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Happy Veterans Day!!!

Econ101

Well-known member
To all who have served,
past and present,
liberal or conservative,
democrat or republican,

Thank you for your service to our country.

Without you, we would have no country.


If you have served, and are proud of it, tell us the amount of time served and where. If you have a relative you are proud of, do the same.

Again, Thank You.
 

katrina

Well-known member
My dad, 82 years young is a wwII vet. Was in Japan.
My nephew was in the navy, don't know the boat, was in the persian sea. Now is a parametic and nurse.......
Benj, My dear friend, his family and mine are like one big family... The mighty 187th air bourne... ( death from above)......

And I want to thank all the vets who have served for making this such a wonderful country and your service does not go unreconized.......
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
We salute all Veterans where ever they may be
and offer our heartfelt thanks for the sacrifices you have made
for our country.

God Bless the Veterans.

God Bless America as she goes forward on a perilious journey.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Econ101 said:
To all who have served,
past and present,
liberal or conservative,
democrat or republican,

Thank you for your service to our country.

Without you, we would have no country.
I agree with you, Econ101. Great post and thank you for saying it.
 

RoperAB

Well-known member
Special thanks to Memanpa and to other Vets that I dont know. I cant tell your stories because I dont know them but here is one story of one of the 40,000 Canadians who faught in Vietnam.

Medal of Honour Recipient
LEMON, PETER C.

Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company E, 2d Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. Place and date: Tay Ninh province, Republic of Vietnam, 1 April 1970. Entered service at: Tawas City, Mich. Born: 5 June 1950, Toronto, Canada.

Citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Lemon (then Sp4c.), Company E, distinguished himself while serving as an assistant machine gunner during the defense of Fire Support Base Illingworth. When the base came under heavy enemy attack, Sgt. Lemon engaged a numerically superior enemy with machinegun and rifle fire from his defensive position until both weapons malfunctioned. He then used hand grenades to fend off the intensified enemy attack launched in his direction. After eliminating all but 1 of the enemy soldiers in the immediate vicinity, he pursued and disposed of the remaining soldier in hand-to-hand combat. Despite fragment wounds from an exploding grenade, Sgt. Lemon regained his position, carried a more seriously wounded comrade to an aid station, and, as he returned, was wounded a second time by enemy fire. Disregarding his personal injuries, he moved to his position through a hail of small arms and grenade fire. Sgt. Lemon immediately realized that the defensive sector was in danger of being overrun by the enemy and unhesitatingly assaulted the enemy soldiers by throwing hand grenades and engaging in hand-to-hand combat. He was wounded yet a third time, but his determined efforts successfully drove the enemy from the position. Securing an operable machinegun, Sgt. Lemon stood atop an embankment fully exposed to enemy fire, and placed effective fire upon the enemy until he collapsed from his multiple wounds and exhaustion. After regaining consciousness at the aid station, he refused medical evacuation until his more seriously wounded comrades had been evacuated. Sgt. Lemon's gallantry and extraordinary heroism, are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.
 

Red Robin

Well-known member
X said:
Econ101 said:
To all who have served,
past and present,
liberal or conservative,
democrat or republican,

Thank you for your service to our country.

Without you, we would have no country.
I agree with you, Econ101. Great post and thank you for saying it.
I also agree and am endebted to our soldiers.
 

jigs

Well-known member
with the instand communications of todays world, I can not help but wonder what went through the minds of soldiers in wars fought before radio and faster forms of intelligence.

the Civil War, American Revolution, or even the wars waged by the Roman Empire.

surly those men were fighting on old info, and wrong info......

and even then, was the press mis-reporting to affect things back home??
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
I also wonder how the press handled news from the war front before television.

Click on the link below to see “If Iwo Jima Happened Today” by former US Senator Zell Miller:

http://www.goodolddogs3.com/If-IwoJima-Happened2day.html
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
This was in the Rapid City Journal today. I want to add my thanks to all you vets. I shudder to think where we would be without your sacrifices.

Flag more than a piece of cloth
By Elmer Humphry, a U.S. Navy veteran who writes from Piedmont.


PIEDMONT -- Veterans Day is in the air once again with the appropriate recognition of deeds accomplished long ago along with tears and cheers flowing as flags of fluttering stripes and starry fields float by. It's usually heartfelt and soul-enriching, but occasionally something crawls out from under the rug to proclaim that the flag is just a piece of cloth and can be used to blow your nose on or wipe your feet. You've heard some of that from time to time and a few choice words of rebuttal come to mind, but we won't even go there.

There will be stories told and retold by some old geezers, and we all know a few of each. But there is one story that comes to mind that lies in the mist of times past.

It is not a war story but rather it is a story of war.

On May 11, 1945, at 10:45 in the morning, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill, operating in the South China Sea, suddenly and without warning, was struck a devastating blow by two Japanese Kamikaze suicide bombers.

One diving plane exploded into 40 armed and fueled fighters and bombers on the aft flight deck. The other penetrated the flight deck amidships into the hangar deck with cataclysmic results. In a half a heart beat there were 1,500 casualties, half the crew of 3,000, and the dead numbered 400 plus. The attackers had been concealed by a heavy cloud cover that radar of that time could not penetrate. The ship and crew had had an impossible eight seconds to react.

Hours later, the injured ship and battered crew turned toward a far-away home, but there was work to be done and the dead to be reckoned with. Weighted canvas bags and burial at sea - the only choice in the cruel and relentless heat of the tropics, hundreds of miles from friendly soil.

In the battered crew compartments below deck, sailors, exhausted and hollow-eyed, sat on the edges of their bunks and listened, unbelieving, to the metallic rumble of the ammunition hoists that lifted the heavy, five-inch shells from the lockers deep in the belly of the ship to the waiting burial party on deck. Every 60 seconds. Once every minute. Once every minute, for nearly seven hours, the elevator rumbled its deathly count. Then there was silence.

On the hangar deck, flags draped over canvas bags laid on precisely placed planks. One 52-pound shell in the foot of each bag, a blue field of stars over each heart.

On command, the planks were tilted and their precious cargo slid almost silently into the waiting sea below. No drumbeat of hooves pulling a military caisson. Only the swirling swish of the bow wave. No rolling lawns of tailored greens and precision rows of white markers. Just the ocean, endless and trackless.

In some ways, theirs is a contrast and yet a parallel to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier whose specific place is marked but name unknown. Here, their names, once known but with no markers, are fading into oblivion. Their place on earth marked only by the thousands of corroding and rusting five-inch shells scattered randomly in the darkened depths of the boundless sea bottom of the Western Pacific. No visitors or loved ones to pay homage. Just an occasional passing creature of the deep.

Their covering banner of spangled stars was their final shroud. Their journey out from beneath the precious fabric and into the sea, their last touch, their final and only bond to home.

So you see, our flag is not just a flag, but the symbol of a person in body and in spirit. There is no way to tell me, or my old shipmates, the flag is just a piece of cloth.

November 11, 2006
 

Cal

Well-known member
That was truly excellent LB! Just to clarify for some, do you think those old soldiers were fighting for freedom and liberty, or to advance the cause of socialism and appeasement?
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Freedom and liberty, the same as our military is now. Thank God for everyone of them. My father had already served a year in the army when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he and his three friends that had joined with him spent the rest of WWII fighting for those freedoms we hold so dear. Dad came home with a chest full of medals, including two purple hearts, but as far as he and his friends were concerned the only heroes were the guys who made the supreme sacrifice and didn't live to see America again.
 
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