Posted on 06/06/2013 3:21:00 PM PDT by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig
69 years ago today my father in law was landing in Normandy France in a glider....crawling through hedgerows....doing his duty.
Thank you Ralph "Bud" Thomas.
My late uncle, the well-known watercolor artist Dong Kingman, served in the US Army during World War II as a cartographer working for the Office of Strategic Services—he helped draw many of the maps used by D-Day invasion forces on Utah and Omaha beaches. Your father-in-law may have used one of those maps.
“Head half-obscured guy”, or “guy between 23 and chin-resting-on-Ike’s-thumb guy”?
Between 23 and chin on thumb.....jug ears..
Thank you to Ralph and all those heroes.
I heard Rush talking about spending Memorial Day at Normandy. I’ve been to Anzio, Italy and seen the crosses (and a few stars of David) as far as the eye could see in all directions. My first child was a toddler when I went there. It took motherhood to really wake me up to it.
All those crosses were someone else’s little baby, who mostly never got got to grow up, marry, and have children. How I wept.
And the world hates us?? Name another bleeping country who dies for its brothers elsewhere!!!!!! Come on, name it. I’m waiting!
Going forward, war should be avoided at all costs, especially when barely 20 years after the invasion we were on good terms with the enemy.
What a waste of blood and treasure.
This was the last real war that the US has sent men to die in, everything since then has been progressively muddled by ridiculous rules of engagement and an unwillingness to do what it takes to achieve total victory.
The USA is blessed that we have oceans on both sides that make landing an invasion force sufficient to cause any worry impossible.
The enemy we face today is within the halls of power in DC and is allied with moslem and communist interests in the middle east, China, and Russia.
A sound strategy would be to recall all troops from foreign lands, ramp up space, drone, and nuclear forces, make the list of foreign targets public, and let it be known that if a nuke goes off in the USA, 100 will be returned against any country even peripherally connected.
At some point in the next 50 years, the moslem hoard will attempt to annihilate the USA with nuclear weapons.
The only option is to beat them and the domestic enemy within to the punch.
69 years ago my uncle was slowly starving in a Japanese POW camp after enduring the death march.
My Grandfather (taken at the fall of Corrigedor) always said it was pretty close to a death sentence if you were over 6 feet tall in captivity. He was 84 pounds when he was liberated from a Hitachi copper mine on the mainland. When I was little, sometimes he'd jokingly refer to it as being "guest of the Japanese Emperor", but when I got old enough to come home late and they were visiting or I was at their place, I'd hear him having dreams about it (Pops too, who was a decorated helo pilot during Vietnam). THAT really brings it home...
WA Ping
There was a time when our nation was made up of brave and unquestioning people willing to answer the call and make the greatest sacrifice to preserve freedom for others they would never meet. We are blessed to have inherited the country they gave us with no questions asked.
Thanks Bay...I’m around...just quietly observing...keeping my powder dry
69 years ago today great-uncle was on New Guinea.
Dad was a 22 year old LT (j.g.) in charge of an LCT on Utah Beach.
“My Grandfather (taken at the fall of Corrigedor) always said it was pretty close to a death sentence if you were over 6 feet tall in captivity.”
My Tio Ernesto lied to the Japanese that he was a cobbler and got an extra ration of rice for fixing their boots that he shared with his friend who had been beaten very badly during the march. He survived, but came home messed up. He had very strange quirks about food. As a kid, we thought he was just crazy (which he was, really), but as I got older I was told the real reason. That’s when it hit home for me.
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