Tag Archives: WWII

military news

Honor Flight awaits

My phone rang Saturday morning and for a moment I tjhought it might be spam call. Oh … it damn sure wasn’t anything of the sort.

A lady from Dallas was calling to inform me that I had been chosen to join a group of 40 to 45 fellow veterans on a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C. The trip will occur the morning of Sept. 11 and we’ll return to Love Field the next evening.

It’s an Honor Flight, established years ago to salute those who have worn the uniform of the nation.

Now … every person I’ve ever know who has taken one of these trips cannot speak kindly enough about the treatment they receive. They carry nothing. They have “guardians” who accompany them to ensure their needs and desires are satisfied. The plan, as I understand it, is for us to visit as many of the pertinent memorials and monuments on the D.C. Mall during our time in the nation’s capital.

I also understand that we will be applauded, offered congratulations and many thanks from those are present to see what’s going on. I’ll be candid here: I do not yet know how I intend to react to such royal treatment.

There will be veterans who have served in all the nation’s conflicts dating to World War II. I suspect there will be few among our group who served in WWII, or in Korea for that matter, given that the Korean War started just five years after the end of the the Second World War. I hope there will be plenty of us who served in Vietnam who will take this trip. We will have much to share among ourselves about our experience during that troubling era. Desert Storm, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans also will be present.

This kind of fanfare marks a remarkable about-face for a nation that once scorned those of us who came home from Vietnam. To be clear, I was never spat upon or called a filthy name. However, I am aware of how too many Americans blamed military personnel simply for following lawful orders.

Well, that’s all changed. I am going to take part in an Honor Flight. It’s a new day in America and I look forward to enjoying it.

national news

FBI boss did this?

FBI Director Kash Patel, who long ago earned this blogger’s designation as the most disgusting Donald Trump appointee has outdone himself.

This idiot decided to go SCUBA diving at the Battleship Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. This memorial happens to be the final resting place for about 1,000 sailors and Marines who died during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor by Japanese warplanes. The attack brought us into World War II. The rest, of course, is history.

But the seriously boorish behavior by the FBI director to go SCUBA diving at the memorial denigrates beyond measure the heroes who are interred in the wreckage of the battleship on which they served.

Kash Patel should be fired immediately by Donald Trump. This behavior is absolutely despicable.

national news

GOP silence speaks volumes

Republicans’ stone-cold silence in response to Donald Trump’s lies continues to boggle my noggin … such as what he said the other day about the potential end to the Iran war.

You cannot make this stuff up!

He started the war with Iran. Trump is now working to end it. If he succeeds and the Iranians stop firing back at us and Israel, he’ll take credit for ending that war. Yes? Of course he will!

But then he said the other day that no previous president in U.S. history has ended a war. He has ended eight of ’em, or so he said. Hold on a second, Mr. Ignoramus in Chief.

In 1941, we were drawn into World War II when the Japanese bombed our fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Roosevelt asked Congress the next day to declare war against Japan, which it did. Then the Nazi Germans declared war on us and we responded by declaring war on them.

Nearly four years later, FDR died of a stroke, up stepped Vice President Harry Truman to take over as commander in chief. On May 7, 1945, President Truman accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender. WWII in Europe ended … on Truman’s watch. Give ’em Hell Harry wasn’t done. We dropped two A-bombs on Japan in August 1945. The Japanese surrendered on Aug. 14 and on Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese military leaders signed the surrender documents aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

I learned of that historical sequence when I was a little boy.

He keeps blathering about his “landslide” election as POTUS; it was nothing of the sort. How he won more Electoral College votes than any POTUS since President Reagan; another provable lie.

And through all of this, the Republican conference in Congress sits silently on its hands, saying nothing to correct the record.

These GOP officials disgrace themselves, the government they are elected to run and the once-great political party they supposedly represent.

International news

Avoiding comparison to Hitler

Readers of this blog will not find a direct comparison between the man who runs the U.S.A. to the worst despot ever to darken the world’s history.

I just won’t go there. You see, as much as I despise Donald Trump and his effort to turn the United States into some kind of tinhorn dictatorship, i simply cannot make the leap to compare him to Hitler, the father of the “thousand-year-old Third Reich” of Nazi Germany … tha lasted in fact from 1933 until 1945.

I’ve already taken one big leap by suggesting that Trump has gone mad, reversing an earlier vow to avoid diagnosing the imbecile in chief from afar. I am safe in suggesting it, given what the whole world is witnessing.

Let’s be real about Hitler. He killed 7 million Jews in effort to eradicate them from Earth. The Nazi army stormed across Europe from 1939 to 1945 and killed an estimated 20 million people along its murderous rampage.

At the end of the Third Reich, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, and then on his wedding night watched her kill herself before he blew his brains out in the subterranean Berlin bunker where he hid from the advancing Red Army.

Donald Trump is a lot of things. He is evil. He has malice in his heart. He lacks any semblance of human compassion.

Adolf Hitler, though, wallows alone in history’s cesspool.

national news, national security

War then is different from war now

I have just binge-watched a Netflix documentary on World War II, thinking it would offer a poignant reminder of how a nation can be drawn into war, dedicate itself to defeating a determined enemy and then rebuild itself and the enemy it has just destroyed.

WWII, of course, produced the Greatest Generation of Americans, some 16 million of whom signed up to get into the fight for the nation’s life. My father was one of those 16 million, enlisting on Dec. 7, 1941, the very day we were attacked by Japanese air and naval forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Dad is long gone now, as are most of those patriots.

The multi-part series showed remarkable footage from the worldwide battlefield fought on four continents: North America, Asia and Africa. I was struck by a quote delivered to our enemies by President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking on the eve of our nation’s full entry into the fight against the tyrants who sought to conquer the world. “Our enemies asked for it,” FDR said, “and now they are about to get it.”

And so they did get it. Full force.

If we fast-forward about 85 years to the present day we find ourselves in a war that we started. A succeeding president decided to engage in an act of war against Iran. Unlike FDR, who responded by asking Congress to “declare that a state of war exists,” Donald Trump has decided to flout the constitutional requirement that presidents should follow if they are to commit young Americans to combat. We have commenced a war that few Americans want, even fewer of us know the game plan. But we’re in a war. Make no mistake.

I watched this documentary expecting to draw these comparisons. I’m glad I did. Watching this film from start to finish reminds me that the U.S.A.’s founders knew how to limit a president’s power to take this nation to war. If only the current commander in chief was smart enough to grasp it.

local news

Frozen in time at museum

My friend and I today toured the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, which is within a chip shot of Dealey Plaza in the city’s downtown district.

We got near the end of our tour when suddenly I froze, transfixed by the images being shown and by the voice attributed to one of the death camp survivors who had been freed by Allied soldiers near the end of World War II.

My friend asked if I was OK. I shook my head “no.” Did I want to leave. Again, I said “no.” I wanted to stay and listen to the voice tell me of the unimaginable deprivation inflicted on millions of Jews. My reaction to it all caught me by surprise.

Yes, I know all about the Holocaust. I know all about the extermination of 6 million human beings who happened to be Jewish. I had toured Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam with my bride in 2016 and knew of the suffering she endured after being turned over to the Nazis by her fellow Dutch citizens. In 2009, I had the high honor of visiting the famed Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. So, none of what I learned today was a surprise.

Maybe it all just caught me in a moment of weakness. The exhibit reminded me of the depths that the human heart can plunge. And it surely plunged beyond what anyone could predict when Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933. He formed the Third Reich, which he said would last 1,000 years.

In April 1945, Hitler married his mistress Evan Braun and on their wedding night they committed suicide … ending the Third Reich after 12 of the most miserable years possible.

The museum in downtown Dallas reminded me of why the world must hold fast to its solemn pledge: Never again.

military news

For the love of country …

Of all the lessons my dear ol’ Dad taught me before he died tragically in 1980, the one that stands out is to love one’s country and be ready to fight to the death for it.

I am thinking of Dad today as the nation remembers the event that exploded over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on this date in 1941. Dad was a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Portland when the Japanese attacked our military forces that day. Dad was the oldest of seven siblings born to my grandparents, who were living in Portland when the attack occurred.

I didn’t learn until much later — after Dad had been gone for nearly 40 years — about what he did on that day. The youngest of his two brothers told my wife and me that on the afternoon of the “Day of Infamy,” the kids were gathered around a radio in my grandparents’ house listening to the events of that tragic day. Dad got up, walked out of the house and made his way downtown to the armed forces recruiting station. He intended in that moment to enlist in the Marine Corps; the USMC office was closed that Sunday morning. Across the hall, Dad noticed the Navy office was open so, he joined the Navy at that moment.

He wanted to get into the fight against the tyrants who sought to conquer the world.

And, oh brother, did he ever.

He never boasted about the decision to enlist on the very day our nation went to war. Indeed, he never even mentioned it to me. My uncle Tino, though, remembered that moment vividly. “I was 9 years old and I remember it to this day,” Tino told us.

Therein is the lesson my favorite veteran taught me. Even without saying so out loud, Dad imbued in me the belief that if falls on each of us to do what we can do individually to protect our nation against forces that seek to destroy it.

military news

Recalling the ‘day of infamy’

I feel like visiting for a moment on this blog the date that President Roosevelt said would “live … in infamy.”

FDR stood before Congress on Dec. 8, 1941 to seek a declaration of war against Japan, which the day before had attacked our fleet and Army Air Force in Hawaii. That day occurred 84 years ago.

The United States mobilized immediately and before World War II ended, this country would suit up 16 million of its young men and women to defeat the Axis Powers, who were the embodiment of evil.

I remind myself of a quote attributed to a Hawaii teenager, Daniel Inouye. The Japanese-American boy watched the fighter aircraft overhead flying low over his house. He could see the red ball painted on the wings. Young Dan reportedly said, “Those goddamn Japs.” He would enlist later in the Army, suffer grievous wounds in battle in Italy and would receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism. Oh, Inouye also served in the U.S. Senate for decades.

The Americans who enlisted after the “date which will live in infamy” rose to the challenge. They defeated tyranny. They came home to start families. They are dying off now. Only a few thousand of them are still with us.

I also have heard about aging Japanese men visiting Pearl Harbor to this day. They fought our forces during the war. Yet they feel shame for the sneak attack. Many of those old men are returning to seek forgiveness for the deeds they committed on that quiet Sunday morning in Hawaii.

As the son of an American patriot who answered FDR’s call to join the fight, I am willing to forgive them.

Uncategorized

Vets get overdue respect

High Plains Blogger has called attention over the years to my favorite veteran … that would be my Dad, a World War II Navy vet who saw his share of hell on Earth during his years fighting fascists.

I occasionally speak a bit about my own military experience, which pales in comparison to what Dad endured.

Today, I want to discuss the growing up of the nation, which this week celebrates the millions of men and women who have served in the military. It took a war that we didn’t win on the battlefield for Americans to stoop to new lows in the way it treated its veterans. Many of my colleagues came home to actual scorn from Americans because they followed lawful orders and committed — in the uneducated eyes of their fellow citizens — crimes against humanity.

Baby killers? My ass …

This year veterans are bound to feel love and respect they were denied when we came home from the Vietnam War. I won’t dwell on what happened in the bad old days. Instead, I will call attention to the respect coming from TV commentators who, two generations ago, likely would be leading the jeers intended for the returning veterans.

Whatever. We’ve all grown up. We are more mature these days. I will accept whatever thanks that could come my way as we celebrate those who suit up to defend this nation and protect the rights we all enjoy.

military news

Museum honors men of honor

As a rule, I don’t do reviews of sites I see on this blog, but I visited an exhibit in Arlington, Texas, over the weekend that clearly deserves a mention and a few words of the highest praise I can deliver.

My brother-in-law and I toured the National Medal of Honor Museum across the way from AT&T Stadium. To say it was an experience the likes of which were new to me would do it a terrible injustice. The museum grounds are spectacular, but more importantly the stories they tell visitors are gripping beyond measure.

The museum honors all 3,600-plus recipients of the nation’s highest award for military valor. It is resplendent in pictures of the recipients, some of the pictures showing them in combat. There is a limited amount of text accompanying the photos, and if I had one criticism of the disiplay, I would prefer to read more about the events that resulted in these men being honored with the Medal of Honor.

A quote attributed to one of the recipients tells how he was honored for taking action “on the worst day of my life.” I have seen countless quotes from men who, when asked what propelled them to act with such mind-blowing valor, would say, “I just knew I was going to die so I acted to save the lives of my friends.”

The museum has a virtual reality exhibit in which visitors can sit in a UH-1 Huey helicopter simulator, don glasses and be placed in a medical evacuation mission, or “dust off” flight, to rescue personnel wounded in action in Vietnam.

I am proud to have made the acquaintance of two Medal of Honor recipients, Navy SEAL Mike Thornton and Army Ranger Bob Howard. Their exploits are the stuff of legend. And one of the recipients, Army Lt. Audie Murphy, indeed achieved legendary for his exploits in saving a French village from Nazi troops near the end of the World War II. I mention Murphy because Farmersville, where I work on occasion as a freelance reporter, honors its “favorite son” Murphy every year with a day commemorating his untold heroism.

I was thrilled to see the exhibit and to honor the men who fought so valiantly on so many battlefields to defend our democratic way of life.

Wow!