Posted on 04/18/2009 12:24:16 PM PDT by Stoat
Great-grandfather Daniel Currie broke his elbow and shoulder after slipping during a walk at Fiddler's Elbow, near Abercynonon in Wales on Good Friday.
Unable to move, and without food or water, Mr Currie protected himself using survival skills learnt while serving in the Army 65 years ago.
The 87-year-old covered himself with leaves as temperatures plummeted to 3C overnight, and cleared surrounding undergrowth in order to make himself more visible to rescuers.
Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Currie said: 'I am really lucky to be here. I thought if I could get to my feet I could get home.
Ordeal: Mr Currie fell 250ft down a ravine Fiddler's Elbow, near Abercynonon in Wales on Good Friday. The pensioner was not rescued until Easter Sunday
Flashback: Mr Currie aged 24 in a picture taken at the end of World War II
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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Also:
Old soldier's still got the skills The Sun NewsCampaignsOur Boys
Survival instinct ... Daniel Currie with picture of his army days
“I was really isolated and beginning to wonder if I'd ever be found. I heard a dog barking and a voice.
“I was shouting 'help me' but nobody came.”
Great-grandfather Daniel curled up into a ball and covered himself with leaves when night fell and temperatures dropped to just 3C.
Second World War veteran survives for two days trapped in ravine - Telegraph
They alerted police and officers found the pensioner barely conscious at the bottom of the embankment.
He was taken to Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil where he was expected to make a full recovery.
WalesOnline - News - Wales News - 87-year-old survives two days’ agony in ditch after 80m fall
The greatest generation.
No kidding. God love him.
87? He doesn’t look a day over 70!
First there is no such thing as "the greatest generation" if he was born before 1925 then he is part of the GI generation, and it was boomers that brought a slowdown to the radical leftism of the GI and the silent generations.
SAme the uniform pic is B & W - was he a RM or Airborne?
ANy freeper military history buffs out there?
My father was a WWII combat veteran, in the worst of it. He loved his CIC, FDR, and voted Democrat because of FDR until Reagan, then slid back to FDR’s coattails after that. He had always hated a draft dodger worse than a biting dog, but somehow the Clintons charmed him and he gave Bill a pass and thought Hillary should have whatever Hillary wanted. To some degree, while he was very industrious and not lazy, there was some degree to which he thought this country owed the veterans of that war especially - and it DID! However, I’m his kid, and I’ve always voted conservative and never asked the government for anything. My parents raised me to be honest and a law-abiding, tax paying citizen. My son on the other hand was loused up by the Bill Ayers types of professors long after I had any influence left with him; so he’s a liberal until Obama louses up this country and it affects his pocket book.
ANy freeper military history buffs out there?
Unfortunately, the most information about his military service in the articles is this single line from the linked Wales Online story:
He saw action from Normandy to Hamburg, and with command force was a gun position officer’s assistant, plotting targets and giving ranges for the guns.
I'm wondering also if anybody might know if all is well with FReeper Archy? His last post at FR was in December of last year. Hopefully he's just taking a break and will be back soon :-)
No. No. My father worked all his life as a carpenter and made a decent living, paid into the system, paid his taxes, never drew a dime in welfare. He did retire and drew a pension from working for many years at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama back when rocket launching pads were made up of crude materials and packed with dry ice for cooling during launching the early rockets. I doubt that many of the WWII veterans expected to sit on their butts for the rest of their lives. Now, the later ones, I don’t know, but about the time of the Korean War, the spoiled, picky attitudes of many POW’s who served during that war died in prison camps simply because they were too picky to eat the simple foods they were given and had readily available to them in the camps. For instance, they were given soybeans, but wouldn’t eat them. Maybe they didn’t know how to cook them (they have to be cooked a long time and are a source of protein). Explained in a book entitled, “In Every War But One”.
My father was raised hunting squirrels, fishing, farming and killing snakes with his bare hands or maybe a rock if he could find one big enough. He did think that battle sustained injuries deserved treatment if possible, and died with shrapnel in his hands from wounds sustained in Italy. He was a hardened soldier of N. Africa, Sicily, Italy and Germany by the time the war ended, and even then, he was set for the duration which would have included Japan.
Kid my Uncle Mac is a WWII vet. Flew planes. Any of them. After the war was over, he was sent to Okinawa. Then he taught. He was a lifer. Ya know what they were told? Serve your country and it will take care of you. When he needed surgery a few years back, ya know what he got? Zip. Zilch. Nada. Squat. Don’t tell soldiers they’ll be taken care of if they aren’t going to do it.
So you support unlimited entitlements for veterans. Might as well pay for their mortgages, utilities, and food bills too. After all, we’re not “taking care” of them.
The English language desperately needs a sound effect for eye-rolling.
Do you know anything about how we take care of our military and their families? Most are on foodstamps and are dirt poor. You need to read more and talk less.
AND these men sacrificed so you could be free and sit at your computer and cry.
FR Veterans ping to this.. poster “terpfen.”
He believes that after a veterans service is over that they SHOULDN’T get medical benefits.
I’ll start off:
Terpfen, do you speak GERMAN as a primary language here today?
How about Russian?
No?
Thank a vet and then kindly SHUT UP.
You know absolutely NOTHING about the military and those who serve.
You know NOTHING about veterans in general.
You also know NOTHING about how many veterans are here on FR.
I guess you’re about to find out, the hard way.
“SAme the uniform pic is B & W - was he a RM or Airborne?
ANy freeper military history buffs out there?
Unfortunately, the most information about his military service in the articles is this single line from the linked Wales Online story:
He saw action from Normandy to Hamburg, and with command force was a gun position officer’s assistant, plotting targets and giving ranges for the guns.”
That would suggest he was Royal Artillery....
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