No words.......

My words : Thanks to all that fight and protect this wonderful country we live in !

 

X2 and those that fought before as well.

 

Thanks Chris. Just remembering and honoring a few brothers I lost while over there.

 

Salute to all my Brothers in Arms Past Present Future

 

Rest In Peace to those that gave all and bless those that have/are giving

 

Damn it..Very tough......

 

This is exactly why I defend the flag and will not hesitate to knock somebody on their ass that tries to desecrate the flag in any way.

 

God bless our great nation and those that served and let us not forget those who paid the ultimate price fighting to preserve our freedom and way of life.

 

Was my honor and privilege, Ron. Thanks for your service.

 

I'd like to give a huge thanks to all our men and women in harms way. Also want to remember my father, a decorated WWII combat veteran who saw extensive action in the Solomon Islands and the Philippine Islands. God bless you my father. I miss you still...

 

This is a long one, my friends, written in the '90s....but worth the read.

A Memorial Day story that applies to all services.....this one just happens to be Air Force.

STILL THE NOBLEST CALLING

I visited with three old friends recently at a park in my town. It seems
like only yesterday that we were all together, but actually it had been 28
years. There was a crowd at the park that day, and it took us awhile to connect, but with the aid of a computer we made it. I found Lance at Panel
54W, line 037, Lynn over at Panel 51W, line 032, and Vince down at line 103
on Panel 27W. We were gung-ho young fighter pilots in Vietnam, the cream of the crop of the US Air Force pilot training system, and now their names are
on that 250-foot-long, half-size model of the Vietnam Memorial that moves around the country. I had intentionally avoided visiting the wall when it
came to town in years past; because I did not trust myself to behave in a
composed manner, but after nearly three decades it was time to try for some
closure on this issue. I told my wife that I preferred to go alone, if that
was all right, and, truth be known, I nearly backed out at that.

Standing in front of that somber wall, I tried to keep it light, reminiscing
about how things were back then. We used to joke about the psychiatric term
for a passionate love affair with inanimate flying objects-we flew
F-100's-and we marveled at the thought that the taxpayers actually paid us
to do this "work." We were not draftees, but college graduates there by
choice, opting for the cramped confines of a jet fighter cockpit over the
comfort of corporate America. In all my life I've not been so passionate
about any other work. If that sounds like an exaggeration, then you've never danced the wild blue with a supersonic angel.

I vividly remember the Sunday afternoon, in the summer of '68, when we flew out of Travis Air Force Base, California, on a troop transport headed for
Vietnam. Lynn, Lance and I crowded around the same porthole and watched the Golden Gate Bridge disappear below broken clouds. We had gone through fighter pilot school together and had done some serious bonding. In an exceedingly rare moment of youthful fighter pilot humility, I wondered if I
would live to see that bridge again. For reasons I still don't understand, I
was the only one of the three who did.

Once in Vietnam, we passed the long, lonely off-duty hours at Dusty's Pub, a lounge that we lieutenants built on the beach of the South China Sea at Tuy Hoa Air Base. The roof at Dusty's doubled as a sun deck and the walls were
non-existent. The complaint heard most often around the bar, in the standard gallows humor of a combat squadron, was that it was "...a lousy war, but
it's the only one we have." (I've cleaned up the language a bit.) We sang
mostly raunchy songs that never seemed to end-someone was always writing new
verses-and, as an antidote to loneliness, fear in the night, and the sadness
over dead friends, we often drank too much.

Vince joined us at Dusty's Pub halfway through my tour of duty, and since he was a like-minded country kid from Montana, we hit it off. He had a wide grin, slightly stooped shoulders, and his own way of walking-he just threw his feet out and stepped on them. But what he lacked in military bearing he made up for with the heart of a tiger. He often flew as my wingman, and we
volunteered for the night missions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. One starless
night, the longest, saddest night of my life, we got into a really nasty gun
duel with some anti-aircraft artillery batteries. I watched Vince die in a
mushroom shaped fireball that for a moment turned night into day.

Lance-a New York boy who took unmerciful grief from the rest of us because
he talked like a New Yawker-crashed into the side of a mountain in the
central highlands while attacking a target. Lynn, a happy-go-lucky jock from
Pennsylvania's Slippery Rock College with a hound named John the Basset,
returned to his base on a stormy night in July after weather aborted his
mission. Two miles of wet runway weren't enough to stop an F-100 landing at
160 knots with all it bombs still on board. He ran off the end, flipped
over, and slid through the minefield at the perimeter fence, setting off a
gruesome sound and light show.

At the wall, I told the guys only about the good parts of the last 28 years.
Lacy, one of our associates from Dusty's Pub, became an astronaut, and a few
summers ago I watched from my back yard, near Tampa, as he blasted off. His voice over the radio from space was at least an octave lower than it was the
day I heard him radio for help while swinging from his parachute hung up in
a tree in Laos. Another Dusty's patron, Rick, is now a two-star general, and
I reminded them of what we used to say about the military promotion
system-it's like a septic tank, only the really big chunks floated to the
top.

I didn't tell them about how ostracized Vietnam vets are, that during that
same week, one of the nation's leading newspapers has run an article that
implied we Vietnam vets were, to quote one syndicated columnist, "either suckers or psychos, victims or monsters." I didn't tell them that the secretary of defense they fought for back then has now declared that he was
not a believer in the cause for which he assigned them all to their destiny.
I didn't tell them that a draft age kid from Arkansas, who hid out in
England to dodge his duty while they were fighting and dying, is now the
commander-in-chief. And I did not tell them we lost that lousy war. I gave
them the same story I've used since the Nixon administration: "We were
winning when I left."

I relived that final day as I stared at the black onyx wall:
The dawn came up like thunder after a year and 268 combat missions in the valley of theshadow. The ground trembled as 33 F-100's roared off the runway, across thebeach, and out over the South China Sea, climbing into the rising sun. On
the eastern horizon a line of towering deep purple clouds stood
shoulder-to-shoulder before a brilliant orange sky that slowly turned powder
blue from the top down. From somewhere on that stage, above the whine of
spinning turbine blades, I could hear a choir singing Handel's "Hallelujah
Chorus" in fortissimo: The "...Lord God Omnipotent reigneth...," and He was
bringing me home, while Lance and Lynn and Vince will remain as part of the
dust of Southeast Asia until the end of time.

I was not the only one talking to the wall through tears. A leather-vested,
bare-chested biker two panels to my left was in even worse shape. I backedabout twenty-five yards away from the wall and sat down on the grass under a
clear blue sky and mid-day sun that perfectly matched the tropical weather of the war zone. The wall, with all 58,200 names, consumed my field of
vision. I tried to wrap my mind around the mega-tonnage of violence, carnage
and ruined lives that it represented. Then I thought of how Vietnam was only
one small war in the history of the human race, and I was overwhelmed with a
sense of mankind's wickedness.

My heart felt like wax in the blazing sun, and I was on the verge of
becoming a spectacle in the park. I arose and walked back up to the wall to
say good-bye and ran my fingers over the engraved names-Lance and Lynn and
Vince-as if I could communicate with them in some kind of spiritual Braille.
I wanted them to know that God, duty, honor, and country will always remain
the noblest calling. Revisionist history by the elite dodgers who are trying
to justify their actions cannot change that.

I have been a productive member of society since the day I left Vietnam. I
am proud of what I did there, and I am especially proud of my friends-heroes
who voluntarily, enthusiastically gave their all. They demonstrated no greater love to a nation who's highbrow opinion makers are still trying to
disavow them. May their names, indelibly engraved on that memorial wall,
likewise be found in the Book of Life.

 

Man this one is tough to look at. Damn. May they all R.I.P.

 

I'd like to find out who she is, where she is, and somehow find out a way if she is getting any support. We can't help everyone but you have to have a starting point. I know we can make things happen here for trivial anal things. Just sayin.

 

Visited an old buddy a few weeks ago while I was in DC.

 

Mike, like you, I have no words....thank you for posting this.

 

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
- George S. Patton

 

Not sure if the article is fake news or real.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...idows-touched-a-nerve/?utm_term=.48615489d351

@Grey Wolf

 

Quite possible but we all know there are many widows in that same situation. Many.

 

Wife and I went to a nearby Salisbury National Cemetery today just because. It is one of the oldest with mass graves of Union Soldiers who were prisoners of the south. It has since expanded into two locations.

 

I've been there several times, didn't know about this. Will make it a point to visit next time.

 

The original location has been at capacity for years and has the monuments at the graves of the mass civil war burials. The newer location is adjacent to the VA hospital a few miles away.

 

Dam man I would just lose it!! The older I get I just can not take the little ones being in pain or having anything happen to them!! Hell of a picture!!!

 

Salute to all my brothers in arms who didn't make it home