Once again let me apologize for mistaking a Marine for a soldier.
When I call someone a soldier, I mean to give them a very high compliment. Soldiers sleep in foxholes, in the mud, in the rain, in the snow. Soldiers get frostbitten and lose fingers and toes and sometimes arms and legs. Soldiers walk for miles with heavy packs on their backs in freezing cold and hot humid jungles. Soldiers get blown up with land mines and artillery and mortars. Soldiers get machinegunned and bombed by enemy aircraft. Soldiers lose arms and legs and eyes in battle. Soldiers eat crummy food for days on end. Soldiers jump out of airplanes to get at the enemy. Soldiers protect our country.
Soldiers are brave and wonderful people who willingly sacrifice their lives for their country. I have nothing but complete and total respect for a soldier.
You are right, Marines are not soldiers. Please accept my sincere apology for ever confusing a Marine with a soldier.
You tell us how you have nothing but respect for soldiers and yet in your very first post on this thread you went out of your way to call Col. Boyington a poor soldier, and now you have the gall to say Marines are not soldiers.
I never said Marines weren't soldiers, I said they prefered not to be called just soldiers, there is a vast difference which escapes you.
Just like it escapes you that your comments on Col. Boyington are no better then Jill Edwards' comments on Col.Boyington.
Your's of course are padded with a compliment or two to cushion the impact as well as cover your rear, but they are no less as derogatory as hers were. You have called him a drunk, a poor soldier, questioned why The Flying Tigers didn't like him and said that he fought with his superiors.
None of this things are germane to why he should be honored, He should be honored because he was a hero, a legend, and Icon, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and a Great American.
You like to point out his faults, and no man is without them, but we shouldn't let them stop us from honoring our heros.
To me at least, everyone that absolutely has to point out all the faults of the great men and women of this country, the failings of all the heros and heroines, are doing nothing to honor them, they are actively discrediting them so that future generations of Americans won't have heros to study and learn from.
Those that do so are lower then the scumbags that tell other peoples' toddlers that Santa Claus is a phony and doesn't exist. At least with our real heros, they accomplished great deeds.
I suppose your next post will be to reminder me that I "Really" haven't read this thread and "really" don't know what you are trying to said, sadly I do know exactly what you are trying to do.
I blame it all on Aviator Envy, or the senseless fear of men with big watches.