2 1/2 MINUTE VIDEO: THE STOLEN 2020 ELECTION
https://www.brighteon.com/839346d6-da5d-48e0-9737-5a5fda8a4e4d
I worked at Lake Junaluska summer camp in 1987. The cook I worked for was on a Garbage Scow at Okinawa. He still had nightmares.
Submarine Triton, SS-201. Lost. Distant cousin. Maybe they will find it one day.
Thanks for posting this. I thought you might like this, written in 1942 by :
IRON BOTTOM BAY
(By Capt. Walter Mahler, Chaplain on USS Astoria sunk August 9, 1942 in The Battle of Savo Island with 219 men killed)
********************************************
I stood on a wide and desolate shore
And the night was dismal and cold.
I watched the weary rise,
And the moon was a riband of gold.
Far off I heard the trumpet sound,
Calling the quick and the dead,
The long and rumbling roll of drums,
And the moon was a riband of red.
Dead sailors rose from out of the deep,
Nor looked not left or right,
But shoreward marched upon the sea,
And the moon was a riband of white.
A hundred ghosts stood on the shore
At the turn of the midnight flood,
They beckoned me with spectral hands,
And the moon was a riband of blood.
Slowly I walked to the waters edge,
And never once looked back
Till the waters swirled about my feet,
And the moon was a riband of black.
I woke alone on a desolate shore
From a dream not sound or sweet,
For there in the sands in the moonlight
Were the marks of phantom feet.
Burial at sea.
The world does not understand how many were buried at sea.
Almighty Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic8zMkYwnq8
People tend to downplay the contributions of the Navy in many ways, but they paid their price in blood as well.
During the Battle of Guadalcanal lasting largely from August through December 1942 three to four times as many sailors died in the battles at sea than Marines or Army killed on land.
Here’s an example of an Avenger gunner buried at sea, his aircraft serving also as his coffin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMWz10jaK0g
I’ve known several Cold War-era naval veterans whose captains had “gone swimming” when their ships were sunk by kamikazes.
An additional one recalled a story about his own ship, a Sumner-class destroyer that served off Okinawa. As I remember it, his ship arrived two hours early to relieve another destroyer on picket duty, and it was the last assignment for the other ship before it was due to rotate home, so the other ship got to depart early. After the relief, the other ship was hit by kamikazes and sunk.
I have added Neptune’s Inferno to my collection. I served onboard an LST during three Vietnam campaigns. In reading the book, the author gave great descriptions of how about any part of my home could reach out and horribly kill me at any moment if the enemy got lucky.
The navy had the highest death toll of all the services at Okinawa. More than the Marines and more than the army.
Good reminder.
Against his parents wishes, my uncle joined the Navy at 17 and left for the Great Lakes Dec. 3 or 4, 1941. After Pearl Harbor they did 6 weeks of training in a couple of weeks then he was on a battle ship heading for Pearl.
When they reached Pearl Harbor he said some of the ships were still burning and they were still recovering bodies from the water.
Of things he saw as the war went on, he said “Just don’t ask me about it.”
He was discharged in 1946 and went back to his old high school to finish that last semester. Can’t even imagine how strange that would have been.
Although he survived physically minus part of one hand I think it affected him deeply.
RIP Uncle GJ and thank you for your service.