Posted on 06/01/2008 5:54:34 PM PDT by PowderMonkey
Dedicated in memory of all those who landed in Normandy June 6, 1944.
“My family is with me. They wanted to come with me today. To be honest with you, I’m not sure how I feel coming back here. Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best I could. I hope that it was enough. I hope that it is in your eyes, I have “earned” what all of you have done for me.” ---- Pvt. Ryan
In loving memory and with eternal gratitude. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Uncle Ralph. At ease, fellas. Bravo Zulu.
Ping
Thanks for this. My Dad passed away three years and a couple of days ago.
He never talked about it...
There are not many left who remember what L.S./M.F.T. means anymore.
Right Hand Salute!
BAND OF BROTHERS!
My Dad’s brand......
Lucky Strike means fine tabacco. My Dad was in the Pacific Theater.
I know what it means (exposing my age).
My Mom was also a patriot, recruited from the coal mining camps of Appalachia to go to Richmond Virginia at the tender age of 17. She was a “Rosie the Riveter,” only she was a welder, welded ship hulls during WWII.
And the girls then wrote to every GI they met after the guys went overseas. My Mom wrote to several, it was a patriotic duty then to do so.
Take a silly hillbilly girl from the mountains of Appalachia and send her to a city during WWII, to contribute to the War Effort, and you get catasprophe (sp).
Mom danced to Benny Goodman’s band, and lots of others, in the ballrooms in Richmond. Her claim to fame was having three ballroom gowns and shoes to match (from a coal mining camp and lucky to get shoes).
But she spent all her free time writing letters to the soldiers she danced with. The YWCA recruited these gals from the coal mining camps and across the U.S. So these gals weres safe, spent all their time writing letters.
God Bless your mom and all those who worked on the homefront and supported - truly supported - the troops overseas.
All those that took the beaches on D-Day could have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. They could have been handed out like Chicklets. There was so many stories on untold heroism that day. Everyone that survived that hell hole and are alive today deserve all the respect that can be given. What they did that day and in the days following changed the course of history and we are reaping the benifits of their sacrifice and efforts. God bless each and everyone of them.
Well said and it bears repeating. God bless and thank you with all of my heart.
My dad would never talk about the war. I was born in 1942, while he was stationed here. He told me that he went to visit his father at the VA hospital in Westwood, California to tell him about my birth and when he got home, his dad had died. My grandfather had served with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. May they both rest in peace, Dear Lord!
My Dad was in D-Day +8. He served in the battle of St. Lo and in the Battle of the Bulge. He lost his best friend in the war, but never talked much about it. He was like all the great men who served—he was just doing his duty. They were truly the greatest generation.
God bless all of these great heroes and the Moms on the homefront that kept their hope alive. When they came back, God blessed them with many children and I am one of them.
Day of Days.
Yea, when I listen to my little grey haired (82 years old) Mom today, all these decades later, she still tells her stories of WWII and being the second best welder at Richmond shipyard with great pride.
I have B&W pics of a little teenaged girl in her coveralls from this period. It’s hard for me to imagine that is her.
She also had two brothers in WWII, one in the Navy and one Army. The uncle in the Army was career, did time in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
I used to be at Grandma’s house (their Mom) and would pull out the boxes of pictures she had. She had a black and white snapshot of Mussolini and his mistress laying on the ground with nooses around their necks. I am not kidding.
I asked her once who it was (it was a gruesome photo). She just said her son sent it to her, and she knew it was Mussolini. I suspect he bought it off an Italian after the Allied forces went into there.
“hehehe — My Mom left the hills of Western Tenn with he Sister to work in a Naval Ammunition factory. All the same things she did and experienced as well.”
Well, SandRat, we east Tennesseans don’t call them hills, but refer to them little bumps over in west Tennessee as “rolling landscape.”
But I fish over there a lot (Kentucky Lake) and I can tell you, those folks are the salt of the earth, some of the finest. So, I can see your Mama marching off to the “War on the Front” here.
God, we sure need some more Americans like these were. I just hung up the phone from my friend who used my oven to bake a LOT of cookies and banana bread to send to Afghanistan.
She is in Nashville now, and kept me on the phone a LONG time. She’s a lot younger than me.
We have been talking about the outstanding men in far away places defending us, she happens to be in love with one of them.
I have tried to explain to her that we also have to fight this war here in the U.S. Our efforts are important too.
Our mission is the same as my Mom’s and your Mom’s. But the tactics differ from those days. We have to WRITE our congressmen and women, hold their soft little spoiled feet to the fire, and RAISE HELL with them.
I do this, aggravate the *** out my elected officials, threaten to organize parties to go door to door to educate the masses here about their voting history. I also went to the first Gathering of Eagles counter march in D.C. in March 2007.
SHucks, she wants to go to a Code Pinko counter demonstration now. Education is a major weapon. We dang sure won’t learn the facts/truth from the MSM.
Thank the Lord for the Internet. There’s a lot more patriots than idjotits (deliberate misppelled) in this country, and a free flow of information is vital to freedom.
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Thanks PowderMonkey. |
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What a wonderful post, thanks!
my mother-in-law (nice lady, went to Heaven in ‘85) worked in a parachute factory during the war. came from the hills/mining areas of w. kentucky - madisonville/hopkinsville/earlington area (barnsley, unincorporated!)
highway 41, if i recall.
wife had vacations to kentucky lake as a kid.
we often wonder if we could muster the teamwork today they showed back then...
You are welcome.
My parents grew up during the Great Depression, knew what it was to do without comforts. When WWII came along they all did what they had to do to help the War Effort.
It’s easy to believe we have lost that in this country, but that’s not so. Look at the young men and women who joined the military after 9/11, the ones currently in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I amazed at the number of young folks I know who are very conservative.
It was my generation that really messed things up. And if you take a good look at the ones at anti war protests today, you’ll see it’s my generation. And the enemies in Congress — mostly my generation.
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