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Posted on 11/04/2004 7:58:17 PM PST by Diva Betsy Ross
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Ahhh....Krispy Kremes, huh? It is that time of year. It's nice that I am not a Kremes fanatic otherwise I'd have a hard time resisting temptation. People are selling them at the doorway of almost every store in our area.
HEY KIM!!!! (I'm sneaking on from school!!!) Y'all, if you don't know Kim, you should! She's wunnerful!
Purty WooHoo, Fawnn!! Thankee!
Where in the world did you find this one??? Too funny!
GOOD!!! You deserve that!
Purty music, tomkow! Thankee!!
Welcome home.
This election has demonstrated that the majority of the US population rejected J F'n K and all he stood for - both then and now.
Again, Welcome home.
Thanks for the warm welcome mi amiga....I see a lot of familiar handles on this thread. I think I've checked these threads out before..but not posted..
Lot's of neat people here, Kim. You'll like! Check out Operation Season's Greetings (see pic at beginning of thread).
Lot's of neat people here, Kim. You'll like! Check out Operation Season's Greetings (see pic at beginning of thread).
Ruh roh....I "hiccupped"....
Here is the Canteen, if you haven't already visited. It is the most supportive military site there is. ;)
Speaking of Vietnam Vets...I came across this story I did last year in Iraq. Thought I'd repost it here. Thought we could all use a heartwarming story after all the bile and hatred of the last 8 months! LOL! IMHO it shows the TRUE feeling of the Vietnam Vets to those of us in the swelling ranks of OIF Vets. Enjoy the Flashback!
Vietnam Vet Brings Message Of Hope
Dave Roever Horrifically Burned, Tells Bulldog Brigade “Don’t Give Up”
By Spc. John S. Wollaston
3BCT PAO
BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Sometimes, when you’re having a bad day, it helps to talk to someone who’s had a worse day and made it through. For the soldiers of the Bulldog Brigade, still feeling the effects of a “bad day” announcement of a 6-week extension to their combat deployment in Iraq the day before, hearing Dave Roever talk was the shot in the arm that most of 3rd Brigade needed.
“I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart as I stand here before you today, thank you for what you’re doing over here.” Mr. Roever said to a full house at the Brigade’s Bulldog Theater. “It’s been thirty two years since I’ve been in a combat zone and I wanted to come here to say thanks for allowing me to sleep comfortably in my bed at night.”
If there’s ever been anyone whose taken advantage of the adage about “turning lemons into lemonade”, it’s Dave Roever. A gunner’s mate in the “Brown Water” Navy in Vietnam, Roever was on a patrol when a phosphorus grenade exploded next to his face severely burning most of his body. “I was getting ready to throw it to burn away some brush near the banks of the river when it went off. Just one second longer was all I would have needed and that grenade would have been out of my hands.” Roever explained. He then tells the audience though, that had the grenade been tossed safely overboard, the snipers bullet that struck the grenade causing it to explode prematurely in his hand, would have killed him. Roever was so badly burned that the medics who loaded him on the helicopter thought he was dead. “I had half of my face and my right ear burned completely away, I had blood spurting from an open artery in my right hand and I could see my heart beating in my chest.” Roever told a captivated audience. “When the medics put me on the stretcher initially I burned through the stretcher and fell on my head when I hit the ground.” Wrapping him in a blanket soaked in river water, he was finally loaded in the helicopter. Thinking he was dead, the medics didn’t do anything to try and help him, and so Roever took matter into his own hands. “From under that blanket I summoned all the strength I had left and yelled Medic! That got everyone’s attention real fast.”
Roever, who is now a successful motivational speaker, travels across the country every year delivering his message of hope and telling people how he overcame adversity. A message seemed to strike a chord with the Bulldog soldiers. That message is that no matter how bad things seem to be, don’t give up. And Roever should know, because when everyone else gave up on him, Dave Roever didn’t give up on himself. From laying in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas listening to his father read to him the telegram telling him that his son had died, which Roever says they were both laughing at, to the nearly two years he spent in hospitals going through surgeries to repair and replace his burned skin to the support and love of his wife, he never gave up. Well, almost never.
He relates the story about how early in his recovery after seeing himself in a mirror he tried to “pull the cord” as he describes it, an attempt to disconnect the IV’s that were keeping him alive. “But I pulled the wrong one,” Roever says laughing with his audience. “And when you wake up wanting a cheeseburger like I did, you know that maybe it wasn’t your time to die.”
Roever told the soldiers to seek out friends and loved ones to talk to about their experiences in Iraq when they return and not go back to bad habits they might have shaken or gotten rid of due to their deployment.
Brigade Command Sergeant Major Nathaniel Hopkins, who presented Mr. Roever with a Bulldog Brigade coin and a certificate of appreciation for his visit, seemed to sum up the feeling of most of the soldiers in attendance when he said, “I was feeling pretty down about our situation, until I heard you speak, now thanks to you I’m feeling better.”
Before he left, Roever posed for pictures, signed autographs and visited the soldiers standing guard around the compound who did not have the opportunity to hear him speak, thanking all of them for serving and doing their duty in Iraq.
A Buddhist monk puts the final touches on a traditional cart during a festival at a temple in Pattani province, southern Thailand.
FReeper Tomkow6 recently won the international scribbling contest held in Asia.
Pondering soup : A man looks at a Chinese soup sculpture displayed at a shopping mall in Hong Kong.
FReeper Tomkow6 recently won the international home made potato soup contest held in Asia.
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