sound being the drumming of aircraft engines in the distance, and no sensation of falling at all. I felt suspended in space.” Rather to his surprise, he found himself to be strangely composed and at peace. He was sorry to die, of course, but accepted it philosophically, as something that happened to airmen sometimes. The experience was so surreal and dreamy that Alkemade was never certain afterward whether he lost consciousness, but he was certainly jerked back to reality when he crashed through the branches of some lofty pine trees and landed with a resounding thud in a snowbank, in a sitting position. He had somehow lost both his boots, and had a sore knee and some minor abrasions, but otherwise was quite unharmed. Alkemade’s survival adventures did not quite end there. After the war, he took a job in a chemical plant in Loughborough, in the English Midlands. While he was working with chlorine gas, his gas mask came loose, and he was instantly exposed to dangerously high levels of the gas. He lay unconscious for fifteen minutes before co-workers noticed his unconscious form and dragged him to safety. Miraculously, he survived. Some time after that, he was adjusting a pipe when it ruptured and sprayed him from head to foot with sulfuric acid. He suffered extensive burns but again survived. Shortly after he returned to work from that setback, a nine-foot-long metal pole fell on him from a height and very nearly killed him, but once again he recovered. This time, however, he decided to tempt fate no longer. He took a safer job as a furniture salesman and lived out the rest of his life without incident. He died peacefully, in bed, aged sixty-four in 1987. —

Ere trendeline Sesi m`ju lendon dashurija! Sesi m`ju lendon pa pushim! O lotet e syve te mija! O klithmez e tingellit t`im! Ju shoqe te kohës mitare… Mikesha…motricka…pa faj! Ju humbte ne mjegull perfare, Dh`u solla nder mend e po qaj! As flak` e shkendijes q`u shua, As syri qe nxihet e plas, Nuk lane-o ju vasha për mua Vurratat e erreta pas : Haj!flutur` e zeze me duar Një flutur secila prej jush Me la ne gishtrinj dyke shkuar Pluhurin qe ndrin posi prush… Sot cela pellemben e dores Q`u ciku gazmore dikur- Si pah verbimtar i debores Se-rish po me ndrin një pluhur… Përse nuk m`u shojte përherë Të hesht te pushoj për kurdo, Ti mall qe ner to pate lere Dh`u rite dh`u ndrite ner to! Ju shoh përtej mjegulles s`uaj E shpirtin prej jush e kam plot, Pa s`mund si t`a them, si t`a shuaj Ah!këngën e mbushur me lot. Se koti-u larguat menjane, Me vajtte me kot aq larg, Kur sumbulla lot qe me rane Si ruazat i shkova ne varg… Dh`i ndrita me syrin e fshehur… Dh`i vela me zërin mitar… Dh`i skuqa me buzen e dehur… Me shpuzen e flogut si ar… Oji!trendelin` e venitur Ju fali gjith eren e saj…- Pse rreh kaq me hov te cuditur, Haj!Zemera ime ti haj?... Ju lule q`u leu parevera, Dh`u cika me gas një mëngjes!... Se largu prej jush me ra era, E desha prej mallit te vdes.

Ku vemi shpesh Në zemër t’ënde vetëm unë, Në zemër t’ime vetëm ti, dhe jashtë bota fjalëtare, Dhe jashtë syri plot zili. Dh’ashtu filluam përngahera Një vetësi plot ëmbëlsi, Të mos na shohë syr’i botës, Mos na zemrosh, moj njerëzi. Dhe ikm’ e ikmë gjith-me largë, Dyke kërkuar pak liri, Që me t’u ndezur flak’e ditës, Gjer më të mugëtit të zi; Gjer në mesnatë-e pasmesnate, Oh! E pangopur e arrati! Un’ hijerënd’ e mvrerësuar, Ti buzëndritur në stoli. Nër ato male shtat-mëdhaja, Nër ata pyje me fshehtësi, N’ato mburima lozonjare, N’ata shkëmbenj plot llaftari; Ku fryn nje erë pastërtije, E vetëtin një bukuri, E ritet malli posi deti, E ndizet zemëra në gji; Ku nuku duket asnjeri, Ku vemi shpesh veç un’e ti Ku djeg si zjarr, moj dashuri! Ku ndrin si yll, moj perendi!

Lutja e deshprueme Ju qi keqas t’vorrosun keq flêni nder murrâna mbi shpate t’pjerrta a n’pyje, n’breg deti ase n’breg lumi, deshmor‘, q’êmën t’lavdishem keni thadrue n’gojdhâna, nën dhé me gjak t’uej t’rîmun idhnín nuk u a shuen gjumi. Ju qi n’vorre t’vetmueme keq flêni e nuk pushoni e as deka varrz e shtatit nuk thau as nuk u a mbylli, qi éshtnat vrik ju dridhen kur del nji zâ nga pylli, a kur nji zhapllim‘ hapash përbrî murân’s ndëgjoni, ju qi n’mesime fisnike t’lahutës jeni rritun, ju qi burrnín jetike e patët si mësuese, ju qi lirín kreshnike zgjedh‘ e kishi per nuse, ju qi n’mprojen e nderit botën keni çuditun, sot n’murrâna t’harrueme kërkoni kot pushim: ju qi epopé t’panjoftun shkruet me gjakun e kuq, plot vrumulisje n’eshtna rrini tue bluem idhnimin, fatosa orzez, për flîjen e jetës q’u shkoi huq. U rrzuet tue rrokun armën dhe rrzue me jue fisi; ato q’atdheut i kjené ndër mote gardh çeliku, porzmat vigâne t’ueja, jo, nuk i mposhti anmiku por mâma e fatit, mâma qi befas mbi né krisi. N’heshtim t’natës shqiptare s’ndëgjihet kund zâ njerit, prân‘ votres s’fikun nânat n’vaj nuk e njomin bukën, por me sy t’papërlotun plot shkndija mnije, strukën tue prit‘ furín ahmarrse qi t’thej‘ t’prîmunt e mnerit. Jo váj por gjâm e ahté prej pyjesh sjell jehona, zhumhura e rrebtë e lumit kushtrim zâ-mbytun ngjanë, shpirtnat errson e ballet vrugon, ndiell mort zezona q’atdheut palcet gjallnuese mâ t’mshefta po i a thanë. O Perëndí, na tokën pranuem qi Ti na fale, n’tê tash tridhet‘ qindavjeta na u end e ndershme jet, jetuem m’kto troje t’vobta, n’kto brigje t’thata e t’shkreta, ngujve larg botës tjetër tue ruejtun dhên mbi male. Me mzi strehueme trupin nga shiu e brshni e marrdha, n’kasolle e stane t’brishta qi shpërthejshin duhínat, pa dijt‘ qejfet e holla, pa dijt‘ ç’janë miradinat, pa njoft‘ doket e lmueta të kombeve fatbardha. E, pra, t’ushqyem n’kto gryka me bukë kollomoqe Qi e zbutshin n’új të kronit, s’lypshim kurrgjâ mâ shum, sepse bylmet na kishin nji lirí t’thjsht‘, t’pashoqe, qi me hiret e veta na e bânte gjakun t’lum. Nânat me qumsht‘ të pastër andjen n’shpírt t’on‘ dikojshin Me fluturue si shqipe në qiell t’nderit shqiptar, n’flak t’dokeve m’u kndellun e n’zjarrm t’buzmit bujar, qi kobin e zvetnimit nga votra na e largojshin. O Perendí, ndër shekuj ûja buzën na e zverdhi, shpesh u errem pa hângër bukën m’e ruejt‘ për fmín e mitun q’ish n’e rritun, por n’qe ‘i mik né shpín na msyni, ia vûm para at buk mikut kur erdhi. Pse kshtu na e randon jetën me dhunë e me krajata? Lírin e dy gisht nderi n’shtek t’ballit: s’kishim tjetër: kto dy të mira zbritshin vobeksín t’on‘ të vjetër. Po pse, o i Lumi i Qiellvet, na i rrmbeve kto dhurata?

Stairs!” Parks yells, pointing. “Get up the stairs.” They do. To the sound of crazed church bells as the windows shatter. Parks is bringing up the rear, throwing grenades over his back like strings of beads at a fucking Mardi Gras parade. And the grenades are going off behind them one after another, barking concussions overlapping in hideous counterpoint. Shrapnel smacks Parks’ flak jacket and his unprotected legs. The

much flak if I made you a general at your age.

Both power and chemical executives (who were also catching flak from environmentalists) sent their own representatives to Merridale in an effort to discover the true cause and clear themselves, or, if the fault were theirs, find some way to reverse the phenomenon and/or cover up their involvement in it.

the fighter pilot words to Petula Clark's song Downtown.   When you get up at two o'clock in the morning You can bet you'll go Downtown, Shaking in your boots, you're sweating heavy all over, 'Cuz you got to go Downtown. Smoke a pack of cigarettes before the briefing's over, Wishing you weren't bombing, wishing you were flying cover, It's safer that way the flak is much thicker there -- You know you're biting your nails and you're pulling your hair, You're going Downtown, but you don't wanna go, Downtown, that's why you're feeling so low, Downtown, going to see Uncle Ho, Downtown, Downtown.

The navy took them from all walks of life and winnowed out anyone who showed signs of self-doubt—in other words, anyone who carried the usual baggage of humility that weighed down most of the human race—and retained only those with balls the size of grapefruit and a brain the size of a pea, or so Marty liked to announce after a couple of drinks at the officers’ club. Still, he reflected, Lundeen had a remarkable ability to look disaster in the face, flip it a bird, and go merrily on his way. Tonight the bombardier’s eyes kept swiveling back to the fuel gauge. Greve had not been able to find the target on the first bomb run. Lundeen had insisted on flying a racetrack pattern and making a second attempt. Lundeen was driving, so that is what they did. But as they turned onto the final bearing for the second try, they had run right into a flak trap. Lundeen had cussed and

hurtling through space at mach eight. Flak

Throughout the war, media reports of the growing number of GI casualties troubled those who were still fighting to no end. men objected to the anonymity the term “GI” conveyed “When we think of GI we think of items of issue, nut we are not issued,” Sergeant Frank Turman explained. “When we walk over our dead buddies we wouldn’t refer to them as dead GIs. And when we get home again, and see our buddies’ loved ones, we just couldn’t say: ‘Your son died a GIs death.’” Any body can be a Gl,” Sergeant Turman said, “but it takes a man to be a soldier, sailor or marine.” For those who were fighting on the frontlines, the dead were not nameless or faceless. The war claimed men they knew and loved, and it was torture. The pilot who negotiated, his plane through storms of flak knew the crew member who wis fatally struck; when the Marines charged a beach in an amphibious landing and enemy snipers opened up on them, they knew which of their friends had fallen; and when Japanese pilots swung their planes into Allied ships, damaging and destroying them, the sailors who survived knew who had perished. For the men at war, death was agonizingly personal. Yet they rarely talked about it

In the process, Robbie Flak had spent all his money, burned every bridge, alienated almost every friend, and driven himself to the point of exhaustion and instability.

If physical classrooms forced students to be at their seats out of fear, virtual classrooms tempt students to be in front of their computers out of curiosity and eagerness. The baby steps of the teachers into the technological world have progressed into giants leaps now. Cut the flak and acknowledge the courage of teachers who evolved as digitally smart educators overnight with 21st century skill set.

A driving licence only gives permission to legally operate a motor vehicle, it does not promise efficiency. Most amateur drivers have to face flak and occasional road rage until they learn to master the vehicle like a boss. Similarly, a teacher’s degree only gives permission to officially teach in classrooms. Teachers have to face flak until they learn to master classroom situations. It is all about consistent practice, willingness to learn, patience and persistence.

Well?” she demanded. “I no drive. Who takes me.” “Madam, would you not prefer to rest—” “Your body rest when dead. Who.” “We do have an hour,” Ehric hedged. As Assail glared at the other vampire, the little old lady hitched her purse up on her forearm and nodded. “So he will take me.” Assail met Sola’s grandmother’s gaze directly and dropped his tone a register just so that the line drawn would be respected. “I pay. Are we clear—you are not to spend a cent.” She opened her mouth as if to argue, but she was headstrong—not foolish. “Then I do the darning.” “Our clothes are in sufficient shape—” Ehric cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a couple of loose buttons. And the Velcro strip on his flak jacket is—” Assail looked over his shoulder and bared his fangs at the idiot—out of eyesight of Sola’s grandmother, of course.

You posted an essay, “How to Be a Flâneur,” on the custom of urban strolling and loitering and its place in literary culture. You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn’t think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares,

Enough rationalization. They simply had what you wanted, so you took it. [My chair-- I shit on my good chair!] You shit more than just your chair. You shit the world. All you ever cared about was winning -- And you did. The last man standing on a mountain of filth [. . .] Kazumi taught forgiveness. She accepted all refugees looking for a better life. And you turned that against her. Kazumi would show mercy. I'm not Kazumi.

The steeper angle of a true dive bombing run (about 70 degrees) was far less vulnerable to flak and far more accurate. Japanese carriers had thin unarmored flight decks, and on board the ships there were hundreds of aircraft, many of them being refuelled and re-armed. All the factors were now aligned for a devastating attack. Yorktown’s

The Wildcats tore into the Vals as they climbed prior to making their dives, and 11 of the 18 attacking dive bombers were shot down before they could even begin their bomb run. Others were knocked down by flak as they bore in on the Yorktown. It would not be enough to save the ship from damage, however. By 12:30, the Yorktown had taken three bomb hits, damaging the flight deck, starting a series of fires, and stopping her engines. At 12:38, Admiral Fletcher moved his command to the heavy cruiser Astoria. The returning Japanese pilots reported that they had left an American carrier ablaze and at least crippled. This would end up causing an important misunderstanding in the Japanese command. Less

My office is over here—” He stopped. Frowned. Looked about. Had to backtrack to the kitchen in order to find the various parties. Sola’s grandmother had her head in the Sub-Zero refrigerator, rather as if she were a gnome looking for a cool place in the summer. “Madam?” Assail inquired. She shut the door and moved on to the floor-to-ceiling cabinets. “There is nothing here. Nothing. What do you eat?” “Ah . . .” Assail found himself looking at the cousins for aid. “Usually we take our meals in town.” The scoffing sound certainly appeared like the old-lady equivalent of Fuck that. “I need the staples.” She pivoted on her little shiny shoes and put her hands on her hips. “Who is taking me to supermarket.” Not an inquiry. And as she stared up at the three of them, it appeared as though Ehric and his violent killer of a twin were as nonplussed as Assail was. The evening had been planned out to the minute—and a trip to the local Hannaford was not on the list. “You two are too thin,” she announced, flicking her hand in the direction of the twins. “You need to eat.” Assail cleared his throat. “Madam, you have been brought here for your safety.” He was not going to permit Benloise to up the stakes—and so he’d had to lock down potential collateral damage. “Not to be a cook.” “You have already refused the money. I no stay here for free. I earn my keep. That is the way it will be.” Assail exhaled long and slow. Now he knew where Sola got her independent streak. “Well?” she demanded. “I no drive. Who takes me.” “Madam, would you not prefer to rest—” “Your body rest when dead. Who.” “We do have an hour,” Ehric hedged. As Assail glared at the other vampire, the little old lady hitched her purse up on her forearm and nodded. “So he will take me.” Assail met Sola’s grandmother’s gaze directly and dropped his tone a register just so that the line drawn would be respected. “I pay. Are we clear—you are not to spend a cent.” She opened her mouth as if to argue, but she was headstrong—not foolish. “Then I do the darning.” “Our clothes are in sufficient shape—” Ehric cleared his throat. “Actually, I have a couple of loose buttons. And the Velcro strip on his flak jacket is—” Assail looked over his shoulder and bared his fangs at the idiot—out of eyesight of Sola’s grandmother, of course. Remarshaling his expression, he turned back around and— Knew he’d lost. The grandmother had one of those brows cocked, her dark eyes as steady as any foe’s he’d ever faced. Assail shook his head. “I cannot believe I’m negotiating with you.” “And you agree to terms.” “Madam—” “Then it is settled.” Assail threw up his hands. “Fine. You have forty-five minutes. That is all.” “We be back in thirty.” At that, she turned and headed for the door. In her diminutive wake, the three vampires played ocular Ping-Pong. “Go,” Assail gritted out. “Both of you.” The cousins stalked for the garage door—but they didn’t make it. Sola’s grandmother wheeled around and put her hands on her hips. “Where is your crucifix?” Assail shook himself. “I beg your pardon?” “Are you no Catholic?” My dear sweet woman, we are not human, he thought. “No, I fear not.” Laser-beam eyes locked on him. Ehric. Ehric’s brother. “We change this. It is God’s will.” And out she went, marching through the mudroom, ripping open the door, and disappearing into the garage. As that heavy steel barrier closed automatically, all Assail could do was blink.

Well, look who’s back from her sailing date looking all windblown and smug. Big day on the high seas?” Kerry knew she’d have to deal with a lot of this kind of flak but didn’t really want to start the ordeal with Hardy. Although, she thought, maybe it was better to get this dealt with up front. He’d said it smoothly enough, and seemed to be simply razzing her, with no other agenda in his eyes, but she treated him as if there was, just in case. “Oh, Hardy, you say the nicest things,” she teased right back. “It was a lovely day for a sail,” she added, then smiled brightly and, as it happened, quite sincerely. “Thanks for asking.

Tynne flak av hud skaller av, og drysser slik stjernestøv mot gulvet.

The two CIA men had donned flak jackets and unslung their own rifles, accurized AK-74s. The sight of the Eastern Bloc weapons had raised a few eyebrows at first, but there were no comments now. Just silence. And they waited.....

Rart å tenke på at en kom levende ut av dette helvete. Jeg tror det skyldes tre ting, og disse tingene måtte klaffe. En måtte være både mentalt og fysisk sterk. En måtte også ha flaks. Alt dette klaffet for meg.

The reason it never occurred to her is that, when she was starting out, few in her field were even considering wealthy families. This lack of attention amounted to “an interesting sort of reverse classism,” she says. Like Kenny, she took flak from colleagues when she switched from studying the problems of the poor to those of the privileged. “Why would you want to work with them?” people would ask. “Don’t they have everything going? Why are you wasting your time?” The notion seemed to be that the rich people’s problems were not as real, or that wealthy people were unworthy of empathy. “There is a lot of judgment,” Luthar says. “And now we have the whole thing where the parents are ‘helicopter’ and ‘snowplowing.’ It’s relatively rare that someone comes along and says, ‘Can we talk about this stuff with some kindness?’ 

attack was launched in the evening, and at 23.04 the air-raid warning sounded on the Tirpitz. The Flak defenses opened fire as the British airmen strived hard to hit the target, but the results were indeed meagre. Only the remains of a flare actually hit the battleship

flak jacket

And this is their story. One of boys becoming men and waking to the prospects of life. One of flight. Of breaking ties to the earth and gliding over the hills of western North Carolina and over cities with unfamiliar names, like Schweinfurt and Regensburg, and through skies thick with flak. Of touching the clouds, the moon, and the stars. One of enduring friendship, duty, and honor.

They were said to be suffering from battle or combat fatigue, or being “flak happy,” a condition we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most recovered from the stress when removed from combat. Some, however, carried it with them the rest of their lives.

When Peretti got flak for relying so heavily on this dumbed-down form of publishing, he zealously defended the practice. “Lists are an amazing way to consume media,” he wrote in a public memo. “They work for content as varied as the 10 Commandments [and] the Bill of Rights.” Another BuzzFeed editor claimed that lists worked for Homer. “You could call that [book, The Odyssey,] 24 Chapters about Odysseus. That’s, like, a really great list. Really top notch. Really, really viral. Super viral.

It is still unclear exactly what inspired such brutality. Many point to the influence of the Guatemalan Kaibiles working in the Zetas. In the Guatemalan civil war, troops cut off heads of captured rebels in front of villagers to terrify them from joining a leftist insurgency. Turning into mercenaries in Mexico, the Kaibiles might have reprised their trusted tactic to terrify enemies of the cartel. Others point to the influence of Al Qaeda decapitation videos from the Middle East, which were shown in full on some Mexican TV channels. Some anthropologists even point to the pre-Colombian use of beheadings and the way Mayans used them to show complete domination of their enemies. The Zetas were not thinking like gangsters, but like a paramilitary group controlling territory. Their new way of fighting rapidly spread through the Mexican Drug War. In September the same year, La Familia gang—working with the Zetas in Michoacán state—rolled five human heads onto a disco dance floor. By the end of 2006, there had been dozens of decapitations. Over the next years, there were hundreds. Gangsters throughout Mexico also copied the Zetas’ paramilitary way of organizing. Sinaloans created their own cells of combatants with heavy weaponry and combat fatigues. They had to fight fire with fire. “The Beard” Beltrán Leyva led particularly well-armed death squads. One was later busted in a residential house in Mexico City. They had twenty automatic rifles, ten pistols, twelve M4 grenade launchers, and flak jackets that even had their own logo— FEDA—an acronym for Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo, or Arturo’s Special Forces.

What’s facing it, firing-arc-wise? I’ve lost engine control, so I can’t rotate us.” “Railguns fourteen, sixteen, twenty through twenty-six, and thirty. One bombardment cannon that I do not think would have the accuracy you are looking for. The singularity shotgun, a plague dropper, five different pain inducers. Two missile tubes, four particle beams, one inferno lance, a magnetic flux projector, an x-ray array that you have marked as ‘no,’ the third and fifth segments of the pulse field generator, and the point defense flak cannon that you have named Larry.

The only power we have is the power to destroy, the power to disrupt.

Ever since the Ford administration, each White House press secretary had passed their successor a bulletproof brocaded vest, the flak jacket—eventually replaced by a blazer—with a note of advice and encouragement tucked into its pocket.

When Psaki contemplated her first day on the job, she realized that her predecessor had seemingly broken with tradition. Ever since the Ford administration, each White House press secretary had passed their successor a bulletproof brocaded vest, the flak jacket—eventually replaced by a blazer—with a note of advice and encouragement tucked into its pocket. Psaki couldn’t find the jacket and, in fact, never did. If the Trump administration had plundered the rest of the government, it might very well have absconded with that ceremonial relic, too.

said: “If you’re taking flak, you’re over the target.

In a battle involving so many fighters and bombers, one of the most valuable ships to the fleet at this precise moment was proving to be a ship that didn’t always see a lot of love or action—the flak cruisers.

It only took one searing mental snapshot of a comrade and his aircraft turned to a golden blob of flame by missiles, flak, or MiGs striking from a Washington-designated “sanctuary” to convince him that his ass really did belong to Uncle, and in this one, Uncle wasn’t very concerned about it.

Enemy flak is usually inaccurate...but when you start taking hits you'll have to call it accurate

This time, I asked a mortal Israeli girl what sort of things she liked to eat. She led me to a something called a falafel stand.” Phil shrugged and his voice lilted in a question at the end. “Are you saying I’m looking at a solid brick of falafel?” Roland raised a doubtful eyebrow at Vincent’s bulging bag. “Oh, no,” Vincent said. “The Outcasts also purchased hummus, pita, pickles, a container of something called tabbouleh, cucumber salad, and fresh pomegranate juice. Are you hungry, Lucinda Price?” It was an absurd amount of delicious food. Somehow it felt wrong to eat on the altars, so they spread out a smorgasbord on the floor and everyone-Outcast, angel, mortal-tucked in. The mood was somber, but the food was filling and hot and exactly what all of them seemed to need. Luce showed Olianna and Vincent how to make a falafel sandwich; Cam even asked Phil to pass him the hummus. At some point, Arriane flew out the window to find Luce some new clothes. She returned with a faded pair of jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and a cool Israeli army flak jacket with a patch depicting an orange-and-yellow flame. “Had to kiss a soldier for this,” she said.

The slow, mismanaged arrival of armored vehicles and bulletproof plates for flak vests was only the most conspicuous demonstration of how the Iraq War, like every war -- just or unjust, won or lost -- became a conspiracy of the old and powerful against the young and dutiful.

When a TV show starts out, it is incredibly competitive: maybe one in a hundred TV ideas goes on to get made into pilot (tester) episodes. Maybe one in twenty of those pilots will go on to have a first series commissioned. And maybe one in ten of those will be asked back for a second season. It takes a sprinkling of fairy dust and a lot of goodwill. But do two seasons and you will quite probably go on to do five--or more. So we got lucky. No doubt. And I never even asked for it. Let alone expected it. I was simply, and blissfully, unaware. But on this journey, Man vs. Wild has had to endure a lot of flak from critics and the press. Anything successful inevitably does. (Funny how the praise tends just to bounce off, but small amounts of criticism sting so much. Self-doubt can be a brute, I guess.) The program has been accused of being set up, staged, faked, and manipulated. One critic even suggested it was all shot in a studio with CGI. If only.

pilot’s duty, and that of his crew, to check constantly, even when over the target with enemy fighters attacking from every angle and the flak coming up from the German ack-ack batteries just, as Andy remarked, to make life a little more exciting.

As we passed on into the Ruhr Valley we came to more and more trouble, for now we were in the outer light-flak defences, and these were very active, but by weaving and jinking we were able to escape most of them. Time and again searchlights would pick us up, but we were flying very low and, although it may sound foolish and untrue when I say so, we avoided a great number of them by dodging behind the trees.

We could see the colonel approaching, a short, balding man with flinty eyes and a brief black mustache. He was trussed up tightly in his flak jacket, and as he came toward us small groups of Marines broke and ran to get their flak jackets on too, before the colonel could have the chance to tell them about it. The colonel leaned over and looked hard at the unconscious Marine, who was lying now in the shade of a poncho being held over him by two corpsmen, while a third brushed his chest and face with water from a canteen. Well hell, the colonel was saying, there’s nothing the matter with that man, feed some salt into him, get him up, get him walking, this is the Marines, not the goddamned Girl Scouts, there won’t be any damned chopper coming in here today. (The four of us must have looked a little stricken at this, and Dana took our picture. We were really pulling for the kid; if he stayed, we stayed, and that meant all night.) The corpsmen were trying to tell the colonel that this was no ordinary case of heat exhaustion, excusing themselves but staying firm about it, refusing to let the colonel return to the CP. (The four of us smiled and Dana took a picture. “Go away, Stone,” Flynn said. “Hold it just like that,” Stone said, running in for a closeup so that his lens was an inch away from Flynn’s nose. “One more.”) The Marine looked awful lying there, trying to work his lips a little, and the colonel glared down at the fragile, still form as though it was blackmailing him. When the Marine refused to move anything except his lips for fifteen minutes, the colonel began to relent. He asked the corpsmen if they’d ever heard of a man dying from something like this. “Oh, yes Sir. Oh, wow, I mean he really needs more attention than what we can give him here.” “Mmmmmm …” the colonel said. Then he authorized the chopper request and strode with what I’m sure he considered great determination back to his CP. “I think it would have made him feel better if he could have shot the kid,” Flynn said. “Or one of us,” I said.

As they debated the ethics and efficacy of activism, social workers were under attack from both conservative politicians and organized client groups. At the 1970 National Conference on Social Welfare conference, Johnnie Tillmon, the leader of the NWRO, blamed social workers (rather than the socio-economic system) for the problems welfare recipients faced. At the other end of the political spectrum the Nixon administration frequently trumpeted the view that social workers promoted community programs out of self-interest. Given this climate, it was no surprise that a popular book of the time referred to social work as “The Unloved Profession” (Richan & Mendelsohn, 1973). Social workers, in Tom Wolfes (1970) memorable phrase, had become one of the “flak catchers” of a turbulent society—bombarded with criticisms from ideological opponents of the left and the right. Despite the presence of radical

As Paul Friedman from the University of Kansas put it, flak catchers are “lightning rods” and “hassle handlers” who take and absorb “jolts sent by the dissatisfied.” Taking such heat is part of the job for receptionists; executive assistants; security guards; spokespersons for companies, universities, and political campaigns; people who work in complaint departments; and bouncers.

You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn’t think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares, comments, catcalls, gropes. A woman was raised to be always on guard: Was this guy walking too close? Was that guy following her? How, then, could she ever relax enough to experience the loss of sense of self, the

Often the flak was so thick the men could smell it through their oxygen masks; and the concentrated barrages exploded with such force that the concussions would have driven the pilots through the roofs of their planes had they not been strapped in. On some planes, men sat on sheets of lead to protect their genitals. Helpless in the flak field, all they could do was sit and take it. This was when pilots and crewmen alike learned that it was possible to sweat at 40 degrees below zero. Bombardier Theodore Hallock was not a praying man, but when he was in a tight spot over the target he would whisper to himself, “God, you gotta. You gotta get me back. God, listen, you gotta.” Many of the men promised the Almighty that if they got through they’d swear off liquor and women. Hallock said he never promised that “because I figured that if God was really God he’d be bound to understand how men feel about liquor and women.

Hutch MISSION ALERT Mission alert, we’re scheduled to fly another day of combat; perhaps to die. Early to bed for a restless night we’ll get the call before dawn’s light. Breakfast, briefing and out to our plane, we pray to survive combat again. Loaded bombers soar into the sky hundreds on both sides are going to die. Eighth Air Force aircrews in WW II faced flak-filled skies and fighters too. I’ll always remember the B-17 boys; the deadly missions and the terrible noise. Sixty- six years have come and passed since I heard “mission alert” last. Victory was won at a terrible cost. Today, I salute the boys we lost. World War II airmen share my tears as our ranks grow thin with the passing years. Many know nothing of those days of glory and so I write to tell our story. James Lee Hutchinson, 2011