Captain Friendly

Proud Alum of Auburn University. Occasional sharer of snark. Tweets are my own and most likely do not reflect those of my employers, family, or pets.

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it." - St. Maximillian Kolbe

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@FilmLadd Smiles and smiles of cars!

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@alexthechick https://t.co/SLR5TMNg5n

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@alexthechick I just started the 2nd book of this series the other night. Really fun and different.

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@Rule5Tweets

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@alexthechick @HadaWillia91578 @ShamashAran This, plus the audiobook.
Plus the Audio Immersion Tunnel.

[The Rule 5 Texan @Rule5Tweets]

Especially on a Monday morning.

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@r0ck3t23 "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any
bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies."
Conquest's 3rd Law

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

His name was Roddie Edmonds.

Most people had never heard of him.

A quiet Methodist from Knoxville, Tennessee. A husband. A father. A churchgoing man who came home from World War II, raised his family, and never once bragged about what he had done.

The world almost lost his story completely.

December 1944.

The Battle of the Bulge.

Roddie Edmonds had been on the Western Front less than a week when his unit was surrounded by German forces. Thousands of American soldiers were captured during Hitler’s final major offensive.

Edmonds became one of them.

What followed was brutal.

A forced march through freezing snow.
Men collapsing from exhaustion.
Packed into rail cars with almost no food or water.
Days of starvation and cold before arriving at Stalag IX-A, a German prison camp.

As the highest-ranking American noncommissioned officer there, Edmonds was responsible for 1,292 prisoners.

Then came the order.

All Jewish soldiers were to report separately the next morning.

Everyone understood what that meant.

Separation was not administration.

It was a death sentence.

That night, Edmonds gathered his men and gave a simple instruction:

“All of you. Every American. Outside in formation tomorrow morning.”

The next day, the German commandant arrived expecting a small group.

Instead, he found 1,292 American prisoners standing shoulder to shoulder.

Furious, he shouted:

“They cannot all be Jews!”

Roddie Edmonds answered with four words that would echo across history:

“We are all Jews here.”

The commandant pulled out a pistol and pressed it against Edmonds’s forehead.

He threatened to shoot him if he did not identify the Jewish soldiers immediately.

Edmonds never moved.

Instead, he calmly reminded the officer that under the Geneva Convention, prisoners only had to give their name, rank, and serial number.

Then he said this:

“If you shoot, you’ll have to shoot all of us. And when this war is over — which it nearly is — you’ll be tried as a war criminal.”

The commandant lowered the gun.

Turned around.

And walked away.

About 200 Jewish-American soldiers were saved that morning because one man refused to divide his men into categories worth protecting and categories worth surrendering.

But Edmonds wasn’t finished.

Weeks later, the Germans ordered the prisoners onto another forced march through the snow.

Edmonds knew many would die.

So he secretly told his men to make themselves appear too sick to travel — eat dirt, grass, whatever it took.

When the Germans came, the Americans stayed behind.

Nearly all the prisoners forced onto the march died.

Edmonds’s men survived to be liberated by General Patton’s forces in March 1945.

And then?

Roddie Edmonds came home and said almost nothing about it.

No speeches.
No interviews.
No book deals.

He worked. Went to church. Raised his children.

He died in 1985.

His family knew he had been a POW.

They had no idea he had saved hundreds of lives.

The truth only resurfaced decades later after his son discovered his wartime diary and began contacting survivors whose names were written inside.

Again and again, they told the same story.

The same frozen morning.
The same pistol.
The same four words.

“We are all Jews here.”

In 2015, Yad Vashem recognized Roddie Edmonds as “Righteous Among the Nations” — the first American soldier ever to receive the honor.

And in 2026, more than 80 years after that moment in the prison yard, his son accepted the Medal of Honor on his behalf.

No battlefield charge.
No dramatic explosion.

Just moral courage.

A man staring down a loaded gun and refusing to hand over his soldiers.

One survivor later said:

“That such people can exist gives you hope for humanity.”

They do exist.

Roddie Edmonds was one of them.

[Nick Searcy, Actor/Director/Producer/Author @yesnicksearcy]

From my book, JUSTIFY THIS, in the chapter about GOSNELL:

"We were filming the movie in Oklahoma, and there was one role that we still had not cast. I just had not seen anyone that struck me as right for the role.

On a Sunday after the second week of shooting, I went to a Waffle House (my favorite restaurant chain by the way) in Oklahoma City. The place was very busy, and the manager was going around apologizing to everybody for their meals being late.

I kept looking at her. There was something about her. She was very attractive, and she had a tattoo on her neck. There was a certain toughness about her, and she way she carried herself was so poised and competent. There was a strength and a wisdom to her that I thought would really read on camera.

I felt moved to go and talk to her. I waited until she had a free moment, and I said, “Look, I know this sounds like a crazy pickup line, but…um, have you ever done any acting?”

Obviously having never been asked that question, she predictably responded, “Um, no.”

I said, “Look, I know this might sound like a cliche pick-up line, but…I really am a director from Hollywood and I really am shooting a movie here in town, and there’s a part in it that you would be right for. Would you mind if I got the script and let you read it with me to see if it’s something you want to do?”

“Um, okay.”

I drove home and got the script and went back to the Waffle House and sat down with her in a booth to read the script together. I explained that the character only had three or four lines, but they were very important to the story. I said, “I think you could do this. Would you be willing?”

She was understandably skeptical of this guy who suddenly showed up at her job claiming to be a Hollywood director and offering her a role in a movie. “I don’t know. How much would it pay?” she asked.

I said, “Well, it’ll probably be at least two or three days of work—and it’ll pay about eight hundred and thirty dollars a day.”

She said, “Okay.”

Probably a little better than Waffle House.

The first day she came to work, she practically brought her entire family with her to make sure I wasn’t some sort of crazy serial killer. We shot with her a couple of days, and she did very well. She was a natural. I kept telling her, “Tessya, don’t try to be interesting. You’re interesting enough. Just tell the truth. Let the words do the work for you.” And she was terrific.

On the third day, one of the producers, Ann, came over to me and said, “You’re not going to believe this.”

I replied, “Oh no. What now?” I was sure someone had quit, or some location had fallen out, or some other low-budget-movie disaster had occurred.

She said, “The thing that happened to her character in the movie happened to her in real life.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“Tessya, in her real life, went to have an abortion, and when they let her listen to the heartbeat of the baby, she decided not to go through with the abortion. She had her baby, just like her character in the movie.”

I was floored. I felt the hand of God was at play here. I believe God led me to that Waffle House to find her. That something inside me, telling me, when I first saw her, “She can do it! She can do it!”—was Him.

She is now the proud mother of three boys, including her firstborn, whose heartbeat changed her life.

@sagesteele @WaffleHouse

[NeverTweet @LOLNeverTweet]

Das Fatterland

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

😮

[TSA @TSA]

In an effort to avoid unexpected airport meet & greets please verify your cat’s location is not inside your suitcase before zipping it. Thanks.

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

To guard the fire is to guard your honor.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A backyard. One man guarding a grill for four hours.

He never left it once.

Everyone else drifted and drank and laughed. But one man stood alone before the flames, turning meat with a long fork, immovable. I knew him at once. The keeper of the sacred fire.

I took my place beside him and said nothing. After a while, he spoke.

"Low and slow," he said, eyes on the coals. "You can't rush it. Rush it, you ruin it."

I bowed my head. A blade, a tea, a life. None can be rushed. I had crossed four thousand miles to hear my grandfather's words from a man in a "KISS THE COOK" apron.

"Everything worth doing is slow," I agreed.

He glanced at me. Something passed between us.

"My wife says just use the oven." He shook his head at the fire. "She doesn't get it."

"They never do," I said.

And this is where it turned.

For the first time in years, this man had been understood. And he rose to meet it. His back straightened. His voice dropped low. A teenager reached for the grill and the man lifted one hand without even looking. "Not yet." The boy retreated. He was becoming what I already believed him to be.

A woman asked when the food would be done. "It's ready when it's ready," he told the flames.

Three people approached. Three were turned away with a single word. By the fourth hour, no one questioned him. The whole party had arranged itself around the man and his fire, the way a village arranges itself around a shrine.

Then he handed me the fork.

"Watch it a sec. I gotta pee."

I have been trusted with castles.

I have never been more honored.

He served everyone before himself, and ate last, standing, still watching the coals. We never traded names. We did not need to.

He believed he had finally met a man who took his cooking seriously.

I believed I had finally met America's last samurai.

Neither of us will ever correct the other.

So tell me, America.

Who is the man at your gathering who will not leave the grill?

Have you ever once asked him why?

I think he is still standing there.

Guarding the fire.

Waiting for one person to understand.

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

Someone replaced the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK with PEE-WEE HERMAN and I love it even more now 😂🔥 (not created with AI btw)

[Auburn Men's Golf @AuburnMGolf]

how it started vs. how it’s going 💤🏆

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

Read this on fb and wanted to share.

We are saddened to announce that Colonel Bruce Perry Crandall, one of the most courageous helicopter pilots in history, passed away on Sunday, May 31, 2026, at the age of 93.

Born on February 17, 1933 in Olympia, Washington, Crandall enlisted in the US Army in 1953. He earned his fixed-wing and helicopter pilot qualifications by 1954 and went on to serve nearly a quarter century in uniform.

His moment of legendary heroism came on November 14, 1965, during the Battle of Ia Drang in South Vietnam, the first major battle of the Vietnam War. Then-Major Crandall was leading a formation of 16 unarmed UH-1 Huey helicopters into Landing Zone X-Ray when enemy fire became so intense that the ground commander ordered all incoming helicopters to abort.

Crandall went back in anyway.

Along with his wingman, Captain Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman, Crandall flew 22 unescorted missions through walls of small arms fire, mortar rounds, and rocket-propelled grenades. They evacuated more than 70 wounded soldiers and delivered the ammunition and supplies that kept the trapped Americans alive through the night.

The battle was later chronicled in the bestselling book "We Were Soldiers Once… and Young" by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway, and portrayed in the 2002 film "We Were Soldiers" with actor Greg Kinnear playing Crandall.

He flew more than 900 combat missions during two tours in Vietnam. In 1968, his helicopter was shot down and he was severely injured, but he recovered and returned to service. He retired from the US Army in 1977.

On February 26, 2007, more than four decades after the Ia Drang battle, President George W. Bush presented Crandall with the Medal of Honor at the White House.
He is survived by his three sons and five grandchildren. His wife of 54 years, Arlene, passed away in 2010.

May Colonel Bruce "Old Snake" Crandall rest in peace.

Thank you for your service. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Pc:Aviation circle on Fb.

[Auburn Men's Golf @AuburnMGolf]

THE NO. 1 TEAM IN THE COUNTRY STANDS ALONE ☝️🏆

For the second time in three years, the Auburn Tigers are NCAA Champions!

#WarEagle

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

What day is it?

[Captain Friendly @Capt_Friendly]

@AuburnElvis

[Millennial Woes @MillennialWoes]

New Substack essay:

THE MURDER OF HENRY NOWAK

https://t.co/MYOK4qvCyJ

[Kevin Carpenter @kejca]

Warren Buffett: "The bottom 2% in terms of income in the United States, the bottom 5%, and for sure the top 1% all live better than John D. Rockefeller was living when I was six years old."

"John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world and, today, you can get better medicine, better education, better entertainment, better transportation. You can do everything better than he could."

"When I was born, the dentist didn't use novocaine!"