Memorial Day Reflection

Tough time of year for sure. Thanks for posting that.. its a great video, sad, but really well done.

I try and visit family of my friends i lost. I make the effort to visit their graves, but it's mostly a stay at home thing for me. It's just hard seeing people that act like it's labor day and a big reason to BBQ.

Don't get me wrong BBQ is a great way to do the things that those i knew that died Loved.. It was that and other things that we do on nice weekends that we would all day dream and talk about doing when we got home. It's just that most high school kids i ask don't even know what it's about.

Just like Veterans day, they have no idea why it's on 11/11 at 11am. No clue. They think it's a day that we are supposed to celebrate veterans. I always correct them, and tell them it's the 11th day on the 11th month at the 11th hour and since your history teacher can't read, it represents the effort to NOT use Force, that last minute before the fighting starts, and hope that those that face it will do so in honor, and those that send them will make every effort to avoid moving past the 11th hour.

One would hope that out of all the tranny garbage, and man made global warming crap they come up with, they could spend 30 seconds explaining that.
 
Quote:'Memphis Belle' gunner revisits England, dies during 'final mission'


Published May 27, 2016
· FoxNews.com


The crew of the Memphis Belle, a Flying Fortress B-17F, poses in front of their plane in Asheville, N.C. (AP)


A retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant who returned to England this month for the first time in 71 years to visit the country he defended during World War II has died during his “final mission.”



Melvin Rector, 94, served in England with the 96th Bomb Group in 1945 as a radio operator and gunner on B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, including on the Memphis Belle, the first heavy bomber to compete its 25-mission tour of duty with its crew intact.

Operating out of RAF Snetterton Heath in Norfolk, Rector flew eight combat missions over Germany during the spring of the final year of the War, with his plane coming back one time dotted with bullet holes on its wings, Stars and Stripes reports.

Rector, hoping to return to the base, decided to leave his home in Barefoot Bay, Fla., to visit Britain as part of a travel program organized by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

"He planned it for like the last six months," Darlene O'Donnell, Rector's stepdaughter, told Florida Today. "He couldn't wait to go."

Susan Jowers, who accompanied Rector on the trip, said on May 6 he stepped foot on British soil for the first time in 71 years and visited RAF Uxbridge in London.

After Rector toured the Battle of Britain bunker, a command center where airplane operations were coordinated during D-Day, he told Jowers he felt dizzy.

There, right outside the bunker, Rector quietly died on the soil where he risked his life to defend decades ago.

"He walked out of that bunker like his tour was done," Jowers told Florida Today. "He completed his final mission."

Rector's daughter, Sandy Vavruich, said he never got to visit RAF Snetterton Heath again, but “he couldn't have asked for a better way to go.”

Before his remains were sent back over the Atlantic, Jowers was honored in a special service filled with servicemen and women from the U.S. and British Armed Forces, Stars and Stripes reported. The American Embassy in London donated a flag to drape over Rector’s coffin.

"I do know of his sacrifice and his family's sacrifice, so you do him and his family a great honor by being here today,” one American serviceman said.

Rector’s funeral will be held in the U.S. at the First Baptist Church of Barefoot Bay on June 9.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/27/mem...l?intcmp=hplnws



Regards,
hm
 
Originally Posted By: SkyPupAnd Barry is in Japan laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Kamakazie.....

But there's a golf course there that he's never played.

Regards,
hm
 
Many will not remember Bill Mauldin, but I'd bet even the "youngsters" recognize Willie & Joe.

Quote:Bill Mauldin - a tribute.
He meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubble infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Mauldin was an enlisted man, just like the soldiers for whom he drew; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs their laughs, his heartaches their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.




He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, who informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers to stop. Now!

"I'm beginning to feel like a fugitive from the' law of averages."

The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.


Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, SCAFE, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe . Ike put out the word: "Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants."
Mauldin won. Patton lost.


If, in your line of work, you've ever considered yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about him or herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:+

"By the way, wot wuz them changes you wuz
gonna make when you took over last month, sir?"

He won the Pulitzer Prize & was on the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United States ..



All of that at 23. Yet, when he returned to civilian life and grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, never big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day.

I was lucky enough to be one of them. Mauldin roamed the hallways of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy. That impish look on his face remained.


He had achieved so much. He won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won a third for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in the history of the craft: his deadline rendering, on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial, slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands. But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still Mauldin, the enlisted man.



During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind of it. They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he should know he was still their hero.

"This is the' town my pappy told me about."
Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California for people in the area to send their best wishes to Mauldin. I joined Dillow in the effort, helping to spread the appeal nationally, so Bill would not feel so alone. Soon, more than 10,000 cards and letters had arrived at Mauldin's bedside.

Better than that, old soldiers began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as he, so long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:

"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002, they came to Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach , California , to honor Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation."

One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important: "You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons."

"Th' [beeep] this ain't th' most important hole in the world. I'm in it."

Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery . Last month, the kid cartoonist made it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.


What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who keep him company on that stamp.

There's Willie. There's Joe.

And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is Mauldin himself. With his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.


What a story, and a fitting tribute to a man and to a time that few of us can still remember. But I say to you youngsters, you must most seriously learn of, and remember with respect, the sufferings and sacrifices of your fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers in times you cannot ever imagine today with all you have. But the only reason you are free to have it all is because of them!

I thought you would all enjoy reading and seeing this bit of American history.



Regards,
hm
 
I watched "Lone Survivor" last night for the first time. The commentary and tribute following the feature are inspiring, and made me spend the rest of the evening in quiet reflection on those who have sacrificed on our behalf. So, to quote Cast, I remember. Thank you.
 
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