More veterans removed at Vietnam War Memorial

When I first saw this story, I assumed that it almost had to be a hoax. After the previous incidents with veterans and the added expenditures involved in closing open spaces to keep veterans from paying their respects to the Honored Dead one would assume that even a novice politician would move to staunch the bleeding. But instead, it seems that the White House is doubling down, as reported at The Weekly Standard.

Via William Jacobson, NBC’s affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave the memorial at one point on Friday.

After one group of veterans went around the barricade, “the park ranger told them the wall was closed,” NBC’s Mark Seagraves reported. “Later another group of vets showed up and moved the barricades. At that point, the memorial filled with vets and tourists. That’s when police came and moved everyone out.”

As usual, it sounds like our veterans accounted themselves in a professional dignified manner, but were not going to put up with any nonsense.

The veterans then moved the barricade and walked down to the wall to pay their respects. But a flood of tourists followed even though the memorial is closed to the general public.

“The consensus among the group of Vietnam veterans was we’re going to go anyway. We’ll go through the barricade,” North Carolina resident Reid Mendenhall said.

U.S. Park Police arrive to the scene, asked everyone to leave and put the barricade back into place.

Conflict over the closure of D.C.’s war memorials has drawn a lot of controversy this week.

Yes… a lot of controversy is putting it mildly. The President can pick all the battles with congressional Republicans that he likes and probably not draw too much political fire from the middle. But if you wanted to conduct a poll of who is least likely to be blamed for anything in this country by the general public, veterans visiting war memorials would have to come in somewhere near the bottom of the list, behind possibly only puppies.

How many more of these stories can the administration sustain before the “no compromise, no negotiations” crowd realizes that they’re going to have to come to the table? Assuming, that is, that the stories actually make it onto the national news.

Wow. Thank you for your Vietnam combat service. I was a chopper pilot (UH-1H) and was there only from Sept 1971 to August 1972 when they stood down what was left of 1st Cav assets in country (Task Force Garry Owen). A/229th AHB operating in MR III. We flew infantry, scouts, & LRPs around our AO. I hope you know that our referring to the infantry as `grunts’ meant the highest respect (my Dad was infantry but not in that capacity; we were in country at the same time, Sullivan waiver, etc.)

Little major action (FB Katum) until April when the NVA opened their Easter Offensive with tanks & artillery. Heavy going but as of 1 August we were all DEROSd. Left Tan Son Nhut on 5 August & landed in Travis. Must have been quiet; we were all wearing khakis & took a bus to San Fran Intl, no incidents. Went to Fort Jackson to finish my active duty.

I always will believe that the people stateside who hated us just for serving were a minority; McGovern getting crushed in the 1972 election seemed to prove that. For me it was simple: those who served were right, and those who hated us for serving were dead wrong.

I too hate the Democratic Party for their kneejerk antimilitary attitude & that is borne out by POTUS closing the veteran memorials which shows they really hate us & think we are an insignificant minority that can be insulted without consequence.

Only started wearing a Vietnam vet cap last year; I like to pop into Whole Foods & wait for some aging ponytail of either sex to scream “Babykiller!!!” but all I’ve gotten is the fisheye from a few skinny libs. Muslims don’t seem to like it, either.

But the fact is that the hippies & peaceniks (read: pro-Hanoi) of yesteryear are now in the driver’s seat in D.C. And that’s not good.

By the way, Vo Nguyen Giap finally croaked at 102; the MSM calls him “beloved hero of Vietnam and military genius”. Enough to make you hurl. For some insight on Giap & our last full year in Vietnam, read “Trial By Fire” (Dale Andrade, Hippocrene Books 1995). That final offensive & the near crushing of the North Vietnamese was much bigger than anyone there at the time could realize.

As for PTSD, I only invoked it once; some religious fanatic in our office was pinging on me to come & listen to their dear leader I mean preacher. On & on it went until I turned & said to her,

“Did you know I’m a Vietnam veteran?” “Yes.”
“Do you know that I still have recurring nightmares from that time?” “Uh...OK.”
“Did you know that I own not one, but two, AK-47s?” (looks at me with horror & quietly backs away)

Anyway, welcome home & please pray for our great nation.

A UH-1H chopper pilot, you say? Thank you for your service and here’s my favorite UH-1H story:

The Loop

In mid October 1968, sometime during the brief stand down Project Delta took in Nha Trang between the Quan Loi deployment and the deployment to An Hoa, several of us recon team leaders were invited to go for a demonstration ride with one of the helicopter pilots we knew in Nha Trang. The pilot’s helicopter unit had recently traded in their old UH-1Ds for brand new UH-1Hs and he was anxious to show off his new bird. I won’t reveal the pilot’s name or unit and you’ll soon understand why.

Four of us met the pilot and his crew one morning at the unit’s helicopter revetments, boarded a brand new UH-1H, and away we went. The pilot predicated the flight by stating, “To compare this new H model to a D model is like comparing a Ferrari with a dump truck, now let me show you what this baby can do.” We made several practice insertions and lift offs on LZs we found in the mountains around Nha Trang, and we were quite impressed with the new bird’s capabilities. After about thirty minutes of flying around the Nha Trang hillsides, we flew back to Nha Trang and dropped off two of the recon team leaders who had seen enough already, and we took off again.

But this time, the pilot flew us out past Hon Tre Island and well out into the South China Sea, and he did this to make sure there would be no witnesses to what he intended to do. The pilot told us over the intercom that with the increased capability of this new Huey, he was sure he could “loop” the aircraft. When he told us that, with me not knowing the capabilities and limitations of a UH-1H, I thought, “That sure sounds exciting.” But when I looked over and saw the unmistakable expression of abject terror in the crew chief’s face, I knew then it was going to be not only exciting, it was going to be really exciting.

The pilot swore us all to eternal silence for what we were about to do, had the door gunner and crew chief pull in the M-60s and tie them down securely, and made sure we were all belted down tightly. Then he said, “Watch this,” (No, he didn’t say, “Hold my beer, watch this,” as is usually said before such stunts.) and he took that UH-1H up to about 5,000 feet and looped it, or at least I think he looped it.

The whole thing was probably over in less than half a minute, and for most of the event my memory is a blur. My memory isn’t blurred because of the forty years of time that’s passed since then, it’s because the incident was actually blurred. I have a clear memory of the pilot taking the Huey up to about 5,000 feet altitude and our airspeed increasing to well over 120 knots, but then it starts to get blurry. I remember the pilot putting the Huey into a steeper climb than I ever thought possible in a Huey; I remember being upside down; I remember the sensation of falling like a rock while upside down, and I remember hearing the engine RPM revving to a speed I had never heard before. I’m not sure how far we fell while upside down before the falling sensation changed to feet first, but I’m pretty sure we fell through most of our 5,000 ft of altitude before we finally regained stable flight.

As soon as we had leveled out and were skimming along across the wave-tops, the pilot’s calm voice came over the intercom and said, “See, I told you I could loop this baby,” as if any of us had ever doubted him. I glanced over at the crew chief again and saw that he was petrified with fear, and I didn’t want anyone to think Mrs. Taylor’s idiot son could ever be frightened by such a mundane stunt as looping a Huey, so I keyed my mic and said, “Damn, that was fun! Let’s do it again.” When the crew chief, obviously the only completely sane person on board, heard what I said over the intercom, I could tell he was seriously contemplating exiting the aircraft without benefit of a parachute. He had already determined he stood a much better chance of surviving the impact with the water and a swim back to the mainland in shark infested water than he did of surviving another loop in that Huey.

The pilot answered me with, “Nah, it looks like this bird needs a little maintenance. I can’t get this pesky Master Caution light to quit flashing.” It was then that I noticed a bump-shudder-whine-thump noise coming from somewhere in the engine and or drive train that didn’t sound too healthy. We limped back into Nha Trang, parked that tired little bird in its revetment (talk about being rode hard and put away wet), and adjourned to the Delta Hilton for post-op libations.

By about the fifth round of Budweiser, we had all stopped arguing and agreed that the pilot had indeed looped the Huey. We had been on a heading of roughly 90 degrees, climbed steeply, pointed the nose of the aircraft backward toward 270 degrees, and then fell through the arc to a heading once again of 90 degrees. Some of us thought “loop” might not have been adequately descriptive. Maybe tumbled, maybe flipped, but looped was just too smooth a sounding word to properly describe what we had just done in a UH-1H.

The pilot probably made aviation history that day, but he could never tell anyone about it. Until now, I’m pretty sure no one else on board that helicopter that day has ever talked about the flight with anyone who wasn’t there. The pilot, now retired, went on to a long and distinguished career in Army Aviation, and I doubt if he would want a story going around relating to his wild young days as a Lieutenant in Vietnam when he would push an aircraft far past its maximum capability and think nothing of it, so I will never, under any circumstances, divulge the pilot’s name.

Yes, I know; I’ve just broken my word and revealed a secret I swore I would keep forever, but it’s been over forty years now and I didn’t give up the pilot’s name, so that should be worth something.

DJ Taylor

Our goobermunt representatives, mostly those on the (D) side, and Obama remind of the "Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde.

For those not familiar, the "Picture of Dorian Gray" is a short novel written by Oscar Wilde. In it, the main character, Dorian, is one day painted by a famous artist in a portrait of his likeness, due to his strikingly beautiful physical characteristics. Dorian is afterwards introduced to a friend of the painter. This mutual friend espouses a belief of hedonism and self-fulfillment, and Dorian becomes heavily influenced by the newly discovered belief. Gray begins to believe that looks, his own desires and most importantly his youth are all that matters in life. Gray - perhaps jokingly, perhaps seriously - beckons the mutual friend that he would perhaps even trade his soul if the painter's portrait would age instead of himself. Dorian later engages in a life of sin and debauchery - even eventually killing the painter who painted him - but finds that in eighteen years, he hasn't aged a day. It is later revealed that in fulfillment of his wish, the painting of Dorian did indeed age instead of himself, but when Gray gazes at it, he discovers that it is horribly disfigured and hideous. The painting instead took the figure of Dorian's soul, with each sin and vice contributing to his disfigurement.

If Obama and our representatives gazed at their "portraits", would they be surprised at what they see? Or would they be like Dorian? Ashamed, but not surprised?

I imagine the latter.

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