Posted on 05/29/2021 4:02:42 PM PDT by Jacquerie
Where our Sailors Rest.
“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” – a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded.
War naturally conjures images of courageous infantrymen. Gettysburg, Flanders Fields and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf.
Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield memorials, no marked graves, no poppies, no flags. Presidents and dignitaries visit Normandy and not Midway or Iron Bottom Sound. Few are the photo memoirs of engineering room slaughter-by-steam, of those who inhaled fire, of those blown overboard, of those who survived the battle only to die of burns, thirst, or sharks.
Hoses washed the remains of many off their ships. Some had proper burials. Did boot camp recruits know their Navy-issue hammocks did double duty as burial shrouds? I don’t know, but should your Memorial Day weekend find you on an Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico beach, you are graveside. Take time to say a few words of thanks.
The opening theme from Victory at Sea is my ring tone. I tried to get some guys at our ship’s reunion to hear it, but they were to deaf from the ship’s engines and guns.
What an enjoyable experience, thanx.
We’re old, brothuh
“Sympathy for the enemy?”
I worked with a guy who had been on an attack sub during the cold war. At least among submariners there is a mutual respect.
Beautiful poem, rlmorel. And many thanks Repeal The 17th which I remember from my Navy days. Hauntingly beautiful, both.
A follow on video of “Mansions of the Lord” given by the West Point Glee Club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jccNoxn1HoU
To see the mixture of every race of young Americans singing together is a reminder that America still lives in the heart of her faithful. And it’s those faithful who will ultimately save her from destroying herself.
Another account of Guadalcanal which I’ve posted a few times:
Autumn, 1942: It came down to one Marine, and one ship
https://etwof.com/vin/001022.html
That was beautiful. Just beautiful. Gave me goosebumps...
One day he had left his phone at home and she called him and heard it...!
Sympathy for human beings.
Thanks for posting this poem.
I have no ‘sympathy’ for human beings who want to kill me.
Good for you !
Now go shake your penis at somebody else !
I have relatives who were killed by German U boats.
You have the wrong customer for peddling of your affinity for German U boat personnel .
Glad you liked it. I find it to be very evocative.
The Great War killed nearly 10,000 men a day, seven days a week, for over four years.
I cannot even wrap my head around it.
It is said that so many French men were wiped out that for years all you saw were black garbed women walking up and down roads.
French, English, German, Austrian, Russian ...
Nearly every one of those men who died, effectively widowed one woman.
Some, because they were married at the time they died, formally widowed, the others, who were not married, probably would have eventually married were they not taken out of the pool of eligible men, either by being killed or grievously wounded in the war.
And then they did it all again twenty years later.
Europe never recovered.
That is sadly true.
I understand what is behind the total naïveté (to me) in the “The War to End All Wars” thought, to have lived through that would make a lot of sane people do all kinds of things to ensure there was a “Never Again”.
The unspeakable carnage, never seen before that made a lot of people take that approach.
Like Neville Chamberlain.
But I have viewed people who think we can legislate human nature out of humans as being not just naive, but dangerously naive, especially if they get their hands on the levers of power.
If history shows us anything, it is that nothing invites aggression more effectively than open displays of weakness.
The one thing that ensures there will BE a “Never Again” occurring is people who will do or submit to anything to naively try to make sure “Never Again” won’t happen.
Evil, Domination, and violence are at the root of our being. We must be on guard, always, against their expression. It is why the US Constitution as designed, is a remarkable document reflecting the view of its founders in this.
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