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November 8, 2015

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VETERANS
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Bradford Freeman
By Andrew Hazzard | ahazzard@cdispatch.com

When his war ended, Bradford Freeman


came home and went to work.
He returned to Lowndes County in Dec.
1945 after packing his own parachute
five times, jumping out of five planes
and fighting in the four most significant
battles of the Allied Campaign in Europe.
He helped secure Utah Beach on D-Day,
earned a citation for a daring rescue mission
in Eindhoven, Netherlands, helped hold
Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and
occupied the portion of Germany known as
Hitlers Nest.
By Jan. 1946, he was working.
Freeman was married to Willie Lou
Freeman, had two daughters and drove a
U.S. Mail route from Caledonia up through
Monroe County for 32 years.

as often as they could wherever they


could in Nevada, Colorado, New Orleans,
Georgia and London. Now, as many have
died, Freeman receives phone calls from
their children.
From his personal archives, among
medals including the Bronze Star and the
Purple Heart, lie photos of the men he calls
brothers. There arent many left today.
It was a real good group of boys and they
thought the world of each other, Freeman
says fondly. It wasnt I, it was We.
Freeman gets fan mail on a regular
basis, usually just folks thanking him for his
service and asking for a signature. He tries
to respond to everybody.
At 91, Freeman is still active in body and
mind. He has a firm handshake and keeps
a pair of work gloves in his back pocket.
Not long ago, as a beautiful fall afternoon
passed at the 100 Caledonia acres he has
lived on for 60 years, some ladies stopped
by to thank him for the tomatoes he grew
and gave to them.
One daughter, Beverly Bowles, lives
down the street. His other daughter, Becky
Clardy, lives close by, too.

Chris Taylor
By Carl Smith | csmith@cdispatch.com

Freeman

Freeman was a private-first class in Easy


Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 506th
Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st
Airborne Division. The unit became among
the most famed in U.S. military history
when Stephen Ambrose immortalized them
in his 1993 book, Band of Brothers. A
2001 HBO mini-series by the same name,
co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom
Hanks, added to their fame.
The men of the unit stayed close, meeting

Thirty years, nine months and a handful


of days Oktibbeha County NAACP
Chairman Chris Taylor can quickly recall
how long he served in the Army.
Taylor, a former sergeant major who
served in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan,
enlisted in 1975, following in the footsteps
of his father and uncles.
Like his predecessors, Taylor joined in
search of a better life. Out of his six siblings,
five others joined a branch of the U.S.
armed forces, including his brother Carl,
who also served in Iraq.
Taylor said he clearly remembers the
management duties he faced in Bosnia and
Kosovo during peacekeeping missions from
1997-1998 and 2000-2001, respectively, but
it was his 2004-2005 tour in Afghanistan
that provided the most danger.
In addition to serving in an active
warzone, Taylor said his unit drove around
their sector in unarmored trucks for the first
six months of the deployment.
One didnt even have doors. We felt
completely naked, the 60-year-old says.

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Taylor

Taylor was part of a group assigned


to support local warlords opposing the
Taliban. The warlords, he says, were the
true rulers of Afghanistan.
Live fire experiences became
commonplace as his convoy went on patrols.
Out near Herat, wed be driving down
the road and start taking fire from the
Taliban up in the hills. The only thing we
could do is take cover, return fire and call
for backup, he says. I never saw someone
drop (when returning fire). We called in air
support all the time.
The worst part about it was the
uncertainty you have every day, Taylor
adds. You didnt know if youd get shot at
or something worse. No matter what corner
you went around or in what city, the danger
was always there.
His best experience in Afghanistan? The
publicity he and his fellow soldiers received
when Geraldo Rivera reported on his unit.

Deveon Sudduth
By Isabelle Altman | ialtman@cdispatch.com

Less than two weeks after arriving in


Iraq in Feb. 2006, Lt. Col. Deveon Rawls
Sudduth had to speak at the memorial
service for Army Specialist Benjamin
Schuster, who was killed by an improvised
explosive device.
Sudduth and Schuster had arrived in
Iraq together. Sudduth was the only person
who knew him well enough to speak. The
morning of Schusters memorial, Sudduth

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got up, went to work, spoke at the memorial,


went back to work, spoke at the memorial
for the second shift and went home.
You have to wait until you get home to
process all that, Sudduth says. Because I
knew if I ever cried that I wouldnt be able
to stop crying. So you just hold it all in until
you get home and then you deal with it.
It was the first of two deployments to Iraq
that Sudduth would experience between
2004 and 2013, only three years of which
she spent in Steens, where she and her
husband raise horses. Originally from
Byram, Sudduth joined the National Guard
in 1979, at the same time as her older
sister, because they had never been apart.
Sudduth grew to love the military lifestyle
the structure and the feeling that she was
a part of something bigger than herself.

Sudduth

Now 53, Sudduth credits her husband,


Jimmie, for supporting her and dealing
with her craziness following her first
deployment to Iraq. When she arrived
home, he surprised her by building her a
camp house in their backyard where she
could go to chill out.
Sudduth also has two daughters one
a teacher in Washington, D.C., the other a
college student in Madison.
During her second deployment to
Iraq, from 2008 to 2009, she worked for
several Iraqi ministries, helping develop
curriculums to train the rapidly improving
Iraqi military. Not only did she make
friends in Iraq, she came to like the culture
especially the food.

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Gino Conti
By Slim Smith | ssmith@cdispatch.com

Its been more than 70 years since the


end of World War II, so its natural that
Gino Conti would have forgotten much of
that experience.
But it is not merely the ravages of time
that has erased much of those memories.
For the colorful Conti, now 95, it was also a
matter of choice.
Its just me, but I wanted to forget
the whole damn thing! he says, with a
dismissive wave of his hand.
Conti was born in Palermo, Italy, on July
21, 1920.
I left Sicily when I was 3 months and 3
days old, he says. At least, thats what they
told me. How could I know that?

After being processed at Ellis Island, the


family moved to Brooklyn. He tells stories of
famed gangster John Dillinger, who would
sometimes go through the neighborhood
making sure everybody had a loaf of bread
during the darkest days of the Depression.
In 1940, Conti enlisted in the Army Air
Corps was trained in aircraft maintenance.
When the war broke out, he was sent to
Naples, Italy, and spent the war throughout
Europe helping maintain aircrafts of all sizes
and functions.
At the end of the war, he was stationed in
Africa before returning stateside.
I spent most of my career with the Army

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James Hunt
On Laurel native James Hunts 19th
birthday Dec. 16, 1944 German
forces during World War II began an
offensive through the thick, covered Forest
of Ardennes in Belgium. There, in the
historic Battle of the Bulge, they clashed
with U.S. forces, including Hunt, who was
a replacement infantryman in the 18th
Infantry, 1st Division of K Company.
The coldest winter ever, says Hunt, who
lives in Columbus today. I mean, snow up
to the gazoo.
The ground was frozen, making it
impossible to break the ground to dig
foxholes. The soldiers had to light small
sticks of dynamite just to break the crust
of the ground to even begin to dig, Hunt
remembers.
And the bad thing about it was once you
got the foxhole dug, when the offensive
started moving forward, you left the nice
warm foxhole and went out to do it over
again, he says.
Hunt had been drafted in 1943. He was
discharged for medical reasons before the
war was over. After returning to Mississippi,
he finished his education and taught at
Mississippi University for Women for 30
years. He has helped create programs both
at the university and in the community
to benefit Columbus handicapped
community.
Years later, he would return to Belgium
with his first wife to visit his daughter,
Elizabeth Neil, who works for the State

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the fourth grade.


Donald went to West Point and
graduated as a second lieutenant in 1972.
He was commissioned as an infantry
officer. During his career, he went to
Germany, Korea, Belgium and Ireland.
As an infantry officer, you prepare your
platoon, your company, your battalion for
combat, he says. You lead them.
He served as an attach in Belgium and
in Ireland. During those assignments, he
worked closely with the ambassador and
local governments and was also involved
in maintaining defense intelligence.
Donald, 66, was born in Laurel. He lives in
Starkville now, and has a wife, Marilyn Leah
Donald, and two sons, Patrick and Ryan.
Looking back, he points to his father,
who served with the Navy in World War
II, as an inspiration to join the military.
Long story short, he would tell stories
and I would go with him when he and his

Air Corps (which became the U.S. Air Force


in 1947) in the states, Conti says.
He came to Columbus Air Force Base
in the 1950s and returned to Columbus
in 1970 when he retired with the rank of
master sergeant after 30 years of service.
He and his wife, Ila, were married 74
years before she passed away a year ago.
Their only child, Daryl, served in Vietnam.
He, too, is deceased.
Conti, who has lived in Columbus for 45
years, now lives in an assisted living facility
at Plantation Point.
He remains a gregarious, cheerful man.
His one complaint: There is nowhere
around here where you can get a good
Italian meal.

By Isabelle Altman | ialtman@cdispatch.com

Conti

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Hunt

Department. The three of them visited the


Henri-Chapelle Cemetery where World
War II soldiers, many of them from Hunts
division, are buried.
I couldnt find very many that were older
than 23 years of age, Hunt says. And
you think, These people never knew their
families past this particular age. They never
knew about the changing technology, they
never knew the events that happened in
the world. They were just, I guess youd
say, sacrificed. They gave their lives, I guess
thats a better way to put it.

Jeff Donald
By Alex Holloway | aholloway@cdispatch.com

Jeff Donald traveled the world during his


30-year military career.
For Donald, a retired Colonel in the
U.S. Army, service has been a lifelong
dream. He began his college education
at Mississippi State University, but had
wanted to go to the U.S. Military Academy
at West Point ever since he was a child.
My congressman, John Bell Williams,
told me that if I went to Mississippi State
and took calculus and freshman English
and passed, I could go to West Point,
Donald says. Thats what Id wanted to
do. I had been writing my congressman
and senator since I was a freshman and Id
wanted to go to West Point since I was in

Donald

friends would talk about the war and tell


war stories, Donald says. I said I wanted
to do it. He told me if I studied really
hard, I could go to Annapolis to be a naval
officer.
I started off wanting to do that, but in
the fourth grade I decided I didnt want
to do that I wanted to be in the Army,
he continues. If a ship sinks in the ocean,
theres no dry land to get on. Put me on
dry land.

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God Bless America!


The Dispatch

Proudly supporting the sacrifice


of all our veterans.

Kenneth Montgomery

National Bail Bonding Co. 327-BOND (2663)

True freedom comes from the Spirit of the Lord.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015

8 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015


eventually. For the first few days the
Americans were there, the locals hid
their children whenever they saw Cobb
or other men from his unit because the
Germans had told them black soldiers
would eat their children.
After the war, Cobb lived in Columbus
for a few years before moving to
Wisconsin to take a manufacturing job.
There he met his wife, Nancy Cobb,
who died in 1999. She and Cobb had
been married 51 years. Cobbs stepson,
Sidney Lockett, still lives in Wisconsin,
and the two keep in touch. Now Cobb
is back in Columbus, retired and still
reminiscing about Italy and the men in
his unit.

John Fraiser

Cobb

By Alex Holloway | aholloway@cdispatch.com

Jesse Cobb
By Isabelle Altman | ialtman@cdispatch.com

At 93, Jesse Cobb says he cant


remember much anymore, but he can
still tell you that he was a private in the
Fifth Army in the 1943 Allied invasion
of Italy.
He can also tell you all the different
places he trained and was deployed in
the correct order and can give you the
date that he enlisted in the U.S. Army
Sept. 9, 1941 and the day he got
back to his hometown of Columbus
Nov. 5, 1944.
A few months after Cobb enlisted,
Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor,
pushing the U.S. into World War II.
Cobb was part of an African American
outfit in the Army.
Them Germans would just rain shells
down on the beach, Cobb says. I
never did think Id see back here again.
Cobb served as 242nd quartermaster
in Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Though
his outfit never fought in a battle, they
stayed at the front line to back up the
rest of the Fifth Army and always had
their rifles loaded and ready to use if
necessary.
Because the Germans had recently
invaded Italy, the Fifth Army primarily
fought them. In fact, Cobb remembers
the local Italians as being friendly

John Fraiser is one of a lucky few.


The 90-year-old veteran flew as a turret
gunner atop B-24 Liberators in raids over
southern Germany as part of the 15th Air
Forces 455th Bomber Group.

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in World War II, he says. That would


include all the Marines. Thats seldom
published.
The real early ones that went over
there most of them didnt come
back, Fraiser adds. While I was over
there, we lost about 50-percent of our
aircrew in the 15th and 8th, and they
were the two main air forces.
Fraiser says he counts himself
fortunate to have flown in the turret
atop the Liberators he says gunners
in turrets beneath the planes were far
more vulnerable.
Fraiser joined the military as a
17-year-old in 1943.
At that time, I knew that I wanted to
go into service. Id always wanted to
fly, he says. I had never flown before,
but I wanted to fly. When I went in,
they gave us a test and I passed the test
to be a navigator, but they didnt have
any navigation schools with spots open.
I wanted to go on, and they did have
gunnery schools open, so I opted out
and went on to the gunnery school.
He left the service in 1945 as a staff
sergeant, a few months after the end of
the war.
Fraiser grew up in Sunnyside and
now lives in Starkville with his wife,
Jennie. He has a son, John J. Fraiser III,
a daughter Martha Fraiser Bryant and a
stepdaughter, Emily Odam.

Joseph Johnson
By Alex Holloway | aholloway@cdispatch.com

Fraiser

Fraiser flew on missions over Vienna,


Munich, Regensburg, Linz, Prague and
other cities that hit what he calls the
underbelly of the Nazi war machine.
Combat air crewmen of the air forces
in World War II suffered the highest rate
of casualties of any entity or any group

Joseph Johnson grew up in the small


town of Goodway in Monroe County,
Alabama.
Now, the 90-year-old U.S. Army
veteran lives in Columbus with a career
that spanned 42 years of service in the
military and civil service behind him.
Johnson served with the 3rd Army 551st
AAA Battalion. He was a gunner on a
40-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. In the
civil service, Johnson worked with the
14th Flying Training Wing and spent
15 years as an air traffic management
officer at Columbus Air Force Base.
Johnson enlisted in 1943 at 16 years of
age. His tour took him into the heart of
the European theater during World War
II, from D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge.

SALUTE TO VETERANS

I was in the fifth wave to hit the


beach, Johnson says. The first, second
and third got knocked out. Half of the
fourth wave got knocked out. Then they
called for the fifth. I dont know how we
survived that, brother. It was a miracle.

Johnson

Johnson reached the rank of private


first class during his military service and
GS-12 in the civil service. He earned four
Bronze Stars and a French Legion medal.
During his service, Johnson personally
knew Gen. George S. Patton who, to
hear Johnson tell it, was the greatest
general to ever walk the Earth.
If it wasnt for him, wed be speaking
German right now, Johnson says. I tell
you what, he was hard on us, but he
made good soldiers out of us.
Johnson says he was often scared to
death during the war, but would do it
again, if he had to.
Johnson has two daughters, Gwen
Lollar and Joan Averett, and a son,
Danny Johnson.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015 9

Thank You.

All Americans are indebted


to all of our veterans.

Charles Chuck Younger


The Dispatch

Mississippi Senator, District 17

Paid for and approved by Charles Younger.

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10 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015

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Leondre Rice
By Carl Smith | csmith@cdispatch.com

Ten years ago, Leondre Rice ducked


through the gunners hole in his Humvee
to avoid gunfire as his convoy came
under attack in Iraq.
He was warning his commander of the
attack as an improvised explosive device
rocked his vehicle, severely injuring him
and others.
His next conscious memory came
weeks later as he recovered stateside.
I stood back up, and thats the last
thing I remember. I woke up back in the
U.S Rice says. They said I was (treated)
in Germany for six days. I just dont want
(war injuries) to happen to anyone else.
He lost his eyesight that day, along with
two knuckles and a bone in his arm. The
E-4 specialists skull was also fractured,
and he was badly burned.

Artillery Regiment.
Serving in an active warzone, he
says, brought with it the obvious perils.
Tensions ran higher that April day Rice
was wounded, as insurgents armed with
small arms, rocket-propelled grenades
and car bombs attacked American forces
at Abu Ghraib prison.
We were supposed to get some
equipment installed on our Humvees. I
thought we were going to get attacked
that day, he says while describing how
his convoy snaked through crowded,
hostile streets.
In addition to the scars left by the
attack, Rice says hell always carry with
him the camaraderie he experienced with
fellow soldiers.
Its all about the family each other
over there, he says. I feel like I was
closer with those guys than most people.
We were as close as you can be without
being actual blood family.

Michael Hunter
By Carl Smith | csmith@cdispatch.com

Rice

Rice, now 36, is a Columbus native


who joined the Marines straight out of
high school in 1998 and transitioned to
the Mississippi National Guard five years
later.
Both branches took him to armed
conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Following in his fathers footsteps,
he served in the same National Guard
battery: 2nd Battalion, 114th Field

What started as a way to fund his higher


education slowly turned into a continuous
commitment for Michael Hunter.
A Starkville resident, Hunter enlisted in
the U.S. Army in 1987 and has remained
with the armed services in one way or
another ever since.
Now, at 48, he works with cadets in
Mississippi State Universitys Reserve
Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program.
His service, however, has taken him far
from Macon, his hometown.
Hunters deployments include a 2001
stint in Bosnia one that occurred about
the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks
and two separate tours of duty in Iraq.
As an artillery fire support officer in
a peacekeeping role, Hunter primarily
worked joint military commission roles
in Bosnia, where he was responsible for
monitoring training, weapons supplies
and other accountability marks between
the Bosnian and Serbian forces.
Four years later, his outfit was deployed
to Iraqs active warzone.
We were there to slug it out (with the
enemy). The worst of it was losing fellow
soldiers the ones who didnt make it
home, he says.

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Hunter

Hunter, a lieutenant colonel, was


sent back to Iraq in 2009. He and his
fellow soldiers were sent to shore up the
countrys stability ahead of an expected
U.S. transition out of the region.
The two tours of duty, he says, were
night-and-day experiences.
We did convoy operations securing
them to resupply all the other soldiers
there, Hunter says. The best part of the
tour was building upon successes. One of
my jobs over there was as a police liaison,
where I was responsible for building
up policed departments in our sector.
That included equipping them with
vehicles, guns, vests and training them.
It was a good feeling to watch them go
from nothing to a new building that was
recruiting personnel.

Nick Ardillo
By Slim Smith | ssmith@cdispatch.com

When Nick Ardillo left his hometown


of Homewood, Alabama, in 1962 to study
at Auburn University, he had planned to
become a veterinarian. Then, the 18-yearold took his first airplane flight.
He was hooked.
That first flight launched a 27year career in the U.S. Air Force.

SALUTE TO VETERANS

Commissioned as a second lieutenant in


Dec.1966, Ardillo was thrust into combat
almost immediately as a fighter pilot in
Vietnam, later becoming a flight instructor
and finally wing commander of the 14th
Flying Training Wing at Columbus Air
Force Base (1991-1993).
The 71-year-old retired colonel now
spends his time on his 33-acre mini-ranch
in west Lowndes County with his wife,
Mary, where he tends to his three horses
and tinkers with antique automobiles.
His flying days may be over, but his
memories remain fresh, especially his
time as 25-year-old combat fighter in
Southeast Asia.
Anytime you fly in combat, you have
vivid memories, Ardillo says. The thing
that stands out to me is how close you
become with your military family. You are
over there, fighting and flying and dying
together with your buddies. Aside from
your immediate family, you cant get any
closer than that.
The Ardillos have two children and
three grandchildren.

Ardillo

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015 13

Thank you to our veterans


from the staff of The Dispatch!

14 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015

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SALUTE TO VETERANS

Robert Bishop
By Slim Smith | ssmith@cdispatch.com

Bishop

Robert Bishop credits two things for his remarkable 24-year career as a Special Ops
soldier in the U.S. Army a community pool in his hometown of Starkville and an
incredibly understanding wife.
Bishop, who joined the Army in 1974 and made it through the rigorous Special Ops
training, said the little pool gave him an advantage.
Because of that pool, I learned to be a good swimmer, he says. A lot of candidates
couldnt swim or swim well, especially a lot of the black soldiers. So that really worked to
my advantage.
As a member of Special Ops, Bishop found himself in military hot spots all over the world
from Grenada to Bosnia to Panama and, Bishop says, some places I still cant talk about.
The nature of his job meant being ready to deploy on short notice.
When I got home, I always had another bag packed, he says. When the phone rang, I
had to be ready to go and couldnt tell my wife where I was going. I couldnt have had this
career without the support of my wife, who took care of our two kids.
After retiring with the rank of command sergeant major in 1998, Bishop taught high
school in Houston, Texas, before returning home to Starkville, where he taught ROTC at
Starkville High for 11 years. He retired last year and now works as a bailiff for Oktibbeha
County.
In addition to their two children, Bishop, 62, and his wife, Jerrie, have five grandchildren.

Stephanie Perkins
By Andrew Hazzard | ahazzard@cdispatch.com

If Stephanie Perkins has a fault, its stepping up too soon.


In 2001, inspired by her high school J-ROTC officer, she signed up for the National
Guard at the age of 17.
It led me in the right direction, Perkins says. The military offers so many options.
Perkins became a diesel mechanic, serving as an E-4 specialist with the 223rd Combat
Army Engineers. She was deployed to Iraq when the invasion began in 2003. When U.S.
forces captured Saddam Hussein in Tikrit, she was there. The scene was hopeful and
memorable.
2003 was kind of the beginning of everything, she says. It was fascinating, the way
people celebrated.
Perkins and her unit traveled through Iraq, providing mechanical support to units during
the height of the conflict, conducting security patrols and distributing medical supplies.
Serving in Iraq helped guide Perkins to her current job as a Starkville police officer.
Its a calling, Perkins says. I think I decided to apply when I was overseas.
The only problem was that Perkins was still 20 years old at the time. The chief told her
to apply the moment she turned 21, and thats what she did. In 2005, Perkins became a
Starkville police officer. She served in the National Guard Reserves until 2009. Shell have
been on the force for 11 years in January.
Perkins
Perkins joined the military because it offered her an opportunity to explore diverse
career paths. Already a diesel mechanic, soldier and patrol officer, she added another
line to her resume in 2009 when she graduated from the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Association Police Sniper Training. She
remains the only female sniper in the state.
A native of Louisiana, Perkins said Starkville is the home she knows and loves. At 32, it seems likely shell find yet another way to
serve her community before too long.
Photographs by Luisa Porter & Mark Wilson

SALUTE TO VETERANS

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