quote Originally posted by TheDigitalAlchemist: That's kinda crazy - Didn't he have a head wound? (are those "head wound" images fake?) Wikipedia has a lot of info regarding the autopsy. And that bullet looks pretty unscathed after bouncing around a bunch... I've only '**** ' a half dozen times, but the bullets never looked so "pristine" afterwoods... https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...n_F._Kennedy_autopsy

quote The autopsy found that Kennedy was hit by two bullets. One entered his upper back and exited below his neck, albeit obscured by a tracheotomy. The other bullet struck Kennedy in the back of his head and exited the front of his skull in a large exit wound. The trajectory of the latter bullet was marked by bullet fragments throughout his brain. The former bullet was not found during the autopsy, but was discovered at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. It later became the subject of the Warren Commission's single-bullet theory, often derided as the "magic-bullet theory" by conspiracy theorists.

It was bullet #2 that splattered brain material onto Jackie's dress tho the press politely referred to it as blood stains that got there when she cradled his head in her lap on the way to parkland hospital.

"I want them to see what they have done"

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 09-16-2023).]

I was born 24 days before the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel in June of 1950. 5 years after Japan surrendered and WW2 ended.

My mother was very prim & proper 99% of the time. That other 1% was usually about the Japanese or Germans. I never heard her reference the Japanese other than "Japs' and almost always was preceded by the words 'Those Dirty as in 'Those dirty Japs! ....
It was very common to hear it from a lot of people.
My Dad owned an auto shop and refused to work on a foreign car with the one exception, that being anything British. He broke a long time friendship when he told one of his friends to "get that piece of trash off my property", referring to a Datsun. He hated anything German with a passion and not much better for French stuff.

I will try to share the atmosphere from those post war days I grew up in. VE and VJ Day was still actively observed. I remember at least 1 parade on a VJ Day in my home town. And of course, the other holidays were much more then than department store sales opportunities like they are today. It was still normal to see injured WW2 veterans in wheelchairs and crutches about town convalescing, still normal to meet someone missing a limb or having burn scars from their wartime 'stuff'. Still normal to see a gold star in someone's front window, indicating they had lost a family member in combat. 3 of my uncles had served in combat, US Army or US Navy and my Father was drafted in to the US Army.
I was exposed as it were, to WW2 from a very early age. As stated above, father had an auto shop there in the little town we grew up in and my twin and I as well as my youngest older sister worked in it too. On weekends, and especially Saturday mornings in the winter, some of my father's friends gathered there around a homebuilt natural gas heater. Just off the shelf stovepipe from the local hardware store, piped to a natural gas outlet and hose. Rudimentary, but worked well if you were sitting or standing around it. It used a LOT of natural gas tho, and was one of the few things my otherwise frugal Dad splurged $$$ on, mostly for his friends use,


In the summer, there was a big floor fan that served a similar purpose in regards to cooling off in the Houston area heat and humidity.

Most of the gentlemen there would have been in their mid 40s except one a bit younger that didn't serve during WW2. Consider, that at a young age, anyone iin their late 30s or mid 40s looked and seemed old and all these men did to me. But, my brother and I sat with them and heard the stories first hand from them of their experiences during WW2.
It was an eye opener for young minds. Now,my Dad was drafted late in WW2, after Roosevelt approved the call up of married men. The draft originally only selected from single men, then married men, then married with children as the war went on. Dad never went overseas. Served most of his time near or in Washington DC and was discharged at Ft Meade Md. He had been a mechanic since the early days of automotive history, a whiz on Model Ts and Model As, and worked at motor pool and as a driver for some major at Ft Meade and Ft Walter Reed in D.C.. The major he drove for gave him a new assignment one day, pulling him out of MotorT and driving and had him help start up a new program to teach combat injured soldiers how to make a living once they recovered and were going to be discharged. Dad taught how to overhaul carburetors, generators and starters and manual transmissions. (all those could be done at a bench and were pretty simple back then. ) I think he was most proud of doing that above all else in his life.

But Dad's circle of friends mostly were made up of WW2 US Army and US Navy combat veterans, almost all from the Pacific. One told of the scary days of kamikaze attacks at Leyte and , another of the invasion of the Philippines and of a battle on Cactus ridge. They held little back in the descriptions & I did not understand at the time, the pain that was evident in these conversations. I also didn't grasp then, that at the time they happened, kamakazi attacks were something totally foreign to the American style of warfare. It was 'beneath us'. One of the men there was on a troop ship and his battle station was on a Bofors 40mm anti aircraft gun mount.

Late in the war and afterwards, my mother was a Rosie the Riveter type, but instead of airplanes, she worked 1st in Northeast Texas at Red River Arsenal, where they built and boxed ammunition and ordinance, then after Dad was discharged and they moved down near Houston, Dad went to work at Humble Oil and Refining in Baytown and mom went to work up the ship channel about 10 miles at the San Jacinto Ordinance depot where they stored and did final assembly of ordinance for final shipment overseas. In 1947, mother had just got to work when an explosion was heard and a big shockwave felt. The SS Grand Camp 30 miles away at Texas City had blown up, the biggest industrial accident in US history, leveling 1000 buildings, the big Monsanto plant and breaking windows as far away as Galveston. Mother was scared that Humble refinery had blown up and Dad was afraid the ordinance depot had gone up. It was a couple of hours when the news carried the Texas City story and many were afraid some one had bombed Houston, Pearl Harbor style.. It was that fresh in everyone's minds.


One day, one of Dad's friends named Herschel Blackford ( He owned a '54 Packard Clipper I absolutely hated to work on ; a heavy low slung car with dual exhausts, a straight 8 and automatic transmission) but was a man I got to know very well a couple of years later) asked the younger man, Cecil Singleton how his wartime activities went and Cecil just said, almost distantly, as he moved closer to the heater "It was cold, so f****** cold". That was all I knew of Cecil Singleton then except his daughter was my age and in my class, but the next summer, I went to work for him hauling hay and working cows. He had a big farm just North of my hometown, over 100 acres of hayfield, and lots of horned Brahma/hereford cross cows.
Work in the hayfield started late spring/early summer depending on the weather, with the first cutting. Usually got 3 cuttings 2 months apart..depending on the weather. Thousands of 50 lb square bales eah cutting and me, my brother and 1 or 2 other young teens loaded em on trucks and trailers, to be stacked in one of the biggest barns I ever saw. We got paid 5-7¢ a bale. But, Cecil worked right out there with us, and June thru late Sept, in the fierce Texas heat and humidity picked those bales up like they were nothing, ALAWAYS in jeans and thick khaki long sleeve shirt, soaked wet with sweat. He walked with a bad limp but never slowed down. Cecil was a man of few words but there was no mistake that he was A MAN, of the old kind. Branding spring born calves took place in June or early July. Our same group of young boys helped. Hard, hot dirty work. The branding irons glowed red in the hot fire in the middle of the cowpens. Cecil's dad. probably in his 70s at the time joined us, bringing sandwiches and iced tea when we broke for lunch. I remember sitting on a truckbed with the older Singleton and watching as Cecil just stood by the fire, hot as the summer sun was, again in long sleeves. He crossed his arms and I swore he was shivering. I asked his dad if he was sick and why he always dressed so heavily and he just said, "You'll have to ask him boy, but he never wants to be cold again".
It made no sense to me. It was damn hot.


I guess I was 16 when i first started talking about joining the Marines. My Dad was dead set against it, telling me "Boy, you better think long and hard about that notion...that's something that's a whole different ballgame altogether. They don't mess around"
But I still brought it up some and one Saturday I saw Cecil drive up and my Dad went and met him for a few minutes before Cecil got out of his old farm truck, came back and told me to go with 'Mr. Singleton', so i climbed in. That's the day I found out. Cecil Singleton was one of the Chosin Few. He wasn't in WW2 but was with Chesty Puller and the 1st Marine Division as they fought and died on their way back from Korea's frozen Chosin Reservoir the year I was born. He told me as we drove around, of the frozen bodies of dead Chinese they stacked up at night as protection to shoot from. Of the endless days of walking on ice and snow, fighting, bleeding, never giving up till they reached the coast and Hungnam. It was below zero in the daytime and -30 at night. Cecil got frostbite and lost 3 toes on his left foot, which was why he limped. He never felt warm again but was terribly proud to be a US Marine. . Almost back home, he turned and told me "I'll tell you one thing son. When you come back, this mainstreet here won't be wide enough for anyone but you to walk down".

I don't know to this day what my Dad thought the outcome of that conversation would be, but from that moment on, I knew I would become a US Marine. I forged his name on the enlistment parental permission form at 17 (got caught and had to wait till I was 18) . I still have that forged form, but also have my Dad's US Army discharge hanging by my own Marine discharge on the living room wall.

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 09-19-2023).]

[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 09-20-2023).]