Posted on 05/26/2024 12:59:34 PM PDT by Jacquerie
On Memorial Day 14 years ago I was in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, ready to go home to see my pregnant wife and family in North Carolina after months of endless gun fights with the Taliban and watching my friends die.
Eight days earlier I had a brush with death when a Taliban sniper round hit a bank just inches from my face and held the hand of a teenage Marine whose life slipped away after he was shot in the head.
I heard the radio call for a Marine killed in action: 'Fallen Angel'. 'Fallen Angel, Fallen Angel', their initials, and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
For me, that's why the day is not just about beers and barbecues, but about reflection and remembering American service members who we have lost in battles abroad and at home.
When the sun goes down, I go out to my backyard and mark the day my own way.
I light my fire pit, pull up a lawn chair, pour myself a double of Scotch and light a cigar.
My wife leaves me alone, and I stare at the flames, thinking of the Marines I knew who paid the ultimate price.
I remember the men who were killed by the IED blast that ended my combat career early and left me with physical and psychological scars that are still part of my everyday life.
I think about all the servicemembers who have died fighting for America and our way of life.
I think of those who came home from battlefields and faced - and ultimately succumbed - to their own invisible war with mental health problems compounded by the horrors they experienced.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I think of those who came home from battlefields and faced - and ultimately succumbed - to their own invisible war with mental health problems compounded by the horrors they experienced.
To quote George Carlin, “If we still called it ‘Shellshock’ instead of ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, those vets would have gotten the help they needed at the time.”
My grandfather went to France in 1918 at age 23. He was an old man on the line. He made it home, but was never the same person.
At my VA clinic the first two questions they ask are:
Are you OK?
Do you want to hurt yourself or someone else?
I’m Vietnam era vet. Service connected disabled. Some of my service was to make sure aircraft(B-52) that could end the world were fully operational.
I was crawling around Nukes at age 18.
I was never shot at, but there were some incidents
that I thought we all were going to die.
Incidents the public was never told about.
All dead/disabled veterans deserve our collective
appreciation, mine included.
To all veterans, thank you for your service! This Deplorable Family always tell the military thank you because the Tampa Bay area is home to McDill. As my friend has on a t-shirt, All Gave Some, Some Gave All. He was in Nam.
He was strong, healthy and fit with a full head of light brown hair.
I saw a picture of him two years after coming home and the difference was shocking.
Two years on and he's still rail thin, gaunt eyed and the hair on the sides of his once nice brown were grey.
It was shocking.
And people like Biden, the Cheney family, the Bush family, etc., are thrilled to continue sending OTHER people’s kids overseas to be damaged and killed.
For me, this is one of the to reasons PDJT needs to be re-elected.
Lord. I don’t know where to start. Yesterday just got back from putting flags on graves in central FL.
Never did such before. My life is private... I get almost paranoid when someone says, ‘thanks for your service.” In the 60s and 79s, it was my duty as a citizen. ‘Eff them all if they are just now realizing what ‘duty/honor/country means.
Some were taking photos. Tried to hide. This is a private voyage. In memoryof those who didn’t make it back.
Sorry. I got carried away by ‘me’. A good single malt, sipped while watching sunset over the St. Johns River.
Giving thanks for my friends, alive and dead, and the ability to wake up tomorrow and ‘keep on truckin’.
Don’t post while drinking!
I just read it all, and shared on TS and X.
I don’t have anything to add, except some tears.
Remember the Liberty.
Two of the guys I graduated with in 1965 are on the wall. One was a good friend, whose sister was on the cheersquad with me, and the other sat behind me in homeroom for at least 3 years. Rest in Peace Chuck Robena and Tom Neidermeier.
Thank you for your service. My brother was a U.S. Army Vietnam Veteran, 25th Infantry Division, CuChi, Vietnam 1966-67. Died at the too young age of 51, massive heart attack. He had changed when he came home. He said more in his letters home than he ever said after he came home. After Vietnam, they shipped him out to Fort Carson, Colorado to finish his last year of enlistment. He was supposed to be involved in training recruits heading to Vietnam. It never happened, and he sat on his ass with nothing to do for a full year. The only thing he had ever wanted to do growing up was join the Army. I can’t even imagine how being cast off like that made him feel. He never talked about it, but I know he was disappointed.
My mother was born in Canada, and came to the U.S. as a little girl with her mother and older brother. Her uncle, my great-uncle served with the 38th Battalion (Ottawa) Canadian Expeditionary Forces. He was conscripted in early 1918 and shipped to France. He was wounded by German machine gun fire on the 2nd of September, and died on 10th of September, two months before the Armistice. He's buried in a British Military Cemetery in Wimille, France. I have some family photos of him. In one he's is sitting on a military horse in uniform. I have no idea where the photo was taken. He was 25 when he died and single. He was the only boy in that family.
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