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Missed opportunities to meet legends.

Discussion in 'Military' started by Thee_Oddball, Mar 31, 2018.

  1. Mar 31, 2018 at 12:19 PM
    #1
    Thee_Oddball

    Thee_Oddball [OP] New Member

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    I was big into WW2 aviation via flight sim games like IL2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IL-2_Sturmovik_(video_game) and assumed for a long time that the top three aces were all dead but was very sad to find out in 2009 that Gunther Rall had died and I missed an opportunity to meet a legend :(:(:( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Günther_Rall.

    Yet again I see I was wrong and just learned another legend died recently (2015) Otto Carius, he was a Panzer Ace with 150 tanks destroyed during his career. You can read books about these people till you are blue in the face but it will never match actually talking to them.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Carius

     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2018
  2. Mar 31, 2018 at 2:16 PM
    #2
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    I have often speculated about who I might spend 1 hour with if it could be anyone throughout history.

    On topic, though, while I was working on the historical restoration of the AZ Capitol, I had the good fortune to help the exhibit designers develop an exhibit honoring our Navaho code talkers. About 12 of them came to the exhibit opening and I spent time with them and got autographs. Cool stuff, true heroism.
     
  3. Mar 31, 2018 at 4:55 PM
    #3
    TXMiamiFan

    TXMiamiFan SSEM #3 and tractor extraordinaire

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    If you wanna look at it that way I can see your POV that these guys wouldn’t be the first guys you would want to meet, But they all did what was asked of them and everyone fought for their country no questions asked. If we still held grudges, we wouldn’t be driving Toyota’s.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2018
  4. Mar 31, 2018 at 5:00 PM
    #4
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    It’s kind of a long story, I make my son tell it every thanksgiving, but he was served yams by president bush in Iraq, the first thanksgiving of the war.
     
  5. Mar 31, 2018 at 6:17 PM
    #5
    1UPPER

    1UPPER Not A New Member

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    TEXAS
    Flux capacitor!
    There is a youn man who has made it his mission to interview and capture the stories of all the remaining soldiers from WW2. Its very inspirational to see someone who is not letting them be forgotten. Here is a quote from his website and the link.

    “I am on mission to interview 2-3 WWII veterans every single day until the last one passes away. I want to absorb the gravity of their sacrifices and hardships, their knowledge, and their wisdom. Please help me in this journey.”

    http://www.heroesofthesecondworldwar.org/
     
  6. Mar 31, 2018 at 7:58 PM
    #6
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    Name dropping only works when people know who your talking about bro! lol
     
  7. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:01 PM
    #7
    Eclipsed & Floating

    Eclipsed & Floating Over it.........

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    That’s why I deleted the post. I can gauge my audience, but only after the names have been dropped :rofl:

    Do you not remember the early 90s Olympic Games when Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving platform. One of the most decorated Olympic divers of all time? Also, Lundquist won a bunch of swimming medals
     
    TXMiamiFan likes this.
  8. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:03 PM
    #8
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    I thought that was the guy that played the hulk
     
    NewImprovedRon likes this.
  9. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:03 PM
    #9
    Eclipsed & Floating

    Eclipsed & Floating Over it.........

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    Nah bro! That was Bruce Hornsby!!
     
  10. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:04 PM
    #10
    Eclipsed & Floating

    Eclipsed & Floating Over it.........

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  11. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:09 PM
    #11
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    2"CB shackles, bushings and 1 shim, lockerdown console vault, rear folding seat back mod, snugtop shell with opening side windows, 46g fuel tank, SDHQ sliders and hidden winch, Decked Drawers, Alcan leaf springs and got rid of the interior chrome
  12. Mar 31, 2018 at 8:33 PM
    #12
    gosolo

    gosolo You Don’t Know Who I Am But I Know Where You Live

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    2"CB shackles, bushings and 1 shim, lockerdown console vault, rear folding seat back mod, snugtop shell with opening side windows, 46g fuel tank, SDHQ sliders and hidden winch, Decked Drawers, Alcan leaf springs and got rid of the interior chrome
    Are you gonna get moving to AZ before I make it to Oregon?
     
  13. Mar 31, 2018 at 10:47 PM
    #13
    Eclipsed & Floating

    Eclipsed & Floating Over it.........

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    Nope
    Pilas have changed. I’m headed home to be closer to family
     
  14. Apr 1, 2018 at 10:21 AM
    #14
    Thee_Oddball

    Thee_Oddball [OP] New Member

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    I look at all soldiers as people fighting for the man next to him and the loved ones behind him, excluding those who slaughter the defenseless (SA,SS, political units of the red army etc.)
    the Wehrmacht was the German version of G.I. Joe but sadly every war brings out the devils.

    there is a biography called The blonde knight of Germany , it's about the worlds top ace Erich Hartmann.

    "Below is an account of the mass rape in 1945 of German women by the Russians. The eyewitness was an ace Luftwaffe pilot, Erich Hartmann. The following narrative is an adaption from his biography, The Blond Knight of Germany: A biography of Erich Hartmann by Raymond Toliver and Trevor Constable

    Half-drunk Red Army soldiers, armed with rifles and machine guns, made unarmed Germans stand in rows. Other Russians forced women and girls to lie on the ground, tore off their clothes and began raping them. The male Germans could only silently clench their fists. U.S. soldiers from their truck looked on at all this with eyes wide open.

    It seemed that they were simply paralyzed by the spectacle. When two young German girls, stripped naked, shouting all the time rushed to the truck and in desperation began to climb on it the American guards pulled them up. The Russians did not like this. Firing wildly into the air and shouting, they rushed to the American truck. The U.S. soldiers quickly readied their guns, and the truck raced away across the road. When it had disappeared, the Russian soldiers attacked the German women again.

    A young German woman, a little over thirty, mother of a 12-year-old girl, knelt at the feet of a Russian corporal and prayed to God that the Soviet soldiers take her, and not the girl. But her prayers went unanswered. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she kept praying.

    The Russian corporal walked away from the woman, his face contorted into a mocking grin. One of the soldiers hit the woman on the face with his boot. "Damned fascist pig!", he yelled. The young mother fell on her back. The soldier who had hit her, shot her in the head and killed her.

    The Russians seized all the German women who were visible. The little daughter of the murdered woman was dragged behind a tank by the killer of her mother. He was joined by other Russians. For half an hour rang out wild screams and moans. Then, completely naked, the girl, unable to stand on his feet, crept back.

    However, in the overall picture of the atrocities, the suffering of the girl was not anything special. The helpless German men tried to persuade the Russian guards to allow them to help the girl. Rifle at the ready, the Russian allowed a German medic to attend to the girl. An hour later she died, and her last sobs burned the hearts of Hartmann and his soldiers.

    8 and 9-year-old girls were being repeatedly raped mercilessly by a brutalized Russian military. They showed no other feelings other than hatred and lust. Until all the monsters had satisfied themselves amongst the wild screams and wailing of women, Erich and his soldiers were under the muzzles of guns.

    Spattered with blood, the Russian, lust satisfied, took over the covering of German soldiers. Mothers tried to protect their daughters, but they were beaten unconscious and dragged to the side, and then raped in that state. Even though Eric was a battle-hardened pilot, who had fought in hundreds of missions and who had received many wounds was struck in the heart by what he saw. By a superhuman effort of will he fought down an attack of vomiting.

    Such an orgy just could not go on for long. Lust was sated, and began to appear the first signs of pity. Sometimes smiling, sometimes indifferent, sometimes a little depressed, Russian soldiers returned the women and girls. Those who were dragged away from the truck, nobody saw them again. Others fell unconscious in the arms of shaken fathers and husbands.

    The Germans were herded into a makeshift camp in a meadow. They were allowed to go to the lake to wash and wash clothes. Then around the meadow was built a ring of 30 tanks to organize security for the night. Russian soldiers came again and again to the German women. The violence continued throughout the night, and stopped just before dawn. Women stumbled back, like broken dolls, after the Russian had satisfied themselves. Soldiers of JG-52 Squadron, which served E. Hartmann, had to make hard choices, and many of them made it.

    When the first rays of the sun fell on the meadow surrounded by tanks, many Germans did not rise. Those who woke up, found themselves in a terrible realm of death, which was etched in red-hot iron in their memories forever. When Eric woke up, he saw a German sergeant with his wife and daughter lying beside him. The sergeant's wife quietly cut the veins of her hands with a homemade knife. Then he just killed his 11-year-old daughter, and then cut his own vein . Life slowly went away from them, while Eric lay nearby watching.

    Other men strangled their wives and daughters and then hanged themselves on the sides of trucks. They preferred to die slowly and painfully. Erich began quietly talking to himself, to overcome the terrible effects of the bloody scenes in the mind. "You must live, Erich. You must survive to tell others about what happened. You can never forget what happens when man falls below any animal".



    Three million German troops crossed the Soviet border in June 1941 in an attempt to extirpate the Russian state, and the Nazi commitment to
    Total War produced atrocities so terrible that they were bound to be avenged once the Red Army reached German soil. As so often in war, it was to be defenceless women, girls and even elderly ladies who were to pay in pain and outrage for the crimes of their male compatriots.

    Stalin said people should ' understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'.

    On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.'"


    War will always show who is the worst and best among us.
     
    NewImprovedRon likes this.
  15. Apr 1, 2018 at 11:09 AM
    #15
    TXMiamiFan

    TXMiamiFan SSEM #3 and tractor extraordinaire

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    Not a fun read, bro. I’m sure it’s true, but damn man. So sad to read that.
     

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