Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The willow is too close to the house.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

In my day, never was longer.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Not all heroes wear capes.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Bark louder, little dog.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / An Update On The Search For A Guadalcanal Veteran

An Update On The Search For A Guadalcanal Veteran

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I just wanted to take a minute to update you all on what happened with the search for a Guadalcanal veteran yesterday. As you can imagine we were not the only people on the case, but I pushed Greg Walcott’s lead to the points of contact in the request for assistance yesterday. But I appreciate every lead everyone recommended yesterday.

I received a couple of follow up emails. The first is from the volunteer coordinator at the hospice.

Adam,

Thank you!

We did find someone to speak with our patient, however, I am forwarding all the correspondence I receive to them and allow them to follow through if they choose.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

Carol Galione

And this second one is from the Deputy Executive Director at BRiDGES, whose request was tweeted out by the American Legion in NY:

Good evening Adam,

Thank you so much for what you did today!  It is kind and generous. I am bowled over by the response in the veteran community to help a fellow veteran.

At this time the family feels it will be too much for the veteran to speak with another veteran.

I really appreciate your efforts and if the family changes their mind, Hospice will reach out.

Thanks again!

Best,

Lorraine

So you all did good!

Stay sharp!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    Yarrow

    Thanks for the update. I posted this tweet to you in a thread earlier today. Don’t know if you saw it.

    Update: The hospice reports that multiple Guadalcanal vets reached out to talk w/ this patient. (Response was "absolutely amazing!" they say) Sadly, his family has withdrawn the request because he's having trouble speaking now. Please keep these folks in your thoughts today.— Andrew deGrandpre (@adegrandpre) April 20, 2018

  2. 2.

    stinger

    This is the fourth post in a row that’s non-political — might be a first since November 2016. And the topics are positive! So refreshing!

    Jackals are good peeps, but we’ve been overwhelmed by current events, and no wonder. Still, how nice to have a short reprieve!

  6. 6.

    MazeDancer

    Great work! But sad man can’t talk now.

    Wonder if he could watch a video from the other vets. Just saying hi, who they are, thoughts and memories about Guadalcanal. Wonder if all the other Guadalcanal vets can connect with each other now, with the hospice linking them to each other.

  7. 7.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MazeDancer: From reading between the lines of the original request, it seemed there was something he wanted to talk about. As in he’s got a memory of something and he wants to talk it through with someone else who was there. I may be reading too much into that original request, but that was how I took it.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Someone mentioned in an earlier thread that even though the hospice veteran may no longer be able to speak, he might still be able to hear and appreciate recorded messages and reminiscences from fellow vets. Don’t know whether you’d like to suggest that to the hospice folks, but perhaps something for the family to consider.

  9. 9.

    JPL

    Adam, OT who is the Pakistani mystery man Trump is tweeting about? I assume Wendy is Debbie, but am still confused about the mystery man. Maybe it is Alex Jones hiding in a pizza joint.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    @stinger: Well there is this:

  15. 15.

    MazeDancer

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Wish the man could get to speak with the other vets of that memory, if that’s the case. If something has been on his mind all this time, would be good if he could resolve it. Or if he can no longer speak, seems like his family or the hospice knows that thing. And could ask the other vets.

    Just hope the abrupt change isn’t the family intervening too soon.

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: Imran Awan. Was an IT staffer for House Democrats. Worked for Wasserman-Schultz. He’s been charged with bank fraud.
    https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3900669/Awan-Imran-Complaint-and-Affidavit.pdf

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/federal-probe-into-house-technology-worker-imran-awan-yields-intrigue-no-evidence-of-espionage/2017/09/16/100b4170-93f2-11e7-b9bc-b2f7903bab0d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ca859c885bc8

    Apparently, the Daily Caller found someone who has claimed Awan’s father passed a USB drive with something something on it to a Pakistani legislator. The report originates at Daily Caller, which is run by Tucker Carlson. This report has been reported on by RedState and several fringe sites. I’ve seen nothing in legit media circles on this. Awan has been a conservative, GOP, and alt-right boogeyman for over a year.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    And now a word from the Home Office!

  22. 22.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: I assume someone like Chuck would tell her but just guessing on my part.
    Thanks for the explanation on the mystery man, and I assume Trump will soon find the 30,000 emails that Hillary is hiding.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: I reckon they’re less concerned with viewers in Mississippi or Alabama or South Carolina.

  46. 46.

    debbie

    Jeez, I just heard on a local news show that Kucinich was chatting it up with Alex Jones. Oh boy.

  48. 48.

    Mary G

    Did anyone see Twitler’s tweet about the DNC lawsuit? He deleted it about an hour after it was up, but he said he was happy because now they can get the servers the DNC refused to let the FBI take, the “Wendy Wasserman Schultz” servers, etc, etc. I imagine his lawyers were unhappy with it. Wendy, Debbie, whatever.

  51. 51.

    TenguPhule

    @Baud:

    True, Putin showed him.

    I don’t think he brought his best.

    Donald would have settled for good enough.

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: I don’t know about civil servants, unless they’ve claimed combat veteran’s preferences for hiring or claiming to be combat veterans and they aren’t. But this is sort of a type of stolen valor. Pompeo did serve. He was in the Army during Desert Storm. His unit, however, did not deploy to Iraq. So unless he can prove he was an individual augmentee detailed to one of the two 7th CAV squadrons that did deploy or to one of the brigades or one of the Division HQs or to the Corps HQ that did deploy, he’s got some explaining to do. I know this has caused some headaches for some other elected officials. Congressman Issa has been hit repeatedly about inflating and embellishing his record. As has Senator Blumenthal.

    I deployed to Iraq in 2008. I do not claim to be a veteran as I was not in the Army. And since every civilian in my program at that time was a contractor, with the exception of 3 people running the program who were term appointee civil servants under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, because the program was an experiment (Proof of Concept), which required all the civilians to be contractors, I try to make clear I was a contractor. That way if the experiment was shut down, we could all be terminated quickly. It didn’t change the way I did my job, which infuriated the company that was supplying me to the Army, but I try to be very clear about it.

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    For what it is worth, I took his request the same way. Something he wanted to discuss, get off his chest, thank someone for…….
    I’ve been in some group therapy at the VA and back when I was in the Navy, and the stories and people can be overwhelming. My service was a piece of cake compared to a lot of guys, Hell it was cake, ice cream, whipped cream and pie all rolled into one. And I still can’t forget some of the days.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    CIA has now confirmed publicly that Pompeo did NOT serve in the Gulf War.

    Worse, Pompeo told that old vet he was at Guadalcanal.

    LOL, Baud!! ???

  60. 60.

    raven

    @Ruckus: My late pal’s dad was a Guadalcanal Marine. The thing that bothered him most were the rumors of cannibalism that dogged them.

  62. 62.

    TenguPhule

    Washington Post asks the question for the ages, “Have we hit peak Derp in America?”

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: Yep. And at 94 there’s no telling if he’s even remembering what it is correctly. Or if he wants to talk to someone because he’s got survivor’s guilt – he made it through, but his best buddy didn’t. And he wants someone who was there and understands that. It could be any of a 100 different things.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: It’s comments like this that make me think I should be circumspect about the contractor thing…//

  68. 68.

    Ruckus

    @MazeDancer:
    A lot of vets have things on their minds that they can not speak of to people that didn’t have those experiences or at least weren’t in combat.
    I can fully understand that man may not have said anything to anyone he knows and loves about what he saw/did/didn’t do on that island or any other. Some of those secrets you really don’t want to know. You just don’t. They don’t want to know them either, but they can’t forget them, they live with them.

  71. 71.

    maya

    Thanks Adam for this followup on the Guadalcanal vet. Now we know there are quite a few of them left. What a pleasant surprise.

  73. 73.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: There are all levels of guilt we can put on ourselves. My old man used the “never fired a shot in anger” as his bellwether and, as we know, the vast majority of people who served did not. I watched the a West Point Oral History interview with Lieutenant Joseph B. Anderson who was featured in the “Anderson Platoon” a Vietnam War Doc that won the Academy Award. He said the thing that he was most proud of is that, in 2 tours as an infantry officer, he never fired his weapon. He said if he had had to it would have meant that he screwed up. YMMV

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Yep. The things I heard first person……….. Even if only half was true and half of that was bullshit……… No one was trying to kill me, no one shot at me, they did try to make me hate the “cooking” however……..
    A brain is a terrible thing to lose in war. And it happens more than a lot will admit. A leg, an arm, ability to walk at all, those are bad enough.

  75. 75.

    TenguPhule

    North Korea No Longer Needs Nuclear Tests, Kim Says

    Via the FTFNYT.

    So all translations matter!

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: I was kidding. I knew you were referring to the first paragraph about Pompeo, not the 2nd paragraph about my deployment. I apologize for the confusion.

    And no argument on your point in regard to your father’s approach. I only ever drew my weapon to load it leaving post, unload it when coming back on, and to check it back into the arms room.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodingers_cat: No. I prepped for Afghanistan, then got handed off to a different Army program (the second culture program) and sent to USAWC as a term appointment civil servant under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act as the Cultural Advisor.

  82. 82.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I remember incidents where veterans inflated their history. About 20 years ago, the head of a local VFW lodge who had claimed to have fought in Vietnam turned out to have been in a non-combat role. They made him resign.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    I vaguely remember reading about that a number of years ago. Never did know to believe it or not. Figured it was probably bullshit but one never really knows. We are after all animals, which means we have a survival instinct. We don’t do things that we think are wrong because of upbringing and society. Take all that away and leave only pure survival instinct and I’d bet nothing would surprise me.

  84. 84.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ruckus: My old man died when I was 27. He never said one word about the war. Part of me wishes I knew something.

  85. 85.

    Ohio Mom

    @Adam L Silverman: Chris Hayes says that clip is “amazing in forty different directions.” From this I take it that he has never been to New Richmond, Ohio, because he would be less surprised if he had.

    I share my Congressional with them, they are part of the reason we sent Mean Jean Schmidt to DC.

    I will say that New Richmond does have a very cute cardboard boat race every summer. But think about that: they spend hours constructing and decorating something that is almost certain to fall apart and sink as they are riding it in the Ohio River.

  86. 86.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: It’s a strange thing. I know for some it is a form of guilt driven embellishment as therapy. They served, but for whatever reason they didn’t go where it was dangerous. So they feel guilty. And then they feel ashamed. So they embellish because then, at least in other’s eyes they’ll appear to be better. The mind can be a terrible thing.

  87. 87.

    tybee

    @raven: i never heard such rumors. any written claims of such?
    friend of mine’s dad was a seabee and had nothing to say about the leather necks that wasn’t good.
    however, when his son, my friend, joined uncle sam’s misguided children in 1967, he slapped him across the face and told his kid “they’re gonna get you killed”.
    and he was almost right.

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    I wonder if it’s related to/a form of dementia. I suppose that’s something they’re studying at the VA.

    Interesting thing that was discovered fairly recently about PTSD: it frequently seems to be associated with head injury, but not necessarily a diagnosed concussion. It can be repeated small injuries.

  89. 89.

    maya

    @Adam L Silverman: My uncle Phil was already in the Army, signal corps, when WWII started. He was in his late twenties then. Wound up as a tank commander in the 2nd Armored Div (Hell on Wheels) through North Africa, Normandy (27th wave) and across France into Germany until it was over. 2nd Armored Div had around 62% casualty rate and he didn’t get a scratch – just a lot of back problems later from the hard crates they had to sit on when the rapid production of the M4 Sherman couldn’t keep up with more comfortable seating arrangements. He was the last one of his 5 siblings, including my mother, to pass on at the age of 94.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Dad was in the Navy during WWII and would not talk about it or discuss the military in any way. During the mid/late 60s, I worked for him, when I got out of HS, full time. The draft was on and Vietnam was raging, I was IA and he would not talk about it. I joined the Navy in 69 and he wouldn’t discuss it. I got out in 73 and he wouldn’t discuss it. Not once in my life would he discuss the military with me and we worked together daily for over 2 decades. To this day I don’t know the name of the ship he was stationed on. I know what he did, his rate, because I have a couple of pictures of him in uniform. That and the year he enlisted 42, and the year he was discharged, 45, that’s all I know.

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @maya: They seemed to come up with a 21st Century equivalent of those seating arrangements in the MRAPs. They didn’t make the seats deep enough to sit properly or comfortably while wearing body armor.

  92. 92.

    Barbara

    @Adam L Silverman: “Everybody hates everybody it just depends on who you like.” A man whose rhetoric Demosthenes himself could not have matched in the pantheon of western greatness.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:

    I wonder if it’s related to/a form of dementia. I suppose that’s something they’re studying at the VA.

    They are. It is a problem in the VA population as much as anywhere else, maybe worse because of the patient history.
    To your point I think that there is at some truth to the concept of late onset PTSD being related to incidents that may have happened decades earlier. You get older you have time to think about things that have happened or supposedly happened in your life and they can be scary, even if they weren’t a bother at the time. And then things can trigger the memory or the vision of it and you relive it again. Add in advanced age and combat……….

  94. 94.

    Barbara

    @Ruckus: The naval archives allow you to look up these kinds of things, at the Navy Memorial in DC.

    ETA: Listening to many of my relatives, I suspect that for many men, the death of others around them was too much to bear talking about.

  95. 95.

    maya

    @Adam L Silverman: Ha! A few years ago a B-17 and a B-24 were at a local airport for an Open Bomber Weekend, so I decided to go take a look. I’m 6’2″, 225 lbs, and I could hardly manage to maneuver down those bomb-bay aisles sideways. The cockpits were so effin’ tiny too. What sized men were they built for? Small tough ones I gathered.

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    Given the apparent link between PTSD and brain damage, one wonders if something like a mini-stroke happens and triggers it. But IANAD, as you well know, so I’m just spitballing.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    My Marine buddy was a remington raider for his 13 months and he carried his loaded M16 everywhere with him. Everywhere. He landed at Chu Lai on January 30, 1968 so his first day in country was a fun one.

  106. 106.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:
    There is also, as I eluded to, the knowledge that what they had to do and what they saw was not something that they could tell their families. I’ve stated above and here before that I sat in the Navy hospital for 2 months as an ambulatory patient and every day had to go to the psych ward to sit in group. There was one Marine sergeant that like me was let in every day, through 2 sets of locked doors and out every afternoon. I think I was the only non combatant in the room other than the hospital staff. The 30+ guys would talk as they saw fit and because of the surroundings they didn’t hold back. Those stories that they won’t say at home or to their friends who didn’t serve, I heard all of them. Now as I said to Adam up thread I don’t know how much was true and how much was bullshit, if even 10% is true, you don’t want to know. That Marine sergeant and I would talk before and after being let in/out and he confirmed that most or all of it could easily be true. You just don’t want to know. And because it didn’t happen to me directly I’ve been able to forget a lot of it. But those guys can’t forget. Now they may have been the worst of the lot, the hospital was full of wounded, most of them not on the psych ward, but really none of them can or rarely forget what they saw and experienced. For some it gets a bit easier over time, for others worse. That Marine sergeant, he related to me over those 2 months why he was there. He could no longer send his squad members up hills to die in machine gun fire. His job when they had to take a hill was to decide who to send up to try and take out the machine gun emplacements. He was the judge and executioner, deciding who gets to live and die in the next 15 minutes. And then who gets to go up and try to bring back the bodies. Watch the movie Hamburger Hill. That was exactly what he described, over a decade before the movie. And no, he didn’t have anything to do with the movie. He said if he didn’t make that decision he feared he would have been shot. He was one of the sane guys.

  108. 108.

    Sab

    I remember going to the funeral of one of my mother’s cousins right after the Iraq war started. The first speaker after the minister was the son. He is a rwnj, Vietnam draft-dodger and republican activist who moved from Ohio to Texas. His whole speech was about what a hero his father was in WWII in the Battle of the Bulge and “Yay America.”

    The next speaker was a priest who who had been a lifelong friend of his father, who rememembered how extremely difficult the father’s final years had been when dementia combined with late onset PTSD had left him reliving his war experiences.

    Stupid son was oblivious to that.

  110. 110.

    Pogonip

    Hi Adam, glad to hear there are other Guadalcanal veterans still with us, and I hope the gentleman gets to hear their voices, at least, before he fades away.

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