Posted on 11/14/2014 4:24:51 PM PST by GrandJediMasterYoda
WWII veteran, 98, dons uniform for final salute before dying the next day at New York nursing home On Veterans Day, Justus Belfield donned his Army uniform one more time The 98-year-old World War II veteran died the next day Belfield spent 16 years in the Army, including a stint in Europe where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge By ASSOCIATED PRESS
On Veterans Day, Justus Belfield donned his Army uniform one more time, even though he was too weak to leave his bed at an upstate New York nursing home. The 98-year-old World War II veteran died the next day. The Daily Gazette of Schenectady reports that Belfield had worn his uniform every Veterans Day since he and his wife moved into Baptist Health Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Glenville, outside Albany, several years ago. On Tuesday, the former master sergeant wasn't able to get out of bed to participate in the facility's Veterans Day festivities, so he had the staff dress him in his uniform.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
God bless that man
God Bless you Master Sergeant Belfield, rest in peace old-timer.
This image is an instant icon! RIP, sir.
RIP to a hero.
PRESENT ARMS
Thank you for your service.
Go to your rest, you have earned it!
RIP MSG Belfield.
Sadly, this is what America gave us today.
RIP MSGT Belfield. Thank you for your service.
WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin, Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
I was just thinking the other day when it came to the country and Civil war vets, the 1930s is about where we are today with regard to WW2 vets. Pretty soon they will all be gone, and I am disgusted to my guts that they are going out with everything they fought against in the nations highest office. A piece of rat slime that denied them their own memorial. There are no vets alive right now older than WW2 vets. There are no WW1 vets alive. The last living one died 3 years ago.......
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/27/wwi.veteran.death/
My father, a sergeant in the 110th Regiment, 28th Division, fought in the battle of the Huertgen forest. His unit was overrun by the Germans on the first day of the Bulge, and he was captured and taken prisoner while trying to lead a squad of men back to the American lines. During the 6 months he was held by the Germans as a POW, he lost half his body weight.
Interestingly, he did not come out of that experience holding a grudge against the German people. In his opinion, the average German soldier was just a guy sent out to do a job he didn’t particularly want to be doing. But he came to dislike the French, as he said they would come tell the American soldiers where the Germans were, but when asked to come along to help his unit track them down, would invariably refuse and run away.
My dad died, having lived a full and mostly happy life, almost exactly 10 years ago. If he were alive today, he would have turned 94 in August.
God bless him and all who fought the evil that threatened us in WWII.
You won’t see that level of commitment and sacrifice today. Now, it’s gimme, gimme, gimme.
Tell me about it, I got emotional the second I saw it.
He served a country, the United States of America, that today barely exists in anything but name.
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