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Army IDs soldier who died at Fort Jackson, in fourth death at the base in past year
A basic combat training soldier at Fort Jackson was found dead in his barracks Saturday morning, U.S. Army officials said.
On Sunday, the soldier was publicly identified as Pvt. Michael Wise, according to Army officials. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment.
Following the death of the 29-year-old from Wisconsin, officials said they will have a 48-hour training stand down.
Army leaders share stories of the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon
WASHINGTON — It’s been 19 years since Sept. 11, 2001, when four hijacked passenger jets were turned into makeshift missiles above American soil. But the tragic day is still fresh in the minds of some of the Army’s top leaders who survived the attack at the Pentagon.
Positioned across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, the Pentagon is the nerve center for all things national defense. It’s also one of the world’s largest office buildings, made up of roughly 23,000 military and civilian employees, including the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The five-sided structure is often seen as a universal symbol of America’s strength and security, which made it a target that September morning.
As the sun rose over the nation’s capital that day, the gridlocked morning traffic crept along the Beltway. Underground, train riders like Brig. Gen. Mark S. Bennett and Maj. Gen. Paul A. Chamberlain, who were younger officers at the time, crowded into railcars to beat the slow-moving jam.
All and all “it was just a morning like any other,” Bennett recalled.
They were young officers navigating the city in 2001, but today Bennett is at the helm of the U.S. Army Financial Command, and Chamberlain is the director of the Army budget.
By the time the Metro train dropped them off, the Soldiers weren’t the first to arrive at the Pentagon. Employees were already buzzing through each ring and corridor of the building.
Pentagon staffers were already immersed in numerous morning routines; briefings were planned, PowerPoints were being finalized, coffee was brewing, and some, like Chamberlain, found time to squeeze in a morning run.
“The sky was crystal clear blue that early fall morning,” Chamberlain said, looking back. “I went for a run, came back, and took a shower.” That’s when he first heard the news at the Pentagon Athletic Center. “Over the radio speakers in the shower, I heard a plane [may have] hit the World Trade Center in New York — which was very odd.”
The news quickly spread around the building. Lt. Gen. Thomas Horlander, deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army, Financial Management and Comptroller, was then a 41-year-old lieutenant colonel on a mission from Fort Rucker, Alabama that morning.
The Pentagon has three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, and can be daunting to navigate for newcomers, like Horlander. The Colorado native was in an unfamiliar place during his work trip to the Defense Department epicenter.
When Horlander and his coworkers walked into the building, the security guards knew they were out-of-towners, he said, during a recent interview. “I said [to the guard] we’re trying to locate a conference room. He gave us assistance and said when you get there to turn on the television — an airplane just hit one of the Twin Towers.”
After that, everything changed. Newscasts started reporting the incident at the World Trade Center in New York City. The news anchor on the confirmed “smoke was billowing out of one of the towers,” Chamberlain said. “I thought, wow, it must have been a significant plane that hit it.”
Inside the National Guard’s Daring Rescue of Hundreds from a California Wildfire
More than 200 campers were trapped near a boat dock on Shaver Lake in California’s Fresno County over the Labor Day weekend, encircled by flames and a blinding wall of wildfire smoke.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joseph Rosamond, piloting a California Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook, had already made the decision to try to put his helicopter down close by the desperate campers on Sept. 5.
So had CWO 5 Kipp Goding, pilot of a California Guard UH-60 Black Hawk, who had linked up with Rosamond’s aircraft and was trailing him to the scene, weaving through peaks rising to 7,000 feet and then dropping down to a valley leading to the dock.
“We were quickly running out of time,” Rosamond said.
Order Gives Employees Social Security Withholding Tax Deferral, Not Forgiveness
President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on August 8 that allows employers to defer withholding Social Security taxes.
However, it’s a payroll “deferral,” not payroll “forgiveness” — meaning it’s a temporary change, and service members and Defense Department civilians have to pay that money in 2021.
Internal Revenue Service officials said the Presidential Memorandum defers the employee portion of Social Security taxes. The Social Security tax is set for employees by law at 6.2 percent.
For service members, that would be 6.2 percent of basic pay. An E-5 with eight years of service has a monthly basic pay rate of $3,306.30. The monthly Social Security tax equals $204.99. Through the end of the year, this adds up to $819.96.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2021, the deferred Social Security taxes will be collected through April 30, 2021. So, that E-5 with eight years of service who received a total of $819.96 from the tax deferral now has to pay it back early in 2021.