Pearl Harbor 62 years past

[Al_Capone_Junior]

62 years ago the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. 2400+ people died. 900+ of them are still in the harbor, entoumbed in the Arizona. America was launched into WWII. Nearly half a million Americans died in the conflict, as did many millions more worldwide.

Hats off to the men who fought in WWII, my personal heros.

Sometimes I think I would have been better suited to living in that era. I would have joined the 8th airforce and flown B-17s over Germany (and would have had a damn good chance of getting myself blown away). The ones who died were remembered as heros. The ones who lived were also heros. I have talked to hundreds of veterans from all wars, especially WWII. I'll always listen to anyone who wants to talk about it, no matter what they have to say.

My neighbor was a flight engineer in Korea and Veitnam. He has stories that will make some people cringe. He went through both wars with dogtags that had type A blood on them. He found out when he went to have a procedure at the local hospital six years ago that in fact he had type B blood (as little as 15 mL of the wrong ABO blood type can be fatal, typical units of blood today are around 4-500 mL). For someone who was wounded several times it's incredibly lucky that he's alive at all.

An old poker buddy was in Vietnam. Once he went out into the woods to take care of bodily functions, trying hard to keep quiet so as not to alert enemy soldiers who were thought to be nearby. While there, he came face to face with a 10' cobra. He was so scared he ran off without his rifle. Obviously he had to go back and get it shortly after. He said that was even scarier than combat.

A bit more noble than playing poker for a living, fer sure.

So hats off to everyone who goes to fight so we can, amoungst other things, play poker.

al

[Rick Nebiolo]

Al,

Good post.

Perhaps a good topic for the "Other Topics" Forum would be "best books written about the experience of World War 2 from the viewpoint of the soldiers who fought it" (I can't think of a shorter title right now).

I'd start with "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" by Eugene B. Sledge. The Amazon link can be found at

http://tinyurl.com/y4u7

Regards,

Rick

[Al_Capone_Junior]

thanks for the info Rick. I'm about half through with "band of brothers" right now, great story, a bit tough to keep up with all the names, but very thorough.

al

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
So hats off to everyone who goes to fight so we can, amoungst other things, play poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

I couldn't agree more.

But let's stay suspicious of the people in Washington that send those guys off to war. Because sometimes it might not be necessary to fight in order for us to play poker. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[Al_Capone_Junior]

[ QUOTE ]
But let's stay suspicious of the people in Washington that send those guys off to war.

[/ QUOTE ]

You may be right. Still, I admire them all anyway. In some ways I admire Veitnam vets even more because the country gave them so much flak for doing the same thing as all the other vets, go to war, risk their lives, get shot up, etc. Not their fault what the politics of the situation were, many of them were drafted.

al

[Rick Nebiolo]

Al,

"Band of Brothers" was terrific as are most of the Ambrose books (IMO "The Wild Blue" is an exception, but he was sick when he wrote it).

It didn't get great ratings, but the HBO "Band of Brothers" series was very well done.

Regards,

Rick

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Wait until you get to the epilogue episode, where it's just the old veterans talking. It's not until then that they reveal their identities, and you get to see which of them is which of the young guys you just follwed through the hell of WWII.

[sam h]

Al,

I agree with you wholeheartedly that servicemen deserve respect and admiration. I just think their bosses in the defense department and the military high brass often do not. In fact, in a case like Vietnam, I think if you really respect the people who were sent over there, then you need to start asking very serious questions about the people who sent them. The fact of the matter there is that a bunch of pretty innocent, generally lower-class Americans got put into an impossible, terrible situation by another group of misguided, generally upper-class Americans. It's pretty clear who went and who didn't and how that tended to break down along class lines.

Anyway, didn't want to get too much off on a tangent. I just think its important when we give our respects to the military to distinguish between the people putting it on the line and taking the risk and the people calling the shots and getting the press.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

Politicians hide themselves away
they only started the war
why don't they go out to fight?
they leave that up to the poor

-Black Sabbath

[sam h]

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Oh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give,
Oh, they only answer, more, more, more,

[Beerfund]

I was in Iraq for 5 months and I got to see first hand the destruction that Saddam Husein caused for the last 20 years. So for evryone who thinks this war was fought for oil and BS politics there's another side you should see. I dont know about Korea or Vietnam but I think the brass got this one right.

[sam h]

Beerfund,

The "humanitarian intervention" rationale for the war is certainly the strongest. There is no doubt that Saddam was a brutal dictator and that the price he inflicted upon the Iraqi population was extraordinary. But whether this war was a good idea is another matter and only time will tell. Basically, we're betting very heavily that a functional democratic Iraq will emerge in the next five years. And I think the people making that bet don't have a very historically grounded and nuanced understanding of the problems involved. The Bushies believe that we can just go around restructuring the world, but that world is a pretty complicated place and, as we've seen many times in history, these sort of enterprises often have nasty unintended consequences.

I never bought the argument that war was about oil or Haliburton contracts. I think its mainly about naive people in the Bush administration and a president that believes its his God-given mission to Westernize the rest of the world. (Not to democratize it, because "democracy" in Iraq means the election of a secular, market oriented, leader, no matter what the Iraqi people end up wanting).

[Rick Nebiolo]

In the Epilog episode I was struck that Capt/Major Dick Winters appeared to be just as big and noble a man in the winter of his life as he was in the war. The guy was the best of the best.

Regards,

Rick

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

[JTrout]

A gem of a story I got at a poker table-
.
Elderly gentleman asks me my name, then says, " I was in WW2 with a fellow by the same name. "
.
(Forgive me if I screw up the military word usage here)
.
He continues, " I was flying the first time he went up in an airplane. He threw up all over the place. It was his job to pick up flash signals from the ground and deciper them (morse code, i guess). Anyway, after cleaning up his mess, we're flying over somewhere in Germany when he turns to me and says, "sir, I see the signals, but I can't make out what they're saying." I look out the window, then tell him, "boy, they're shooting at us!"
.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

That story was great, thanks for posting it.

Someone asked why I didn't post this in other topics. There's a very good reason. Everyone and their brother reads this forum. I wanted the 62nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor to be noticed, not pushed to the bottom of a forum I don't even read. Many respected posters can be found here. All comments are appreciated.

War heros got shot at so we could be free. They deserve their recognition on a forum that everyone reads. I encourage anyone and everyone with a war story, either recanted or personal, to post them in this tread.

I am a history buff and admirer of war heros. My only regret is that I didn't get a chance to fight myself. I am no wimp, and would make a good soldier. I just wish I could measure up to the standards that my heros set, but I doubt that will ever happen being a pro poker player. Still, I can admire them from afar.

al

[DougBrennan]

Terrific thread, Al.

My Dad's favorite story from Korea, which had nothing to do with combat, was this: My Dad, a sergeant, was walking around the base one day, kind of not paying attention to anything, wool gathering he called it, when he became vaguely aware of a HIGHLY polished pair of boots standing in front of him.
As he started to look up, My Dad heard "Sergeant, don't you salute a General Officer?" Without skipping a beat my Dad replied "Yessir, every time I see one Sir," and snapped off his best parade ground salute.

The General stared at my Dad for a moment, and then returned the salute, chuckled, and went about his business. As did my Dad, after he got his heart restarted.

My Dad served 20 years, none of it anywhere near combat, he was administrative. I was unlucky enough to be infantry during the Viet Nam War, but oh so lucky to go to Germany instead, and spent my time praticing guarding missles. I didn't realize how lucky I was until some years later when I started to read lots of first hand accounts of infantry duty in Nam, written by grunts, not Field Officers.

As the years pass, and in spite of my political liberal bent, I too become more and more appreciative of the men and women who serve in whatever capacity. Day to day, the service is mostly dull, repititive, mind-numbing, and annoying. But people put their lives on the line just by being there, and that should never be forgotten.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

[CCass]

My grandfather was a field medic in WWII. He never killed anyone as far as we know, but being a field medic he saw some gruesome sights. He never talked a lot about the things he saw in the field, but he did have this 1 story he told about his time at a base in Burma, India.

About 80% of his company had been killed or wounded, and the remaining troops were stationed at the base until replacements could arrive. My grandfathers job during this time was to deliver ice to all the different buildings. He had 2 Indian helpers, who spoke little english. One day, one of the helpers got mad at my grandfather for some reason, and got into an argument with the other helper about my grandfather (they were arguing in their native tongue, so my GFather didn't have a clue what the argument was about). As the argument escalated, the Indian that was defending my GFather put a knife to the other Indian's throat, and in broken English said "I kill him saab (sir)". My GFather told him not to kill him. He said again, "I kill him saab, he disrespect you". My GFather continues to try and convince him not to kill the other Indian, and finally my GFather convinces him to put the knife down. My GFather would always end this story by saying "I don't know how much paperwork I would have had to fill out if he had killed that boy".

I lost my GrandFather 9 years ago, he wasn't a hero by any definition of the term, never did anything extrordinary, he just went and served his country to the best of his ability. I will forever admire him for that (and many other things).

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Great post. My father was a lifelong socialist and pacifist who did not believe in bearing arms. He was 30 when WWII broke out. He spent the war years crewing on merchant ships, mostly tankers bringing fuel and supplies from the US to europe. He was once in a convoy and U-boats sank the ship in front and behind his. He understood why the war was necessary even though he couldn't bring himself to bear arms.

As the years pass, and in spite of my political liberal bent, I too become more and more appreciative of the men and women who serve in whatever capacity.

Freedom's apolitical. Their generation gave their lives so we could bounce over to the *other topics* board and rant and rave from the safety of our homes.