Saluting: Diver Dave
Posted on 09/03/2002 5:13:29 AM PDT by Billie
Thought so.
Okay, I'm going back to work now. :-)
Yep!
I was just a little tyke but I remember that was the first thing that was said to me when we landed that "other" boat!
"Get some Brasso, son, and polish up that brass! Then let the animals out two by two!"
DANG I hate it when that happens.
You do a mighty fine job as the scribe for the FResno Patriots. Always look forward to your reports! Good on you!
Now that is awfully encouraging.
Since you're a day ahead of us, perhaps you can give me a heads up on the Lotto numbers for Saturday night.
That's how it works, eh?
I'll split the proceeds with ya.
Give it 2 weeks and "hooligan" will seem like a compliment.
I love free enterprise!
And congrats again, Diver Dave!
You mean it isn't???
Absolutely!! A bond that will never be taken for granted or forgotten. EVER!! :o)
We love your tributes, it is wonderful to see peoples service honored in this way. THANKS!!
It was early 1954. I was teaching a mean course called “The Unarmed Defense of the American Soldier” in what later became known as Jungle Training School out in the boonies several clicks across the canal from Gatun Dam, near Pina Village at the mouth of the Chagres in Panama.
I was tough in those days. Had just read From Here to Eternity and was living it there.
I had to go over to Ft. Davis (It may have been Ft. Gulick: It was a long time ago.) for something or the other. A fellow there told me I should hang around for the parade in an hour, that the last active mounted unit (not “for show “ as the one’s at West Point and Arlington) was retiring its colors, being deactivated. It had been stationed up north somewhere, near David.
I went out to the parade field. There were only a few people there.
There was a small band leading the parade. The daily morning rain had stopped and there was heavy steam on the field as the sun slowly came out. All of us voluntarily stood at attention as the old Ward Bond looking Chief Master Sergeant with his tri-cornered hat and stripes from his shoulders to elbows swung a long bullwhip over the heads of the mules pulling the caisson. It sounded like a shotgun. He yelled, “Hyah, ye sons of bitches!”
As they passed the reviewing stand he spit a big wad of tobacco and snapped a perfect salute to the few honchos on the stand.
They passed and then circled back to the center of the field. Their CO and a couple of NCOs came forward and slowly rolled their unit guidon, encased it, and gave it to the fort commander, while the band played a lively, but very low version of As the Caissons Go Rolling Along.”
Newly arrived from Korea Maj. Gen. Lionel C. McGarr then slowly read the retiring unit's long history, in places like Fort Blss and the Indian Wars, the Argonne, and Belleau Wood.
I slowly glanced around the field. Even the old salts had tears streaming down their cheeks.
I witnessed a beautiful piece of history that day.
A few months later I got hit by a sobering grenade in a Cold War "operation" you never heard of in another far away place.
ofMagog
Retired, United States Regular Army
Thank you, sir, for your service.
I salute you!
I am so sorry I haven't been around, work work work. Then I found out that this dialup connection is a long distance call. $175.00 phone bill whew!
I thought of them as I stood at The Wall in Washington a few years ago, a thin, long line that has held us together for a long time.
See your private mail for my "operation."
A woman in Alabama sued her husband for divorce. She told the judge she had nagged and nagged the man, but she couldn't get him to do right. Referring to St. Paul's words in Romans 12:20, that in showing kindness to an enemy we "heep coals of fire on his head." The judge asked the woman if she had tried to "heap coals of fire on his head." The woman answered, "No, but I don't think it will work. I've already tried scalding water, and that didn't do any good."
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