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]

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

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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. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[Al_Capone_Junior]

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

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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,