Another WW 2 hero at life's end...

[tsap seui]

He probably was downplayed Bob. Those were some badass soldiers, hard to make them real on a screen. Very hard to put on film what really goes on in vicious firefights.

 

Those guys along with some other major forward thinkers and players in the military came up with the type of hereto unseen helicopter warfare that I later got involved in...airmobile assault. Pretty interesting stuff to read about those guys. Pretty interesting to become a part of, scary as hell, deadly as hell for the aircrews (with life expectancy timelines in combat actually rated in mere seconds for doorgunners and pilots....not minutes....seconds!! But all in all we flew into the shit did our best for the most important troops and the pure backbone of any army (grunts).

 

I am sorry that war got so abused and miss-run by lying upper echelon military officers and the suits in DC, and pissed off to the day I die that my patriotism for joining up in the first place got stuck up my ass, but proud that at least my heart was in the right place for doing my duty to my country....and prouder yet for the honor to serve and do anything I could do in order to help the real heroes....the grunts. HOO RAH

 

Kim, anybody who flew a B-25 or B-17 into the ack ack was a brave and honorable man. Even though we had to come to a complete stop and wait to unload or load up sometimes for minutes smack dab in the middle of a firefight, I'll still say those bomber pilots of WW II had the scarier job. God love em all.

 

tsap seui

[Robert S.]

WWII still lives for me in the sense that my mother pretty much summarizes the whole feeling of that era because she was so steeped in it. Her father was a veteran of WWI and somehow survived the fighting, but then when the second war came he joined up again. That time he was an officer, a journalism guy who went around the South Pacific setting up base newspapers and all kinds of PR activities involving troop morale. After the war he was the convention director for the American Legion. During all this time they lived in Arlington, VA, so my mother was in a war atmosphere her entire early life, then she was surrounded by veterans. I absorbed that whole consciousness of patriotism which was still left over from WWII, but the last of that warlike awareness is quickly fading away. Our "wars" nowadays are optional. When I go to the VA Hospital in Houston I get to talk to a few old WWII vets, but have not yet met any here who were actually dodging bullets, though I have known a few in my life. Those guys you could tell had been to a place inside that the rest of us cannot plumb to that depth.

[Mick]

Hey Robert, so good to hear from you again. Hope all is well with you and yours Old Timer!

 

Speaking of WWII, my dad was an ambulance driver and went ashore at Omaha Beach on the second day of the invasion. My dad is now 92 and to this day he refuses to talk about some of the things he witnessed in that landing and afterwards. He served under Ike and named his firstborn son (me) after his General. (For those who don't know, my given name is Dwight - Mick being a nickname since childhood). Anyway, there are not many of those old warriors left.