SSMAC

Today is Navy Day, a day to salute all military personnel who have served or who are serving in the U.S. Navy. Thank you for your service...

Happy 245th birthday to America's Navy!

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 22 veterans commit suicide every day. As Suicide Prevention Month comes to a close, we hope you'll think ...about the true impact this is having on the veterans community. There is help available. Learn more about the Veterans Crisis Line at https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/ #ThePowerOf1 See more

The National Security Act of 1947 established the U.S. Air Force Sept. 18, 1947. Since then, Airmen have provided air superiority from the skies over Korea to the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts of the Middle East and numerous other missions around the world. Happy birthday!

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, prom...ote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." I am so grateful to our nation's Founding Fathers who, on this day in 1787, signed our United States Constitution. To all my fellow Americans, Happy Constitution Day! #ConstitutionDay

Seventy-five years ago today, formal surrender documents signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay signified Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day), ending World Wa...r II. More than 16 million men and women served our nation during the war. Today, less than 400,000 are alive. To World War II Veterans past and present, VA salutes you. See more

This is our Centennial week and all week we are honoring our legacy, our culture, and our values.

Happy 230th Birthday United States Coast Guard https://www.military.com/coast-guard-birthday

Memorial Day weekend! It's not about the barbeque, it's about remembering those who gave their lives to protect our freedom. As you prepare to display Old Glory... for this patriotic holiday, here is a link for the rules on flag etiquette: http://www.usflag.org/flagetiquette.html Iwo Jima flag image from Feb. 23 1945. Nat'l Archives photo. See more

This is too wonderful and great not to share: Do you know who this is a photo of? Chances are you don’t, but don’t feel bad because probably not one American in... one million does, and that is a National tragedy. His name is Eugene Jacques Bullard, and he is the first African-American fighter pilot in history. But he is also much more then that: He’s also a national hero, and his story is so incredible that I bet if you wrote a movie script based on it Hollywood would reject it as being too far-fetched. Bullard was an expat living in France, and when World War 1 broke out he joined the French Infantry. He was seriously wounded, and France awarded him the Croix de Guerre and Medaille Militaire. In 1916 he joined the French air service and he first trained as a gunner but later he trained as a pilot. When American pilots volunteered to help France and formed the famous Lafayette Escadrille, he asked to join but by the time he became a qualified pilot they were no longer accepting new recruits, so he joined the Lafayette Flying Corps instead. He served with French flying units and he completed 20 combat missions. When the United States finally joined the war, Bullard was the only member of the Escadrille or the French Flying Corps who was NOT invited to join the US Air Service. The reason? At that time the Air Service only accepted white men. Now here is the part that almost sounds like a sequel to ‘Casablanca’: After WWI Bullard became a jazz musician in Paris and he eventually owned a nightclub called ‘L’Escadrille’. When the Germans invaded France and conquered it in WW2, his Club, and Bullard, became hugely popular with German officers, but what they DIDN’T know was that Bullard, who spoke fluent German, was actually working for the Free French as a spy. He eventually joined a French infantry unit, but he was badly wounded and had to leave the service. By the end of the war, Bullard had become a national hero in France, but he later moved back to the U.S. where he was of course completely unknown. Practically no one in the United States was aware of it when, in 1959, the French government named him a national Chevalier, or Knight. In 1960, the President of France, Charles DeGaulle, paid a state visit to the United States and when he arrived he said that one of the first things he wanted to do was to meet Bullard. That sent the White House staff scrambling because most of them, of course, had never even heard of him. They finally located him in New York City, and DeGaulle traveled there to meet him personally. At the time, Eugene Bullard was working as An elevator operator. Not long after Eugene Bullard met with the President of France, he passed away, and today very, very few Americans, and especially African-Americans, even know who he is. But, now YOU do, don’t you? And I hope you’ll be able to find opportunities to tell other people about this great American hero that probably only 1 American in 1 Million has ever heard of.