Tag Archives: Mediterranean Theater

national news

What would Dad think of this charlatan?

My father wasn’t a particularly political person. He didn’t talk much in detail about public policy or those who shape it. He did have opinions about some politicians and when he expressed them to me, they usually were negative.

He was a proud World War II veteran who fought Germans and Italians in the Mediterranean theater of operations. He hated the tyrants he took an oath to defeat when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy right after Pearl Harbor.

I cannot help but wonder what Dad would think of the individual who was elected in 2016 as president of the United States.

Although Dad wasn’t a keen political observer, I believe he was intuitive enough to know a huckster when he saw or heard one. Dad was among the best sellers of products who ever lived. Thus, I have to believe that Dad would know a huckster, a flim-flam artist, a carnival barker when he saw one.

That is what we have in Donald Trump.

I cannot ask Dad what he would think of this guy. Dad died more than 39 years ago. He was 59 years of age. He would have turned 98 this past May, so it’s entirely possible that Dad would be unable to process much of what the nation has seen unfold since Trump took office.

I wonder how he would react to the way Trump has behaved since becoming our head of state. I ponder how Dad would perceive the pronouncements that come from Trump.

Mostly, I wonder how Dad would react to Trump’s kowtowing to dictators, strong men, murderers, Marxists and assorted tinhorn leaders around the world.

Dad’s service in our nation’s time of terrible peril helped define him. He hated tyrants and the tyranny they sought to advance. How in the world would this proud patriot think of a president who sought to avoid/evade service in the Vietnam War? Hmm.

I have to believe Dad would be aghast, appalled and astonished that Donald Trump even got elected to the nation’s highest and most exalted office.

If only I could ask him.

national news

My favorite veteran’s story has gotten more glorious

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VANCOUVER, Wash. — This is a picture of my favorite veteran. He’s my Dad, who died 39 years ago today in a most unexpected and tragic manner.

That is not why I am posting this item about Pete Kanelis. It involves my belief that Dad was my favorite military veteran. I heard something this week from his sole surviving brother that I did not know, but which solidifies my opinion about Dad’s service to the country in a time of great peril.

My wife and I were visiting Uncle Tino and Aunt Claudia the other day. We were reminiscing about family. Then my uncle offered this bit of information that I never knew; if I knew, perhaps I forgot. It’s chilling and heroic at the same time.

Uncle Tino was 9 years of age when the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He told us about how he and the rest of his family were listening to the radio at their home in Portland. They were transfixed by what the news reports were telling the world about what had just happened, which is that the Japanese Empire had just committed a supreme act of war on the United States.

President Roosevelt would stand before Congress the next day to ask for a declaration of war in retaliation for the “dastardly act.” Dad didn’t wait for the president to make his request, according to Uncle Tino.

“Your Dad got up out of his chair and left the room,” Tino told us. He said Dad — who was 20 years of age — went downtown on that Sunday afternoon to enlist in the military. That very day! He was so enraged at what he had heard that he wanted to get into the fight immediately.

Dad did tell me once that his intention was to enlist in the Marine Corps, but that the Marines’ office was closed. So, he walked across the hall and enlisted in the Navy.

I don’t recall Dad telling me that he did all that on the very day of the Pearl Harbor attack. I do recall him saying that he actually reported for duty in January or February 1942. I guess I never pieced together over those many decades that Dad well could have been motivated in the moment to join the fight, but that it took a few weeks for the paperwork to get processed.

Tino told us he remembers the day “vividly.” I believe him. Dad was a red-blooded American patriot. It rings so very true to me that he would act so impulsively.

Dad got into the fight in a big way. He saw combat in the Mediterranean Theater battling the Germans and Italians. He and millions of other young Americans fought hard and saved the world from the tyrants who sought to conquer it.

I am grateful to hear this recollection, as it affirms my view of my favorite veteran.

International news

Adding ‘the beach’ to my bucket list

I don’t have a lengthy “bucket list” of things I want to do before I check out. I’ve lived a good and productive and eventful life full of rare experiences.

I have traveled three times to Greece, my ancestral homeland; I have been able to walk on the soil in Vietnam where I served during a long-ago war; I have spent more than a month in Israel, visiting holy sites and learning how people live so close to their mortal enemies just across borders in almost any direction.

And of course my family has filled me with great joy and pride.

But this week, watching the events commemorating the 75th year since the D-Day invasion of Europe, I have added a destination to my bucket list. I want to walk along “the beach.” I want to see where young men fought and died to save the world from tyranny.

Let me be clear: I do not have a direct familial connection to D-Day. My father was a World War II veteran, as was one of my uncles. Dad saw his combat in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations; he took part in landings at Oran, Morocco and later in Sicily and then at Salerno on the Italian mainland.

Dad faced continual bombardment from German and Italian aircraft. While manning a 50-caliber deck gun, Dad was credited with shooting down a JU-88 Luftwaffe bomber, but then had his ship sunk when an Italian torpedo bomber found its mark off the Sicilian coast.

So, no one in my family met death on the French coast on June 6, 1944. Oh, how I want to see that place nonetheless.

The ceremonies we have seen over the past few days as U.S. and French presidents have heaped praise on the men who fought to save the world. Donald Trump called these warriors the “greatest men who will ever live.” Emmanuel Macron turned to the men seated behind and said, “On behalf of my country … thank you.”

American, British and Canadian soldiers stormed ashore on five beachheads: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno. Their names are etched in world history as the places that changed the course of what we all hope is the last great world war.

I want to see those beaches. So help me, before I kick the bucket, I’m going to make it happen.

military news

Did they make it back home?

This picture appeared on an earlier item I published on this blog. It’s from World War II.

The men you see in this picture are part of the Greatest Generation, the fellows who answered the call to save the world from despotic tyrants in Europe and in Asia.

I see photos such as this and wonder on occasion: Did these men survive their mission and were they able to serve for “the duration” of the war and return home?

Normally I don’t spend a lot of time wondering these things, but they do cross my mind on occasion.

I am thinking at this moment of an exhibit I’ve seen a couple of times in Fredericksburg, Texas. It is the Nimitz Museum on the War in the Pacific. Fleet Admiral Carl Nimitz was a native of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country and the city is rightly proud of its most famous son. He commanded naval forces in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II.

It is full of picture of men sitting aboard landing craft as they prepared to storm ashore at any one of the many island battlegrounds where the fought. I look into the eyes of those men and wonder if they survived.

Granted, those young men — if they did make it home and are alive to this day — would be very old men now. Indeed, I am the product of a member of the Greatest Generation. My own late father would be 97 years old. He saw his combat on the other side of the world, in Africa and in the Mediterranean Sea.

Another exhibit that evokes such a feeling is the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire, N.M. It sits on a bluff overlooking a gorgeous valley amid the New Mexico mountains. It is the product of a man who lost his son in battle during the Vietnam War. It, too, contains pictures of men facing extreme danger, along with letters they had written home to their loved ones. The letters express the anxiety and, yes, the fear in the men’s hearts as they prepared to fight a determined enemy.

You look at those pictures as well and ask: Did they return home and were they able to start or re-start their lives with loved ones, to rear their children and welcome their grandchildren into this world?

The pictures are the faces of men who have ventured straight into hell on Earth and you hope that by God’s grace they were able to return to their earthly home.