Land of Opportunity

Next time someone says the deck is stacked against them or they just can't succeed in this country tell them about Commander Hung Ba Le, U.S. Navy.

On the day his side lost the Vietnam War, Hung Ba Le fled his homeland at the age of 5 in a fishing trawler crammed with 400 refugees. Thirty-four years later, he made an unlikely homecoming — as the commander of a U.S. Navy destroyer.

Le piloted the USS Lassen on Saturday into Danang, home of China Beach, where U.S. troops frequently headed for R&R during the war, which ended on April 30, 1975, when the southern city of Saigon was taken by communist troops from North Vietnam.

Read the rest. Also, Commander Le is not the only example of American success in his family.

Le has few memories of his three-day journey on the fishing trawler, which ended just as they were running out of food, water and fuel.

But he has vivid memories of the example set by his father, Thong Ba Le, who is now 69 and has never returned to Vietnam. After the family settled in northern Virginia, he took a job in a supermarket, where he worked his way up from bag boy to manager.

"I always wanted to be like my dad," Le said. "He persevered and overcame many challenges."

Any father who has a son who wants to be like him is definitely a success.

Breaking News: U.S. Navy Ship Fires on Poland

There are moments I miss Navy life and wish I were still out on the ships. Today is not one of those days at least not on the destroyer USS RAMAGE.

A Norfolk-based destroyer ended a visit to a Polish port Wednesday with a literal "bang," when a crew member accidentally fired three rounds from a machine gun into the city of Gdynia.

The Ramage, a guided missile destroyer, had recently wrapped up an international training exercise called Joint Warrior and was at anchor at the city on the Baltic Sea in northern Poland.

A Navy official at the Pentagon with knowledge of the incident said that at 10:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday, three rounds were "accidentally discharged" from one of the Ramage's M240 machine guns.

Ouch! Life is going to be kind of ugly on the Ramage. The blame might belong to just one sailor, but we like to share. It is going to be uncomfortable for everyone. I would not have wanted to be in the room as the Captain was calling up his chain of command to report the event.