Members of the 593rd Sustainment Brigade's 80th Ordnance Battalion played in a all-day long "ultimate football" tournament at Fort Lewis. Photo by Dean J. Koepfler.

Gordon Hold is an 81-year-old Army veteran who was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Dudley Bang-Ura is a 36-year-old Fort Lewis soldier who is preparing for his first deployment next year.

Over plates of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie, the two shared stories. Hold earned an airborne rating. Bang-Ura has yet to jump from an airplane. Hold drove trucks. Bang-Ura is a medic specializing in preventative medicine.

Forty-five years might separate the two, but they hit it off Wednesday during a Thanksgiving meal for soldiers and residents of a Tacoma retirement home.

“We’re getting to know each other. And he’s telling me a lot about jumping (from an airplane),” said Bang-Ura, a Tacoma resident assigned to the 227th Company, 62nd Medical Brigade. “I’m starting to get some inspiration.”

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Here's a cool story from the Army Times: The Pennsylvania National Guard's 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team will deploy to Iraq with 15 unmanned aerial vehicles.

No word if the two Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigades set to deploy next year will use similar UAVs, but the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 3-2 Strykers recently trained with another component of the Future Combat Systems: The small unmanned ground vehicle, or SUGV (right).

The robot can be sent into buildings, around corners or into bunkers to check for enemies. One soldier moves it with an Xbox-like controller and monitors what the robot’s scope picks up – it has infrared and laser sights, too – with a pair of goggles.

It won rave reviews from the soldiers, who used it at the Yakima Training Center.

As 3rd Brigade’s deployment gets closer (we hear they'll move out around July), we’ll have more about the SUGV, which one platoon of the 1-23 memorably nicknamed “Shredbot.”

Photo by U.S. Army Future Combat Systems