Tag Archives: Medal of Honor

Time has run out for Trump to change his ways

August 23, 2019 kanelis2012

I quit some time ago relying on my trick knee. It has failed me too many times. So I quit making political predictions.

But I want you to consider this forward-looking observation:
It is too late for Donald John Trump to change his ways while posing as president of the United States of America.

He’s been at this gig now for more than two years, going on three. Trump has been acting more erratically than ever. He just recently compared himself to God, called himself the “chosen one” to lead the country, joked that he wanted to grant himself the Medal of Honor, blamed Barack Obama for the souring economy, pitched a goofy notion about buying Greenland from Denmark, lashed out at Democrats and the media continually via Twitter.

Were the president to actually start acting “presidential,” how do you think that would look to rank-and-file voters? Well, it would like what it would be, a desperate attempt to pander to those beyond the “base” of supporters that like Trump just the way he has been all along.

It’s too late, therefore, for Donald Trump to change his ways. It’s too late for him to start acting like the president.

Therefore, if he gets re-elected in 2020 — and I shudder at the thought — Americans will have themselves to blame for ignoring the signals that ring out loudly and clearly: The country made a huge mistake when it allowed Donald Trump to win an Electoral College victory and, thus, become president of our great nation.

local news

Here is to you, our national heroes

May 27, 2019 kanelis2012

To my fellow veterans, I am sending you a note in a form I usually reserve for politicians. This is an open letter to you, our heroes.

You know who you are, even if you won’t acknowledge it. You are the individuals who paid the ultimate price for defending our nation against its enemies.

I want to share some thoughts with you on this Memorial Day. Your heroism hasn’t been forgotten.

Our nation has been honoring you since the Civil War. They used to call it Decoration Day. It morphed into Memorial Day. These days, of course, we spend a lot of time grilling outdoors, taking advantage of the unofficial start of summer. We play with our families, laugh and carry on.

But this holiday carries a deep and somber meaning. Your loved ones, those who still mourn their loss, always commemorate your heroism on battlefields far away. For them, every day is Memorial Day.

I once had the honor of taking part in the development of an exhibit intended to honor you. It’s in Amarillo. They call it the Texas Panhandle Veterans War Memorial. The then-head of the Vets Center in Amarillo — Pete Garcia, a U.S. Air Force veteran — asked me to write some narratives that would be engraved on one side of stone tablets; the narratives gave a brief history of the conflict to be memorialized. I did so, along with two other fellows who lived in the Amarillo area.

On the other side of the tablets contain the names of those Texas Panhandle residents who fell during those wars. Some of your names are engraved on the stones.

I was proud to play a small part in that project. It’s up now and is growing. Randall County Judge Ernie Houdashell — a Vietnam War veteran — has added wonderful new exhibits to the memorial site: an F-100 fighter jet; a UH-1 Huey helicopter; and most recently, a piece of the battleship USS Arizona, which was sunk by Japanese war planes at Pearl Harbor. The memorial board has acquired the now-abandoned county annex building next to the memorial and hopes to turn the annex into an interactive museum.

The centerpiece of that memorial, though, is the names etched in stone. Two of them belong to Medal of Honor recipients: Marines Thomas Creek (who died in Vietnam) and Charles Roan (who died in World War II). They all are your brothers.

You’re all heroes. We owe you eternal thanks because you paid your last full measure of devotion to the nation we all love.

medical news, military news

Show us the bone spur records, Mr. POTUS

March 21, 2019 kanelis2012

Bob Kerrey has pitched a perfectly logical notion for the president of the United States, who has been plagued by doubters who question his assertion that “bone spurs” kept him out of military service during the Vietnam War.

Show us the medical record, Mr. President. That is the suggestion offered by Kerrey, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Nebraska. Oh, I also must point out that Kerrey is a former Navy SEAL, a Vietnam War combat veteran and a Medal of Honor recipient who lost one of his legs fighting the enemy during that horrible time.

Bone spurs don’t heal themselves, Kerrey said. You need surgery to repair them. The president has never mentioned surgery.

The bone spur issue keeps recurring because Trump keeps yapping about military matters in ways that bring these questions to the forefront.

Such as his ongoing and crass attacks against the late Sen. John McCain, the former Vietnam War prisoner who died of cancer this past August. Trump once denigrated McCain’s POW status, saying he was a “hero only because he was captured.”

Trump got several medical deferments during the Vietnam War. He has cited bone spurs. Well, just like the tax returns he keeps saying are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, he has not provided a shred of evidence that he even had bone spurs; he also hasn’t produced a letter by the IRS declaring that it was auditing his tax returns, which he said has precluded him from releasing those returns for public review.

The president also reportedly told his former lawyer/confidant Michael Cohen that he had no intention of going to Vietnam. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Cohen said Trump asked him. Kerrey has taken offense at that notion, saying that Trump “sees all of us who went to Vietnam as fools. We were the suckers. We were the stupid ones. We were the ones that didn’t have the resources to be able to get out of the draft.”

Kerrey said this, as reported by the Huffington Post: “While John McCain was flying combat operations in Vietnam, you were, I think, falsifying that you had bone spurs in order not to go to Vietnam,” said Kerrey, a 1992 presidential candidate who retired from the Senate in 2000. “Now I know lots of people who avoided the draft, but this isn’t what he’s saying. He said ‘I physically couldn’t go,’ Well, Mr. President, get your feet X-rayed and let’s see those bone spurs. I don’t think he has them.”

Frankly, neither do I.

local news, military news

A more fitting memorial honors a hero

October 19, 2018 kanelis2012

CLAUDE, Texas — A little more than 74 years ago, a 21-year-old U.S. Marine was engaged in a ferocious firefight on a Pacific Island. Enemy troops lobbed a grenade at his position.

The Marine threw himself onto the grenade. It exploded, killing him. The Marine’s bravery and valor, though, saved the lives of four comrades and for that single heroic act, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Charles H. Roan is a hero forever. His hometown of Claude not many years ago erected a memorial in PFC Roan’s honor. It was damaged by someone, either accidentally or on purpose. I wrote about that memorial in an earlier blog post.

I want to share this brief item, along with the accompanying picture, to show you how the community has erected what I consider to be a more fitting and lasting memorial to its son, the Marine, the hero who gave his full measure of devotion during World War II.

The Charles B. Roan Veterans Memorial sits on the south side of U.S. Highway 287 as you enter Claude from the west. It contains memorial bricks that comprise a walkway into the memorial; the bricks are engraved with the names of other veterans.

Roan, though, earned this tribute through what the Medal of Honor citation calls his “intrepidity.”

I am glad the community responded in this fashion, by honoring Charles Roan — and all veterans — in the first place and by erecting a strong and stable memorial that will honor this young man’s heroism … I hope forever and ever.

Semper fi.

***

Once again, here is the text of the citation awarded to PFC Roan’s family by President Truman.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese Forces on Peleliu, Palau Islands, 18 September 1944. Shortly after his leader ordered a withdrawal upon discovering that the squad was partly cut off from their company as a result of their rapid advance along an exposed ridge during an aggressive attack on the strongly entrenched enemy, Private First Class Roan and his companions were suddenly engaged in a furious exchange of hand grenades with Japanese forces emplaced in a cave on higher ground and the rear of the squad. Seeking protection with four other Marines in a depression the rocky, broken terrain, Private First Class Roan was wounded by an enemy grenade which fell close to their position and, immediately realizing the imminent peril to his comrades when another grenade landed in the midst of the group, unhesitatingly flung himself upon it, covering it with his body and absorbing the full impact of the explosion. By his prompt action and selfless conduct in the face of almost certain death, he saved the lives of four men. His great personal valor reflects the highest credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his comrades.

military news

This ceremony is worth watching … over and over

July 19, 2016 kanelis2012

President Barack Obama took a few minutes out of his busy day this week to hang a medal around the neck of an 86-year-old hero.

The hero’s name is Charles Kettles. Nearly 50 years ago — yes, 50 years — Kettles found himself in the middle of an intense fire fight in Vietnam.

Kettles, an Army pilot, already had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his effort to rescue his fellow soldiers, flying them out of the landing zone to safety.

But someone in Ypsilanti, Mich., where Kettles lives, heard about the story and worked for five years to ensure that Kettles received the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor.

This video tells the story. It’s moving. It speaks to one man’s humility, which as I’ve long believed speaks to the fundamental character that all true heroes share.

The event also enables us, as the president noted, to honor the “basic goodness” of Americans. “It’s been a tough couple of weeks,” the president said.

Indeed it has … which helps make this presentation so meaningful.

Thank you, Lt. Col. Kettles.

national news, political news

Sen. Dole reminds GOP of its dignified past

July 19, 2016 kanelis2012

Many Republican luminaries are staying away from the Republican Party’s national presidential nominating convention.

But not all of them.

A serious man attended today’s opening of the convention in Cleveland.

He is former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who represented his state and served our country with tremendous honor.

Sen. Dole was there to support presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump. That’s what party loyalists do, whether they’re Democrat or Republican. Dole is a loyalist to the core.

He also represents another time in this country when Republicans and Democrats could be political adversaries, not enemies.

MSNBC commentators took note of Dole’s distinguished career in public life. They brought up his years in the Senate. They mentioned how, in 1976, President Ford selected him as his running mate to assuage conservatives’ concerns. They talked also of Dole’s conservative principles as he ran for president in 1988 against fellow Republican George H.W. Bush.

Of course, they mentioned his losing 1996 presidential campaign against President Clinton.

Here’s another element of Dole’s service they mentioned: They talked about his heroic service in the Army during World War II, in which he suffered grievous injury while fighting the Nazis in Italy.

It was right after coming home from the battlefield that young Bob Dole would meet another young American with whom he would undergo rehabilitation. The forged a friendship in the rehab hospital that would last a lifetime.

The other young man was Daniel Inouye, who would become a U.S. senator from Hawaii, and who was as loyal to his Democratic Party as Dole is to the GOP.

Inouye also suffered near-mortal wounds during World War II. He would receive the Medal of Honor for his battlefield heroics.

“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd took particular note today of when Sen. Inouye died and his friend Bob Dole stood in front of Inouye’s casket to salute him. He told the honor guard that his “good friend Danny wouldn’t want to see me sitting here” in a wheelchair, Todd said.

Dole represented a time when senators could disagree, but maintain personal affection and friendship.

I was gratified to see this member of the “greatest generation” one more time.

If only his political descendants — on both sides of the partisan divide — would follow the example of collegiality that he and his “good friend Danny” set for politicians all across the land.

Uncategorized

Medal of Honor shocks recipient

February 23, 2014 kanelis2012

You’re a 72-year-old Army Special Forces veteran. You’ve seen combat up close and personal. You’ve been injured on the battlefield and you performed so heroically in September 1969 that the Army awarded you the Distinguished Service Cross for valor.

But something was missing. Some of the brass thought you deserved the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. You didn’t get it because, reportedly, someone high up in the chain of command didn’t want to grant the honor to an African-American.

The battle occurred 45 years ago, in Vietnam. Your name is Melvin Morris and when the phone rang one day this past year, you picked it up and the president of the United States was on the other end of the call.

He invited you to the White House to receive the honor you richly deserve. You and several others from will be honored. It is late, but no less deserved.

http://blog.al.com/wire/2014/02/florida_man_shocked_to_learn_o.html

Morris is one of only three Vietnam War veterans who will be present to receive their Medals of Honor. All told, eight living veterans will be on hand. The rest of them are now deceased. Some of them died on the battlefield. Some of the veterans date back to World War II and the Korean War.

It will be an unusual ceremony, honoring veterans of African-American, Hispanic or Jewish heritage who were denied the honor because of their race, ethnicity or faith. President Obama and the Pentagon want to make it right and have scheduled this event for March 18.

Melvin Morris said he was shocked when he got the phone call. He said he fell to his knees.

But like virtually all heroes, he had gone on with his life. “I never really did worry about decorations,” Morris said.

Well done, Mr. Morris — and welcome home.

High Plains Blogger