Oceanside plans its biggest parade for troops Oct. 25

OCEANSIDE - Get out the red-white-and-blue bunting. This city is planning its biggest homecoming parade ever for U.S. troops next month.

City Councilman Jack Feller expects 15,000 to 20,000 troops to march along Coast Highway for the event, which he said will be much larger than the Proud To Be An American Parade in 1991 when troops returned from the Gulf War. About 1,000 troops marched while 100,000 people watched that Saturday, April 27, according to crowd estimates.

From 80,000 to 100,000 spectators are expected at this year's Defenders of Freedom Parade on Saturday, Oct. 25. It will welcome home Camp Pendleton's First Marine Expeditionary Force from fighting in Iraq.

Cannon-like machines will shoot foam that looks like ticker tape along the parade route, between Wisconsin Avenue and Surfrider Way, from 10 a.m. to noon.

Plans call for flyovers by jets and helicopters, an amphibious troop ship landing on the beach near the pier, and displays of tanks and other military equipment in the downtown area.

Five bands - two high school and three military - are expected to march with the troops. But otherwise, Feller said, it will be strictly a military parade led by the expeditionary force's commander, Lt. Gen. James Conway - no politicians and no scantily dressed young women on floats.

All the thousands of troops will be fed before they return to base, Feller said.

Not all the marchers will be Camp Pendleton Marines, however. There will also be sailors from Camp Pendleton and San Diego and Seabees from as far as Port Hueneme and Point Mugu.

"This will be a one-time event that we may never see the likes of again in the city of Oceanside," Mayor Terry Johnson said in a news release. "This will be a wonderful community event."

In order to provide a secure place for official visitors, the Civic Center - including all City Hall buildings, the parking garage, the library and Community Computer Center - will close at 2:30 p.m. the previous day.

Police forces from neighboring cities have promised help with crowd and traffic control.

Feller said President Bush or Secretary of State Colin Powell probably won't come to the parade, despite rumors, because of security concerns. He is hoping to entice the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael Hagee, former commanding general at Camp Pendleton, to come.

Getting so many troops to the parade from Camp Pendleton could clog public roads, so they are scheduled to take the train, said Feller, who also serves on the board of North County Transit District.

Although public trains also will still run that day, the transit district will reroute buses and move operations of the Oceanside Transit Center to another location downtown.

"It's been done once before," Tom Lichterman, NCTD's director of transportation services, said, citing the 1991 parade.

Volunteers are needed for tasks ranging from greeting special guests to directing visitors and distributing programs. Interested people may contact the city's volunteer coordinator, Jean Tobin, at (760) 435-3514.

A parade hotline has been set up at (760) 435-5228, and additional information is available on the Internet at www.ci.oceanside.ca.us.

The parade is a joint venture of the city, the Chamber of Commerce and the Marine Corps.

Regarding war movies, what did you think of "The Big Red One"?

Although it had the look of a high-grade made-for-TV movie, I did like it because it
had a different sort of vibe than a lot of films set in WWII.
Especially the scenes involving the large crucifix in the middle of nowhere.
And anything film with Lee Marvin in it has something going for it!

And as peaceable a person as I am, I did get a feeling of "YES!" when one of the
grunts (as it Mark Hamill or Robert Carridine) empties a clip into the
German soldier hiding in the death camp oven.
And didn't he reload and empty a second clip? I can't recall the detail...too long
since I saw it.

One movie I really like is the Hiding Place, the story of the Ten Boom Family.

Yes, that's a good film and story.
In case you haven't seen it before, Yad Vashem has a website. As part of the group's
mission, they honor the non-Jews who did what they could to shelter Jews in WWII.
It's at URL:
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/

And didn't he reload and empty a second clip? I can't recall the detail...too long since I saw it.

Yes, he used a second clip. The thing that struck me about it was that it wasn't a rah-rah type movie. It opens with Marvin shooting somebody because he wasn't aware of the armistice that had been called, and closes the same way (except that time he has the chance to save the life of the guy). In between, you see what a gritty, nasty, capricious business war is, and why you wouldn't want to be in one.

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