Memorial Day

[Ghosth]

For all who have ever served our country.
Defended it's borders, safeguarded it's sea's & air. For all those who answered the call, surrendered self & risked all.

I offer you one Tight Crisp SALUTE!

Along with the heartfelt thanks of one American.

May your sacrifise never be forgotten. May freedom's flag always wave.

[Maniac]

<S> all who fought and died for an great cause.

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AH : Maniac
WB : -nr-1-

 
   
http://www.rsaf.org/osf/

[This message has been edited by Maniac (edited 05-29-2000).]

[-ammo-]

ditto ghosth.

 

[Wanker]

To Charles A. Rogers, who died in his Sherman tank on Jan.17, 1945. Exactly one week before my mother was born.

<S> Grandpa, I wish I could've met you.

[funked]

Here's a story from Ted Park's "Angels Twenty":

 

One of our squadron's B-17-watchers on what we came to call "Bomber Day" was Lombardi.  Tall for a fighter pilot, dark-haired, brown as a New Guinea native, with a quick flash of white teeth when he smiled, this guy had stepped right out of a recruiting poster.  He was also bright, funny, kind, and modest.  He'd graduated from Cornell, spoke articulately, read books, and played talented baseball when we braved the heat to get up a five-innings game.  When something broke, like the belly-tank shower at the flight line, Lombardi would quietly fix it before anyone had a chance to yell for an aviation mechanic to come and mess with it.

Understandably, he was considered a great addition at the evening meal when the officers joked and argued with noisy amiability at their long table, and afterwards around the poker table.  At our daily task, he was competent, except for one thing he couldn't help:  bad luck, which dogged him.

One afternoon, slow-timing a plane, Lombardi's engine quit.  He'd been flying west from Moresby along the coast, exploring an area we barely knew because we never needed to fly over it.  When his prop stopped he had about 2,000 metres between him and the shoreline.  He glided down over the long, wet mudflats reaching out into the Arafura Sea, found one spot that looked solid, and bailed out over it.

Once out of the plane, his luck returned.  He landed on a small coastal clearing - you couldn't really call it a beach that indeed was solid and even had a track leading away from it, inland.  So he rolled up his parachute as best he could, gathered his gear, and set out along the faint track.  In five minutes he reached a clearing with a house and some shacks around it, and even a flagpole with the Australian flag flying.  It was a small misssion station.  When he knocked on the front door, an astonished white man appeared, and offered him a cup of tea.  He politely accepted and ended up staying a couple of weeks.

Lombardi, naturally, made friends with everyone there, fixed a faulty generator, outlined the world situation neatly to the missionary and his wife, and helped teach the Papuan kids.  He became the most popular person at the mission, and it was only reluctantly that the missionary used his Lombardi-fixed radio to ask for someone to come and take this magnificent stranger away.

A rescue boat showed up a few days later, anchored offshore, and sent in a rubber dinghy.  Lombardi stepped aboard, as the entire mission stood on the shore and waved.  And all the kids sang "Far Above Cayuga's Waters", which is Cornell's beautiful old song.  Lombardi had taught it to them.

Some weeks later, while returning from a Wau milk run which I wasn't on, Lombardi called in his leader to say his coolant temperature was in the red and climbing, and he was getting smoke in the cockpit.  The Beavers were over one of those deep, mysterious valleys, mist-shrouded in the mornings, then lusciously gren to look down upon.  It was there that Lombardi bailed out, his flight circling him as he went down.  They said he waved from the parachute, and they kept with him until he landed.  He seemed to be fine, standing tall and waving that he was OK.

Everyone knew the map coordinates and Beaver leader, whoever it was that day, called them in to Maple, the Moresby sector.  They sent a Piper Cub next morning, which managed to land in the valley.  The pilot hunted everywhere and could find no sign of life.  Two more Cubs went in the next day and the pilots searched.  Nothing.

We conjectured that Lombardi might have set up a little empire in that fertile valley.  Perhaps he did.  We never saw him again

There are a lot of guys like Lombardi still out there.  I pray the Lord takes good care of them.  <Salute> to them all.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 05-29-2000).]

[funked]

Angels Twenty is available from Burbank's Books:  http://www.senet.com.au/~mhyde/burbanks_books_ww2.htm

[JENG]

<S> to all the veterans and people still serving. We owe a great deal to them.

Bee

[StSanta]

Indeed, and I am thankful.

It saddens me though, to think about the German families who lost their loved ones as they fought for a bad cause. Little comfort do they have from that. My thoughts go out to those as well.



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StSanta
II/JG2

[JoeMud]

<Salute> To the best grease monkey the USAF ever had CMSgt. Disca Savant Jr. <---my grandpa

[leonid]

To my father, Segundo Torres Leon Guerrero, who experienced war as a child on occupied Guam in WWII, then fought in Korea with the 24th Inf. Div.

May our species one day look back and see our violent ways as a sad, but extinct, phase of our evolution.

 

[funked]

It's good to remember all of these veterans, but Memorial Day is specifically to remember those who gave their lives in service of their country.

[Greg 'wmutt' Cook]

To the men who fell to English musket balls, standing proud for little more than a dream,
I thank you.
To the brothers who faced one another to preserve their vision of that dream,
I thank you.
To the men who huddled in muddy trenches, and stormed bloody beaches, and somehow found the courage to protect that dream,
I thank you.
To the men and women who answered the call when it seemed we might loose that dream,
I thank you.
To all of those who gave so dearly, in order that I might dream that dream,
I thank you.

Greg Cook
(a simple man, who marvels daily at why I deserve the sacrifice of so many)

[This message has been edited by Greg 'wmutt' Cook (edited 05-29-2000).]

[StSanta]

funked, and part of my point is; who remembers the dead German soldiers who fought for their nation?

Nazi's they're called and tyrants and so forth and probably for good reason. Still at least some of them did it for the same reason the Brits and Americans did; because they thought they did the right thing.



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StSanta
II/JG2

[Greg 'wmutt' Cook]

 

Originally posted by StSanta:
funked, and part of my point is; who remembers the dead German soldiers who fought for their nation?

StSanta, not to belittle the sacrifice of any man, woman, or child who has died in the service of their country, but Memorial day is an American Holiday to remember our past service men and women.  So in answer to your question, I would have to direct you to a German calander to look for something similar.

wmutt

[StSanta]

Ah, yes, but the need to remember fallen ones is universal, no?

It is an American holiday, aye, but we remember the Brits and so forth too. It seems to me we just keep forgetting the Germans.

My post was made as an addition to maniac's:

 

<S> all who fought and died for an great cause.

Clearly they did not die fighting for a great cause. But I believe that at least some of them died fighting for their nation, if not for their Fuhrer.

"Resistance is futile, you have been Americanized".

 

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StSanta
II/JG2
 

[This message has been edited by StSanta (edited 05-30-2000).]