1984 when I signed on the line, the Marxist socialist USSR was the main threat to defend against. Still are, but I only have to take one look around me to realize we lost the cold war. The Marxist socialists have taken over without a single defense shot fired.
Had a neighbor stop by this afternoon, she asked why my Stars and Stripes flag was at half staff...………… Did my best to be polite and advised as to why we have Memorial Day. She said Oh...…….
Rams
[This message has been edited by blackrams (edited 05-25-2020).]
I was out with family and somehow missed this thread so I'm inexcusably "late to formation".
Memorial Day is always both a little sad and brings a smile to mind.
1LT Tim Terhune was my best friend and my brother. He was almost always smiling and happy. He absolutely LOVED the Army. It was his life's calling and he acted like it.
One night we were sitting on top of an M60A1 tank on a long dirt road through a German forest, looking up at stars and just bullshitting. Tim was suddenly and uncharacteristically very serious and said to me: "If I ever get in an accident I want it to kill me, not cripple me. I don't think I could live as a cripple."
It wasn't very long after that Tim was instantly killed in a training accident.
There isn't a day that goes by since that day that I don't think of my brother and the great times we had together.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 05-27-2020).]
I was not late to this "formation" and I can't fly my flag at half mast. It did fly.
I watched the laying of the wreath at Arlington National Cemetery. CNN was talking about Covid19 and MSNBC was talking about their President's tweets.
I got to wondering. With all the advances in DNA identification, can we not identify that hero ? Then, I got to wondering, if we could identify that unknown soldier, would he be replaced by another.
I determined that there are too many unknown soldiers to most of the nation.
The top 4 and next 3 men were killed as a result of a crash while participating in Operation Lam Son 719 (Dewey Canyon II) On their way back from Laos, had taken heavy fire and landed west of hue, inspected the aircraft but surmised it would make it back to our base at Marble Mountain. Just south of Hue, it crashed in with no mayday, but it's wingman saw it crash violently in hostile territory. That was Feb '71. For decades, it was written off as a mechanical caused crash, but just a few years ago, after further invesrigation and lots of written testimony from surviviors of the mission that day, DoD finally concluded it had taken a heavy MG round to the rotor head while in Laos at LZ Lolo, cracked the area where the blades bolt on and slung a blade in flight. After all those years, each of the crew and 4 passengers were posthumously awarded purple hearts.
The Marine on the lower right, was crew chief on one of our CH53s that had crashed, and he survived the intial crash, but was killed when he returned to the aircraft to try to save the pilot and co-pilot. All other crew survived.
.
