Thank you Soonergrunt, John and all the other vets at BJ who have served. And deepest thanks to those who have given their lives for this beautiful country, with all its flaws it truly is an amazing concept. All are created equal.
We’re still working on that, but the important part is we never seem to give up on that ideal.
2.
Jewish Steel
I was contemplating buying a set of bagpipes the other day. Found some cheap (sub $200) sets on Amazon but one reveiwer cautioned, ” There is no bargain in bagpipes.”
There is no bargaian in bagpipes. Words to live by, folks.
Private First Class
E CO, 2ND BN, 7TH MARINES, 1ST MARDIV
United States Marine Corps
04 October 1948 – 22 November 1968
Villa Park, Illinois
Panel 38W Line 038
5.
FlipYrWhig
@Jewish Steel: yeah, the last thing you’d want is bagpipes that sound dissonant, loud, and droning.
6.
MikeJ
Pretty disgusting to hear the cheer at Indy at the conclusion of Taps. Also, the absolute worst prayer I’ve ever heard in public.
Just more reasons to prefer F1.
7.
dmsilev
@FlipYrWhig: “These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.”
Attributed to Alfred Hitchcock.
8.
Ruckus
@raven:
Have you been to the wall?
I’ve never managed to make it there. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go. 50K+ names of people my age, some of whom I knew….
Maybe I should get over myself and go for them. I’m not sure I know how to do that.
A weekend of war movies on the tv for people who probably don’t like watching war movies.
13.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jewish Steel: The yarn is that the British used bagpipes in battle…to encourage the troops to advance towards the enemy and get away…far away…from the bagpipes.
He was my great-uncle and died six months before I was born. He is buried in Arlington. This is what I know of his service:
“He was with the 467th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion and was in the original landing at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. His rank was Captain and he saw service in Northern France, the Ardennes, and the Rhineland before returning to the states in 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star. He left the military for a brief period of time, but rejoined and was promoted to Major and taught ROTC at the University of Pittsburgh for about two years. He was transferred from the Army to the Air Force in 1949 and was sent to Okinawa in 1950 where he worked as an engineer at Kadena AFB. He died of cancer at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport, Louisiana, on March 12, 1952 at the age of 45.”
Rest in peace, Uncle Cary. Thank you.
15.
scav
I’d like to add a thought also for those that are with and support the vets: families, kith kin and the rest of the necessary support and infrastructure (VA for example) that are also necessarily impacted but without a day of their own. I suddenly remember my Vet great uncle talking about the Decoration Days of his youth. His grandfather and great uncles had all been in the same regiment of the Civil War.
16.
Mary G
Thanks to all the vets on BJ and elsewhere for your service.
17.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: I’ve been to the wall…it’s a very solemn place. It really is a superb monument, it invokes deep emotions, particularly for veterans who search for the names of comrades and buddies who fell in that land of rice paddies and jungles, all for so very little, in retrospect. If it had gone on another half a decade…my name might have been on it. As it was, my mother feared so much it would go on long enough for me to go there. I went to Germany instead.
I shudder to think what the memorial to the fallen of the two utterly useless wars of the deserting coward might be. Perhaps some guy in a suit in an anatomically impossible position, with the legend “Here’s to Doug Feith…stupidest man on the planet”.
18.
trollhattan
Tbogg is a must-read today. Takes on the NRA in an unexpected fashion.
My thanks to all Vets and active service members. You too, dad. A century after the Great War, a century and a half after the Civil War, what have we learned?
A century after the Great War, a century and a half after the Civil War, what have we learned?
Obviously not enough.
20.
? Martin
My family has been incredibly fortunate that, though we have many vets, none of my direct relatives died while serving going all the way back to my great x3 grandfather who fought for the Union. Let’s work toward making that true for all families.
Thanks to all who have served. Special thanks to John and Sooner and Raven and Higgs and all the rest of the BJ family that make this country a better place.
21.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Wow, that is a terrific piece by TBogg.
The NRA has always existed to promote sales of firearms, albeit in a more subtle way at first…but when the culture of firearms changed, the NRA, being seriously into marketing, abandoned its previous membership for the new variety of dickless scared twits, like Ted Nugent, with great relish.
Now look were we are today. Males (not “men”) using firearms to get “retribution” on people who were creeped out by them.
22.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Some might say not that we haven’t learned enough but that we never learned many of the lessons that should have been easy to see and that many of the ones we did learn have been forgotten, many of them maliciously disregarded.
23.
YellowJournalism
Thanks to my grandfathers, my uncles, and an aunt for their service.
24.
raven
@Ruckus: Oh yea. I’ve been for several Vets Day’s and on several trips at other times. It’s totally different during veterans gatherings. I don’t begrudge people but when you get lots of kids and their families it can become “Another Roadside Attraction”. I also have visited in the middle of the night and that is a good time to be there.
25.
raven
dupe
26.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, Sooner, THIS is the Hokey Pokey?
Geeze, Sarge, I never imagined…
27.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have a similar history to TBogg and used to even hunt in the same area, east of San Diego. But I’m the one who decided that hunting for food was far too dangerous and had lost any and all nobility that it may have ever had. I’ve been shot at 4 times, none in the military, and none missed me by more than a couple of feet but once was a head shot by less than a couple of inches with a high powered pistol. None of these 4 times was intentional but I still would have most likely been very dead. I fail to understand the abject fear that people must live in to believe that absolute access to guns by everyone will keep them safe. My military experience, my hunting experience tells me the exact opposite. But then good sense and guns really is a oxymoron.
28.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: Well, it’s easy to see why the deserting coward malasstration never had any reason to learn any of those lessons…populated by chickenhawks who deliberately dodged their generation’s chance to learn the lessons.
War is always the last resort…never an option unless all other options have been tried and failed. Soldiers know this. Chickenhawks do not.
@raven:
I keep thinking I’d like to add it to my bucket list, that it alone would be worth the trip. But I just don’t have a good feeling about going. But then a good feeling isn’t the point is it?
31.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: When I was there for the 10th Anniversary I was kneeling at the far end of the Wall reading a not that someone left. A guy tapped me on the shoulder and he was a buddy that was in the VVAW with me. He lived in DC and had become an unofficial care-taker and guide there. It was a real shock that he remembered me and we had a great reunion.
32.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Chickenhawks don’t want to know, and have no need to know. In fact knowing might, just might make them rethink…..
Oh shit, was that a stupid sentence that I tried to write.
33.
Cassidy
@Villago Delenda Est: We have out own memorial at Fort Stewart. It’s the world’s ugliest forest. We planted a tree for every Dogface Soldier who didn’t come home.
34.
raven
@Ruckus: A good friend who has been gone for 10 years felt the same way. He didn’t want to go but we finally talked him into it. As we walked from the Washington Monument to the Wall he got more and more nervous. I remember coming over the rise where you can finally see it and how emotional it was for him. It was really good for him and I’m glad he got to go before he died.
I was also there late a night in the rain with a bunch of people that had been at a fundraiser for the Women’s Memorial at the Wall. We went late at night and one of the nurses was saddened that she really didn’t know any of the GI’s she treated, it was just triage them and try to save those that could be saved. I took her down and showed her some friends and told her the stories of who they were. I think it helped her.
35.
Suffern ACE
I learned today that my GPS does not like to find things without addresses like the entrances to Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetary.
36.
Tommy
It is hard to read all these comments. But can I suggest a soundtrack to read them. Folks have said bagpipes. Amazing Grace. Well try this please, please, please:
It is the Pipes and Drums of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. As a sixth generation Scot, my grandfather a WWII dude, pipes played at his funeral. I would only find later, even my day to a large extent what he did in WWII.
37.
Suffern ACE
Also learned that “locations powered by google” on my GPS is not meant to find landmarks, but instead prefers to find sandwich joints and car repair shops named after the landmark.
Thanks to all that served. I don’t have the guts to do it, so I appreciate those that found the courage to do so for this country, especially when this country didn’t even consider them first-class citizens as they served.
War is always the last resort…never an option unless all other options have been tried and failed. Soldiers know this. Chickenhawks do not.
The one lesson that has to be relearned time and time again as history has shown so often. Our current president is no veteran and he understands this. What blinds people to miss this most important truth? Avaricious? Power? Stupidity? All of these?
@Ruckus: To find a truth, one must be willing to accept it, regardless of where that truth leads. Those who seek power or wealth, even (or especially) at the cost of other’s blood can never accept that truth.
42.
raven
@rikyrah: I’d go easy on that stuff. There were and are lots of emotions and characteristics involved with going in the military and intestinal fortitude is but one. Some of the bravest people I know went to jail or Canada,
43.
Ash Can
Hats off to all veterans, living and deceased, and to all of their long-suffering families.
And taking a walk along The Wall is something everyone should do at least once in their lives, with the obvious exception of those whose firsthand experience with military combat has already given them an understanding of war that the rest of us will never have, and for whom a visit to The Wall would be too much to bear as a result. Even without the sights of the small personal memorials along the wall, people making rubbings of names with paper and pencil, and folks just standing in front of names of family and friends and weeping, it drives home the magnitude of the loss from the war that few experiences in our comfy, insulated civilian lives can. You start walking, and the names start, and they keep going. And you keep walking, and the names just keep going on and on and on. So many, seemingly without end, just like the Viet Nam War itself as it dragged on.
44.
Ruckus
@raven:
Oh I think in the end it would be better for me to go than not, but the trepidation is powerful. A picture of the wall is gut wrenching, just thinking about it is hard. It sounds like I’m just like your friend.
I’ve been through DC once on a work trip, didn’t have time to stop and see the things I’d like to see. Probably take me about a week to see everything I’d like, the Wall, Smithsonian, Lincoln, Washington and yes even the White House, off the top of my head. Right now, like many others, money is an issue as well, the last 8ish yrs not having been good to me at all, but things are getting a little better.
45.
Pogonip
I like the Tbogg piece. I too remember the old NRA; they were a sportsman’s organization before they decided there was more money in crazy people. I would never join now.
Maybe I should get over myself and go for them. I’m not sure I know how to do that.
The most common thing seems to be bringing them something they would have enjoyed were they still with us. Seeing all the offerings was the thing I will remember most about visiting The Wall. I understand that the Park Service collects and stores them as part of maintaining the monument.
@raven:
Agreed.
I know many who joined because we didn’t think that becoming a federal felon was going to turn out well. Forty/fifty years later that has turned out not to be as true as we felt it was then but putting yourself in the line of fire has more than one meaning.
Maybe I’m hypersensitive because 1) before transferring to Berkeley I was at UCSB and even lived in Isla Vista for a few months, and 2) our daughter is a freshman at UC Davis. But as far as I’m concerned everyone who has opposed severe restrictions on gun ownership is complicit in these murders.
I understand that most people are responsible. Tough. I understand that people like their guns. Tough. Let’s have a trade-off: You don’t get to have your guns, and our children don’t get slaughtered.
Target shooting sound like fun. Keep your goddam gun at the range. Hunting doesn’t sound like fun, but if you gotta do it, keep your goddam gun at the range. If you live in the boonies and need it to plunk critters … I don’t know squat about guns, but the words “single-shot” and “low-calibre” sound good to me. I probably misused them, but I am way beyond caring. The father of one of the murdered kids, grief-stricken, shattered, said, “We don’t have to live this way.” And our children don’t have to die this way. Fuck the NRA. Let’s take them on. Full-frontal assault: Repeal the Second Amendment. We just wrote a check to an anti-gun organization, and we’ll be writing more. Enough of this madness.
49.
scav
@Suffern ACE: Wait until you try rural places, or large places where the entrance you want is not the street (or mailing) address. parking lots not attached to buildings. etc. O! The Places You’ll Go!
50.
raven
@Roger Moore: This is old but worth seeing. Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection. When I first got it I was looking through it and there is a picture of a Marine Platoon and a letter to the parents of their Corpsman who was killed. It turned out that it was from my buddy who tapped me on the shoulder at the Wall.
TBogg’s essay today, I Was the NRA, is excellent. Thank you for highlighting it.
He snarks so well, one can forget what a good and honest writer he is.
54.
Tommy
Ode to my grandfather this Memorial Day!!!!!!!!!!!!
My last name has a III at the end of it. As a kid in my grandfather’s house I was just called Tommy 3.
“T3 do you want tea or milk with dinner …..”
We put some flowers on this grave today. He was a hard, hard man. A good man, but hard man. But it needed flowers. He will always get this this day!
He went to college at 16. University of Illinois. Something of a savant. By 22 he had his medical degree (it hangs on the wall in my living room BTW). Went to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis for his internship. Met a nurse and married her. They’d be married for more then 50 years. A day later enlisted. Sent to Wichita Falls, TX.
He was trained as a Flight Surgeon. For HUMP planes, sending supplies to China and Burma to stop the “Japs.” It was a terrible, terrible job. On the weekends he was taught to fly, cause well there maybe a time you will have to fly the plane home if we are so lucky. He flew a plane home with mostly dead on-board. He carried around his life a ton of metal he caught in those planes.
He’d move back to his rural town and never spoke of any of this again. I only know this all cause the local paper dug into it on his death. My dad didn’t even know any of it. He after WWII was know as the “Baby Doc.” He helped the birth of more than 3,000 children in rural Illinois, including myself (why the paper looked into him)!
You know, I wish I was only a fraction of the man you were ……………………………………….
55.
Elizabelle
DC area (and all) Balloon Juicers:
I live in Northern Virginia. I would like to organize a series of candlelight vigils around the DC area, to protest gun violence and promote some common sense reforms.
We can start with background checks, an idea vastly popular with the American public, but stalled because of too many paid for cowards in Congress.
What happened in Isla Vista, and in Newtown, could happen in any American community. Enough.
Who wants to help? We can join up with others, but I want to start on this, even in a small way, THIS WEEK.
I don’t just want to complain on a blog.
I want to show up and be counted.
Will you help me get this organized?
Anybody up for a DC area midweek join-up, candles first and then drinks? Let me know.
56.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Thank You.
For everyone of us I’m sure the Wall will mean different things, and that the takeaway will be different.
For me just knowing that the men and women on that wall died for nothing, that I could have been one of them very easily, that the men I spent time in the hospital with were even closer, that men I’ve met since then have been so close…. I think it’s the shear numbers of all of those people, friends and comrades that gets to me. I see the living remnants of the war every time I go to the VA and it reminds me how fortunate that I was, that I ended up in the right place at the wrong time rather than the wrong place at the wrong time.
57.
Bob In Portland
Memorial Day is an opportunity to quash anti-war thoughts. Ironic, that a holiday that commemorates the deaths of soldiers is used to promote militarism. Sort of the logic used at a casino: You’ve lost so much but you keep pushing more chips into the center to get back to even. But the house always wins.
I’m a vet. After I got out I worked four years at a VA hospital. My dad is buried in Arlington, so attack me for my thoughts, not my service.
58.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
Just the pictures or even thinking about it elicits a very strong emotional response. I’ve been in a few situations in my lifetime that could have easily turned out deadly for me and none of them affected me the way the Wall does.
@Suffern ACE: ONE WOULD THINK that GPS would be able to find benchmarks, and calculate eight digit grid locations from that, but what the hell do I know…I only know how to read military maps.
61.
Tommy
@Ruckus: I lived in DC for 15 plus years. I lapped up the history of the place. All I could see and do. I went to the Memorial more than a few times. It was staggering. People in the fetal position crying. Others in tears getting a “rub” of a name. I’ve never been there where not both hundreds of flowers and candles were not all around. It was something living.
Update: I should note a vet would take me there for a few years, Rolling Thunder, on the back of his bike, and it went to like a level of 100.
@Cassidy: This reminds me of a throwaway gag in the Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye White Christmas, where Danny offers to take Bing to a Haynes Sisters performance, as a favor to their buddy from the Army, since they’re his sisters. Bing is a bit hesitant, given what a dogface their buddy is (imagine that on a woman! Yikes!) but of course is pleasantly surprised by Vera Allen and Rosemary Clooney.
Just went and checked out tickets.
$1400 includes air and hotel for 6 days in June. Plus transportation around town, food and all, probably easily hit $2200. Not really doable now. Maybe a better time would be not summer. Or next year.
66.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: The GPS overall system can, what you’re wrestling with is probably the system on top of it, the address-matching front end which is approximating coordinates from addresses. Possibly there will be street centerline file or basemap issues. both of which are distinct from the GPS thing which is really just providing you a coordinate interpolated from a system of satellites. Sometimes you can enter lat-long directly into GPS / SatNav systems, sometimes not. Sometimes the coordinates you’ve got don’t align well with the digital base maps stored in the system so you can still end up in the wrong place.
My time in service was much less fraught with peril than probably every other veteran on this board. Is it still OK to say that I have a distinct loathing for those who cheerlead for wars they never manage to fight in themselves? “Daddy’s Little Deferments,” “Too Many Important Things To Do,” that kind of crap? Because I do. Cannot stand ‘em. I feel that the lives of those we lost had far more value than any chickenhawk.
That is all.
68.
Tommy
@Bex: Very nice. I didn’t get it until like 1996 when my grandfather passed away. As his body was being put into the ground, in the distance, and as fate would have it in a mist, a bag piper played Amazing Grace. One of the first times my parents talked to me about being a Scot. I didn’t know and had never asked where we came from. I am not dumb to say “America” but it was telling.
Now I have a family tree back almost 500 years to Scotland (more complex, making it easy to say). I guess family was always keeping it. Heck got mom and dad a DNA test for Christmas this year to learn more ….
@scav:
It sounds as if the real problem is not the address matching but the point of interest database system, which is suggesting businesses named after the landmark instead of the landmark itself. Some of the problem is that most GPS systems are really designed to look for single addresses rather than large, diffuse landmarks. They also seem to be pretty dumb about recognizing that when you ask for a famous landmark you’re most likely to be interested in the landmark itself rather than the dozens of nearby businesses that are named after it, so the one thing you’re most interested in is buried in a big list of crap.
@Ben Cisco: As a military brat, but not served I think you can. I freaked out my co-workers years ago when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where full on. I told them I found myself driving by recruitment offices that were not on the way home. That I might be 37 but I was both fit and able. And if our nation is going to fight I can help. Freaked them the fuck out. Honestly I am the most anti-war person you might find. But I sat in a parking lot or two thinking to enlist, just never got out of the car.
Well, I’m not a veteran and it made me sob, so it may be too strong for you — but it’s very meaningful.
74.
Schlemizel
@Ruckus:
I went. I have a good friend and a cousin, I had to look them up. I wish I hadn’t.
I was 4F (spina bifada) so my fight was to end the war. But it brought back a lot of pain. I can never forgive Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon for their parts in this. Whatever good they did will always have a shadow.
I respect the sacrifice made by those who served by have a very hard time getting past the anger over what a waste all the sacrifices made over the last 70 years have been. So many crimes committed on the backs of young men and women who only wanted to serve their country. We owe them so much better than what we have given.
Is it still OK to say that I have a distinct loathing for those who cheerlead for wars they never manage to fight in themselves?
I don’t see why not. Plenty of us who never served at all feel the same way about them without anyone criticizing us, so I don’t see why you would get any more criticism.
Plan it out and go at a non-tourist time. Washington has nice weather many different times of the year. Summer is steamy hot so maybe not even the best time anyway. There are DC people on here who can probably advise you the best time to visit. I’d probably say April.
The NRA should be referred to as the LDA – the little dick association. The asshats fondling their long guns in public are poster children for their obvious shortcomings,
78.
HinTN
I come from a military family but did not serve. High draft number. My respects to all who have, especially those who paid the ultimate price.
Yes – ammosexual works as shorthand, but I still think the thrill for these losers is in the length and diameter of their… barrel. UGH.
82.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
@gogol’s wife:
Thanks.
And….
Thanks. Was thinking summer may just be too many tourists. But living in socal I’m back to the low humidity lifestyle(sweating and not even knowing!) so sometimes I forget how much fun hot and steamy is. A non summer time and yet without snow would be best. Cold is no problem but living in the snow belt for a decade made me hate snow.
83.
JoyfulA
My hometown Civil War memorial will turn 100 on the thirtieth of May.
I recall coming back from an early class in 1990. About a half mile away I hear this song. My pace gets faster as I get it can only be coming from my Frat house, where I was in charge (and many “noise” complaints against me). It was.
I slam open the doors to find two of my best friends, vets that served already and using the GI Bill. Fucking bad ass mother fuckers* (they were going to jail) before the military and now 4.0 students (I know cause I was asked to mentor them). They had been activated, Army Rangers, going to Iraq.
I was like they already served, how can this be?
They both never came back to college. I kept in contact with them for many years, and lets just say they made it, but could have done so much more.
Update: I should note this song played on repeat, as loud as we could play it, for a few days.
*I recall them telling me a story where they got into a fight over a flat tire. One of them started it. They bet each other bloody. I was like how long ago was that. They said a few weeks.
85.
Schlemizel
@trollhattan:
Not too dissimilar story. I was trained by a retired Marine who would smack me upside the head if I screwed up while shooting not by the NRA. But I hunted until I was in my 40’s. I had seen the asshole but managed to avoid them. But one deer opener it was raining and deer were not moving. We decided to break for the morning, have lunch and get dry cloths then come back toward evening.. As I walked to my stand I saw two greasy losers enjoying a beer and a smoke. One in my stand & one on the ground. there were about 6-8 empty beer cans on the ground. I asked them how it was going, they oddly enough had not seen anything. Then I slowly backed away and got the hell out of there.
86.
scav
@Roger Moore: That bias could be better addressed by how they rank order the sets of POI’s they’ve pre-calculated coords for. They need to get better quality coords for certain places (airports, those large areas where you don’t just want to send them to the centoid, etc, and they generally do businesses so they can throw the symbols on the maps) anyway, and if you start typing in a name rather than address, they should suggest the landmark POIs higher than the business POIs they seen to be tossing up first. So yes, not the address matching exactly, more doing a cheap and easy name match from among the precalculated points rather than an intelligent one.
87.
Ruckus
@HinTN:
To show you how my life works, my number was 15 and I had been 1A for a yr and a half. But I had joined just before the lottery was announced so that number was just icing. My two best friends, one had 120 but he had joined the National Guard and they only went to about 115 so he was a little better than me. My other friend had 315. Now that stung just a little. But at least you knew where you stood.
88.
Mnemosyne
Much of my family ended up in some weird in-between generational spots, so we have veterans, but not really anyone for Memorial Day. My maternal grandfather served in WWI (and came home with a Purple Heart) but was too old for WWII. I honestly don’t know if my paternal grandfather ever served — he was an Italian immigrant who came here as a toddler who was too young for WWI but had too many children to be draft-eligible for WWII. My dad was technically “Vietnam-era,” but he was in that spot right between the end of Korea and the escalation in Vietnam, so he got out of the service without ever going further than Ft. Benning, GA. My stepbrother was in Beirut but washed out of the Marines before anything happened to him.
89.
Ruckus
@Schlemizel:
A nice catch phrase for all the assholes in politics. And many not in politics.
I have more than a few FB “friends” that I regularly open their page with the sole intent of unfriending them. I wonder why I don’t always pull the plug. Waiting to see if it is a temporary illness or maybe they are clinically insane and just can’t make normal human responses. But then they post some other bullshit and I realize that they just like being selfish assholes.
In other words, sociopaths.
I’ve said this here a lot. My father’s PhD is in civil war history. When you as a kid might have gone to Disney World I went to Gettysburg and Antietam.
This gives you an intro to a ten hour series that I think is like the best long, extended trailer ever!!!!!!!!!!!!
91.
Higgs Boson's Mate
NICHOLAS GABRIEL SAUNDERS
is honored on Panel 10W, Row 62 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Wall Name:NICHOLAS G SAUNDERS
Date of Birth: 7/3/1948
Date of Casualty: 5/18/1970
Home of Record: GLENDORA
County of Record: LOS ANGELES COUNTY
State: CA
Branch of Service: ARMY
Rank: WO
Panel/Row:10W, 62
Casualty Province: THUA THIEN
Happy Memorial Day. Thanks to all those that served and to the loved ones at home waiting for their return.
94.
Monala
I posted this on Richard’s thread below, but I’ll post it here also, in case anyone has advice. I have shared before that my husband was uninsured (a contractor) for several years, and he is a diabetic. I was insured through my workplace, which only insures the employee. We are at about 350% of poverty (family of 3), but didn’t qualify for a subsidy when we bought my husband’s insurance on the exchanges, because of my being covered with affordable coverage. But his insurance was doable – $520 a month with a deductible of $1200, and 20% cost-sharing after the deductible is met.
However, all these medical bills are starting to sink us, and we’re struggling with this same thing — not going to the doctor and hoping to wait things out. We already have four medical bills we’re paying in installments, two from bills my husband generated when he was uninsured, and one from me from last year (for a breast biopsy that turned out to be negative, which I resent now, because my doctor didn’t tell me I had the choice to refuse it), and one from my husband for medical tests he received shortly after he got insurance in the new year.
We have a 9-year-old, who, like most 9-year-olds, generates her share of issues that need a doctor. A bump in the head on the playground, and now she has a headache: do we take her in to be sure it’s not a concussion? A sore throat — do we take her in to be tested for strep, or wait a few days to see whether it goes away? Because taking her in will generate a new bill, since her insurance carries a deductible, too. (We purchased insurance plans under the same coverage I have at work, which was actually the least expensive on our exchanges, since we were paying out of pocket. The difference is, we were already covering our daughter this way prior to Jan. 2014). The answer was, after wrestling with it, yes, we took her in. And now we know that some bills our coming our way.
Plus, my husband just had laser eye surgery to correct some damage that his untreated diabetes had done to his eyes, so a bill for that is also on its way. All of these things would be more expensive without insurance, but they’re still eating away at us now. The way our insurer works, if you have a current payment arrangement, you have to pay that off before they’ll let you set up a new one. All the four payment arrangements I currently mentioned will be paid off in 6 to 7 months. But when these new bills arrive, they’ll expect full payment, and won’t let us wait the 6-7 months before we can pay them.
Any suggestions?
95.
raven
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Given the date and unit he was probably killed in the fight for Ripcord. It was a year after Hamburger Hill and should have never been fought. RIP brother.
96.
Higgs Boson's Mate
He was. A mutual friend was talking to him on the radio when he got tagged.
I’m not a vet, but I’m close in age to them. I went with my sister-in-law soon after the memorial opened, on a horribly hot and humid August afternoon. Very few people were about. The solitude gave me a real sense of the scale of this country’s loss. It was overwhelming.
I can’t imagine there will ever be another war memorial that can equal the power of the Vietnam Wall.
98.
raven
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Damn, my buddy had an appendicitis and didn’t go on the insertion but was on the horn with them as well.
99.
SiubhanDuinne
I moved to Duluth, GA (a suburb northeast of Atlanta) about 10-11 years ago. One of the first things I noticed was that around Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, the main streets would suddenly blossom with crosses and American flags. Each white cross* bears a name of a Duluth resident or relative who served in combat and is now deceased, and lists his or her dates and the war (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan/Iraq). The display has a kind of home-grown look to it, but is actually very moving to see. I keep hoping some year I’ll see the crew actually setting up the crosses and flags, but they must do it in the dark of night.
*The city calls them “markers,” but I have yet to see a marker that is other than a cross. Must admit I’ve never really searched out a Star of David or non-Christian symbol. Maybe tomorrow I’ll drive around and try to spot one.
So cool to have those stories and photos! What a great-looking guy (and it is uncanny how the young man in the first picture is in the face of the older man in the retirement picture).
I am extraordinarily fortunate that none of my male relatives lost their lives in wartime since the U.S. Civil War. I had a 2GGF and his father, my 3GGF, who were both in the Union Army, both captured and sent to Andersonville, both died there (one of dysentery and one of cholera or something like that). Neither one of them probably knew that the other was there — according to the records I’ve seen, they were in completely different units, captured at different times, and imprisoned in different and relatively distant facilities at A’ville. They both had the same name, John Hogan. I’ve visited, tracked down their markers, and paid my respects.
I had another GGF (I think I’ve mentioned him here previously) who was in both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Lied about his age both times, LOL!
An uncle (career military) was actually in Pearl Harbor on 1941.12.07, but survived the attack, served in the Pacific Theatre throughout the War, and died in 2000 in his late 70s or early 80s. My cousin and one brother both were in the Army during Vietnam — cousin was sent to Nam, brother wanted to go to Nam but was sent to Germany.
But the most interesting of my relatives, to me, is my great-aunt, who joined a nursing unit (she was not a nurse!) in WWI. She used to tell hilarious stories about her Red Cross training. Apparently the RC believed that one of the most important things an Army nurse needed to know was how to take care of newborn babies, so they trained and trained with life-sized rubber dolls, one of which, wet and soapy, went flying from my aunt’s hands and across the room during bath practice!! She served in France, fell in love with a soldier who died, came back to the U.S. to take a degree in art, and ended up teaching art in Swarthmore, PA for the next 35 or so years.
Thank you — and all the other Juicer vets — for your service. I hate stupid wars, but I would never ever attack an active or veteran member of the military for serving. And thanks to your father, also.
@debbie:
Thanks.
Overwhelming is part of what I feel and I’ve only seen it in pictures. But it’s been this way for me since it was built.
104.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I hope as well that there is never a need to build another memorial of that size. I don’t expect that hope to last though. I have become rather cynical in these, my winding down years. I don’t know how many more I’ll get but for sure it’s a much smaller number than have already passed. But I think these years are the time we reflect and ponder, maybe try to pass along a little of the knowledge that we’ve suffered through so that others don’t have to. Although we probably won’t get listened to much there is always hope that we may affect even just one person who can make a positive effort to move the human race just a little bit forward, rather than just doing the same old thing and getting the same old results.
I hear you on the cynicism. I’ve read a few books on WWI and WWII this past year, and if we haven’t learned yet what a horrible, horrible waste war is, then we never will.
As for visiting DC, I recommend April so you can also see the cherry blossoms. I think they’d be a really nice way to recover after going to the memorial.
I’ve been to the wall…it’s a very solemn place. It really is a superb monument, it invokes deep emotions, particularly for veterans who search for the names of comrades and buddies who fell in that land of rice paddies and jungles, all for so very little, in retrospect.
Raised in DC – Vietnam is easily the best of the war memorials, for my money. Appropriately sober, while still managing to find a spot to honor each and every one of the people who died in the war.
I, too, shudder to imagine what kind of monument we’ll build to the Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. Maybe a Gulf War I monument’ll go up first.
I was in the DC area for a class and a friend / co-worker dragged me to the wall. I cried, knew I would, am so glad he made me go. We were both vets in our own ways. There is a young man with the same last name as mine on the wall. But from CA, probably no close relation, I know of none out there in CA, still a shock.
Soonergrunt, thanks for the photo, I have a good friend who is a pro piper, believe it or not. I was in Pittsburgh once for a festive event, after it was over we were crossing the field belor the U of P tower. There is a gothic style chapel on one side of the field, where a wedding was winding up, and a piper began his song outside the back door of the church. I know it was George. Wonderful sound in the evening dark.
All you vets, thanks for the hard work and danger faced!
110.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I have a somewhat common name except for the middle one which is a family name. At one temporary billet I was master of arms of a transit barracks and a guy who was waiting to be discharged checked in and his name, including middle, was the same as mine. At the VA clinic I go to there is a guy with the same name and same last 4 numbers of his SSN. I have been mistaken for him a number of times. On the first ship I was stationed on I replaced a guy who I looked exactly like. For the first 4-5 months I was on board everyone called me his last name, even though everyone’s last name is printed on their shirt. No one would believe I wasn’t him.
It really is a small world.
111.
Monty
Grave stones: marks on a scorecard.
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TaMara (BHF)
Thank you Soonergrunt, John and all the other vets at BJ who have served. And deepest thanks to those who have given their lives for this beautiful country, with all its flaws it truly is an amazing concept. All are created equal.
We’re still working on that, but the important part is we never seem to give up on that ideal.
Jewish Steel
I was contemplating buying a set of bagpipes the other day. Found some cheap (sub $200) sets on Amazon but one reveiwer cautioned, ” There is no bargain in bagpipes.”
There is no bargaian in bagpipes. Words to live by, folks.
Higgs Boson's Mate
From one vet to another; thank you, Soonergrunt.
raven
Paul Andrew Stein
Private First Class
E CO, 2ND BN, 7TH MARINES, 1ST MARDIV
United States Marine Corps
04 October 1948 – 22 November 1968
Villa Park, Illinois
Panel 38W Line 038
FlipYrWhig
@Jewish Steel: yeah, the last thing you’d want is bagpipes that sound dissonant, loud, and droning.
MikeJ
Pretty disgusting to hear the cheer at Indy at the conclusion of Taps. Also, the absolute worst prayer I’ve ever heard in public.
Just more reasons to prefer F1.
dmsilev
@FlipYrWhig: “These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.”
Attributed to Alfred Hitchcock.
Ruckus
@raven:
Have you been to the wall?
I’ve never managed to make it there. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go. 50K+ names of people my age, some of whom I knew….
Maybe I should get over myself and go for them. I’m not sure I know how to do that.
gogol's wife
@TaMara (BHF):
Seconded.
I very much appreciate the veterans’ perspective that we get on this blog.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Yes.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Thirded! I appreciate it as well.
Cassidy
A weekend of war movies on the tv for people who probably don’t like watching war movies.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jewish Steel: The yarn is that the British used bagpipes in battle…to encourage the troops to advance towards the enemy and get away…far away…from the bagpipes.
Mustang Bobby
Cary Gossard Dunn – 1906-1952.
He was my great-uncle and died six months before I was born. He is buried in Arlington. This is what I know of his service:
“He was with the 467th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion and was in the original landing at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. His rank was Captain and he saw service in Northern France, the Ardennes, and the Rhineland before returning to the states in 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star. He left the military for a brief period of time, but rejoined and was promoted to Major and taught ROTC at the University of Pittsburgh for about two years. He was transferred from the Army to the Air Force in 1949 and was sent to Okinawa in 1950 where he worked as an engineer at Kadena AFB. He died of cancer at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport, Louisiana, on March 12, 1952 at the age of 45.”
Rest in peace, Uncle Cary. Thank you.
scav
I’d like to add a thought also for those that are with and support the vets: families, kith kin and the rest of the necessary support and infrastructure (VA for example) that are also necessarily impacted but without a day of their own. I suddenly remember my Vet great uncle talking about the Decoration Days of his youth. His grandfather and great uncles had all been in the same regiment of the Civil War.
Mary G
Thanks to all the vets on BJ and elsewhere for your service.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: I’ve been to the wall…it’s a very solemn place. It really is a superb monument, it invokes deep emotions, particularly for veterans who search for the names of comrades and buddies who fell in that land of rice paddies and jungles, all for so very little, in retrospect. If it had gone on another half a decade…my name might have been on it. As it was, my mother feared so much it would go on long enough for me to go there. I went to Germany instead.
I shudder to think what the memorial to the fallen of the two utterly useless wars of the deserting coward might be. Perhaps some guy in a suit in an anatomically impossible position, with the legend “Here’s to Doug Feith…stupidest man on the planet”.
trollhattan
Tbogg is a must-read today. Takes on the NRA in an unexpected fashion.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/panic-in-funland/
My thanks to all Vets and active service members. You too, dad. A century after the Great War, a century and a half after the Civil War, what have we learned?
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
Obviously not enough.
? Martin
My family has been incredibly fortunate that, though we have many vets, none of my direct relatives died while serving going all the way back to my great x3 grandfather who fought for the Union. Let’s work toward making that true for all families.
Thanks to all who have served. Special thanks to John and Sooner and Raven and Higgs and all the rest of the BJ family that make this country a better place.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Wow, that is a terrific piece by TBogg.
The NRA has always existed to promote sales of firearms, albeit in a more subtle way at first…but when the culture of firearms changed, the NRA, being seriously into marketing, abandoned its previous membership for the new variety of dickless scared twits, like Ted Nugent, with great relish.
Now look were we are today. Males (not “men”) using firearms to get “retribution” on people who were creeped out by them.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Some might say not that we haven’t learned enough but that we never learned many of the lessons that should have been easy to see and that many of the ones we did learn have been forgotten, many of them maliciously disregarded.
YellowJournalism
Thanks to my grandfathers, my uncles, and an aunt for their service.
raven
@Ruckus: Oh yea. I’ve been for several Vets Day’s and on several trips at other times. It’s totally different during veterans gatherings. I don’t begrudge people but when you get lots of kids and their families it can become “Another Roadside Attraction”. I also have visited in the middle of the night and that is a good time to be there.
raven
dupe
Villago Delenda Est
OK, Sooner, THIS is the Hokey Pokey?
Geeze, Sarge, I never imagined…
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have a similar history to TBogg and used to even hunt in the same area, east of San Diego. But I’m the one who decided that hunting for food was far too dangerous and had lost any and all nobility that it may have ever had. I’ve been shot at 4 times, none in the military, and none missed me by more than a couple of feet but once was a head shot by less than a couple of inches with a high powered pistol. None of these 4 times was intentional but I still would have most likely been very dead. I fail to understand the abject fear that people must live in to believe that absolute access to guns by everyone will keep them safe. My military experience, my hunting experience tells me the exact opposite. But then good sense and guns really is a oxymoron.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: Well, it’s easy to see why the deserting coward malasstration never had any reason to learn any of those lessons…populated by chickenhawks who deliberately dodged their generation’s chance to learn the lessons.
War is always the last resort…never an option unless all other options have been tried and failed. Soldiers know this. Chickenhawks do not.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Thank you for this, brother.
For Grandpa, Uncle Jim, Donald, and Chris.
Ruckus
@raven:
I keep thinking I’d like to add it to my bucket list, that it alone would be worth the trip. But I just don’t have a good feeling about going. But then a good feeling isn’t the point is it?
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: When I was there for the 10th Anniversary I was kneeling at the far end of the Wall reading a not that someone left. A guy tapped me on the shoulder and he was a buddy that was in the VVAW with me. He lived in DC and had become an unofficial care-taker and guide there. It was a real shock that he remembered me and we had a great reunion.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Chickenhawks don’t want to know, and have no need to know. In fact knowing might, just might make them rethink…..
Oh shit, was that a stupid sentence that I tried to write.
Cassidy
@Villago Delenda Est: We have out own memorial at Fort Stewart. It’s the world’s ugliest forest. We planted a tree for every Dogface Soldier who didn’t come home.
raven
@Ruckus: A good friend who has been gone for 10 years felt the same way. He didn’t want to go but we finally talked him into it. As we walked from the Washington Monument to the Wall he got more and more nervous. I remember coming over the rise where you can finally see it and how emotional it was for him. It was really good for him and I’m glad he got to go before he died.
I was also there late a night in the rain with a bunch of people that had been at a fundraiser for the Women’s Memorial at the Wall. We went late at night and one of the nurses was saddened that she really didn’t know any of the GI’s she treated, it was just triage them and try to save those that could be saved. I took her down and showed her some friends and told her the stories of who they were. I think it helped her.
Suffern ACE
I learned today that my GPS does not like to find things without addresses like the entrances to Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetary.
Tommy
It is hard to read all these comments. But can I suggest a soundtrack to read them. Folks have said bagpipes. Amazing Grace. Well try this please, please, please:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXOBuJrpKcU
It is the Pipes and Drums of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. As a sixth generation Scot, my grandfather a WWII dude, pipes played at his funeral. I would only find later, even my day to a large extent what he did in WWII.
Suffern ACE
Also learned that “locations powered by google” on my GPS is not meant to find landmarks, but instead prefers to find sandwich joints and car repair shops named after the landmark.
rikyrah
Thanks to all that served. I don’t have the guts to do it, so I appreciate those that found the courage to do so for this country, especially when this country didn’t even consider them first-class citizens as they served.
SatanicPanic
@trollhattan: That’s a classic from TBogg. Really great read
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
The one lesson that has to be relearned time and time again as history has shown so often. Our current president is no veteran and he understands this. What blinds people to miss this most important truth? Avaricious? Power? Stupidity? All of these?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ruckus: To find a truth, one must be willing to accept it, regardless of where that truth leads. Those who seek power or wealth, even (or especially) at the cost of other’s blood can never accept that truth.
raven
@rikyrah: I’d go easy on that stuff. There were and are lots of emotions and characteristics involved with going in the military and intestinal fortitude is but one. Some of the bravest people I know went to jail or Canada,
Ash Can
Hats off to all veterans, living and deceased, and to all of their long-suffering families.
And taking a walk along The Wall is something everyone should do at least once in their lives, with the obvious exception of those whose firsthand experience with military combat has already given them an understanding of war that the rest of us will never have, and for whom a visit to The Wall would be too much to bear as a result. Even without the sights of the small personal memorials along the wall, people making rubbings of names with paper and pencil, and folks just standing in front of names of family and friends and weeping, it drives home the magnitude of the loss from the war that few experiences in our comfy, insulated civilian lives can. You start walking, and the names start, and they keep going. And you keep walking, and the names just keep going on and on and on. So many, seemingly without end, just like the Viet Nam War itself as it dragged on.
Ruckus
@raven:
Oh I think in the end it would be better for me to go than not, but the trepidation is powerful. A picture of the wall is gut wrenching, just thinking about it is hard. It sounds like I’m just like your friend.
I’ve been through DC once on a work trip, didn’t have time to stop and see the things I’d like to see. Probably take me about a week to see everything I’d like, the Wall, Smithsonian, Lincoln, Washington and yes even the White House, off the top of my head. Right now, like many others, money is an issue as well, the last 8ish yrs not having been good to me at all, but things are getting a little better.
Pogonip
I like the Tbogg piece. I too remember the old NRA; they were a sportsman’s organization before they decided there was more money in crazy people. I would never join now.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
The most common thing seems to be bringing them something they would have enjoyed were they still with us. Seeing all the offerings was the thing I will remember most about visiting The Wall. I understand that the Park Service collects and stores them as part of maintaining the monument.
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
This is absolutely true.
@raven:
Agreed.
I know many who joined because we didn’t think that becoming a federal felon was going to turn out well. Forty/fifty years later that has turned out not to be as true as we felt it was then but putting yourself in the line of fire has more than one meaning.
Hungry Joe
Maybe I’m hypersensitive because 1) before transferring to Berkeley I was at UCSB and even lived in Isla Vista for a few months, and 2) our daughter is a freshman at UC Davis. But as far as I’m concerned everyone who has opposed severe restrictions on gun ownership is complicit in these murders.
I understand that most people are responsible. Tough. I understand that people like their guns. Tough. Let’s have a trade-off: You don’t get to have your guns, and our children don’t get slaughtered.
Target shooting sound like fun. Keep your goddam gun at the range. Hunting doesn’t sound like fun, but if you gotta do it, keep your goddam gun at the range. If you live in the boonies and need it to plunk critters … I don’t know squat about guns, but the words “single-shot” and “low-calibre” sound good to me. I probably misused them, but I am way beyond caring. The father of one of the murdered kids, grief-stricken, shattered, said, “We don’t have to live this way.” And our children don’t have to die this way. Fuck the NRA. Let’s take them on. Full-frontal assault: Repeal the Second Amendment. We just wrote a check to an anti-gun organization, and we’ll be writing more. Enough of this madness.
scav
@Suffern ACE: Wait until you try rural places, or large places where the entrance you want is not the street (or mailing) address. parking lots not attached to buildings. etc. O! The Places You’ll Go!
raven
@Roger Moore: This is old but worth seeing. Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection. When I first got it I was looking through it and there is a picture of a Marine Platoon and a letter to the parents of their Corpsman who was killed. It turned out that it was from my buddy who tapped me on the shoulder at the Wall.
raven
dupe
gogol's wife
@Ruckus:
You should definitely go to the Wall if you can stand it. It is by far the most powerful memorial I’ve ever seen.
@Hungry Joe:
You sound like me after Sandy Hook. I’ll keep contributing, but I have very little hope, at least for my lifetime.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
TBogg’s essay today, I Was the NRA, is excellent. Thank you for highlighting it.
He snarks so well, one can forget what a good and honest writer he is.
Tommy
Ode to my grandfather this Memorial Day!!!!!!!!!!!!
My last name has a III at the end of it. As a kid in my grandfather’s house I was just called Tommy 3.
“T3 do you want tea or milk with dinner …..”
We put some flowers on this grave today. He was a hard, hard man. A good man, but hard man. But it needed flowers. He will always get this this day!
He went to college at 16. University of Illinois. Something of a savant. By 22 he had his medical degree (it hangs on the wall in my living room BTW). Went to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis for his internship. Met a nurse and married her. They’d be married for more then 50 years. A day later enlisted. Sent to Wichita Falls, TX.
He was trained as a Flight Surgeon. For HUMP planes, sending supplies to China and Burma to stop the “Japs.” It was a terrible, terrible job. On the weekends he was taught to fly, cause well there maybe a time you will have to fly the plane home if we are so lucky. He flew a plane home with mostly dead on-board. He carried around his life a ton of metal he caught in those planes.
He’d move back to his rural town and never spoke of any of this again. I only know this all cause the local paper dug into it on his death. My dad didn’t even know any of it. He after WWII was know as the “Baby Doc.” He helped the birth of more than 3,000 children in rural Illinois, including myself (why the paper looked into him)!
Here is he before being sent off:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/7261048686/
And in his last day in his medical practice of literally 50 years:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/webranding/7261049190/
You know, I wish I was only a fraction of the man you were ……………………………………….
Elizabelle
DC area (and all) Balloon Juicers:
I live in Northern Virginia. I would like to organize a series of candlelight vigils around the DC area, to protest gun violence and promote some common sense reforms.
We can start with background checks, an idea vastly popular with the American public, but stalled because of too many paid for cowards in Congress.
What happened in Isla Vista, and in Newtown, could happen in any American community. Enough.
Who wants to help? We can join up with others, but I want to start on this, even in a small way, THIS WEEK.
I don’t just want to complain on a blog.
I want to show up and be counted.
Will you help me get this organized?
Anybody up for a DC area midweek join-up, candles first and then drinks? Let me know.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Thank You.
For everyone of us I’m sure the Wall will mean different things, and that the takeaway will be different.
For me just knowing that the men and women on that wall died for nothing, that I could have been one of them very easily, that the men I spent time in the hospital with were even closer, that men I’ve met since then have been so close…. I think it’s the shear numbers of all of those people, friends and comrades that gets to me. I see the living remnants of the war every time I go to the VA and it reminds me how fortunate that I was, that I ended up in the right place at the wrong time rather than the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bob In Portland
Memorial Day is an opportunity to quash anti-war thoughts. Ironic, that a holiday that commemorates the deaths of soldiers is used to promote militarism. Sort of the logic used at a casino: You’ve lost so much but you keep pushing more chips into the center to get back to even. But the house always wins.
I’m a vet. After I got out I worked four years at a VA hospital. My dad is buried in Arlington, so attack me for my thoughts, not my service.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
Just the pictures or even thinking about it elicits a very strong emotional response. I’ve been in a few situations in my lifetime that could have easily turned out deadly for me and none of them affected me the way the Wall does.
raven
@Ruckus: We may have been cryin on the inside but we managed a little smile.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE: ONE WOULD THINK that GPS would be able to find benchmarks, and calculate eight digit grid locations from that, but what the hell do I know…I only know how to read military maps.
Tommy
@Ruckus: I lived in DC for 15 plus years. I lapped up the history of the place. All I could see and do. I went to the Memorial more than a few times. It was staggering. People in the fetal position crying. Others in tears getting a “rub” of a name. I’ve never been there where not both hundreds of flowers and candles were not all around. It was something living.
Update: I should note a vet would take me there for a few years, Rolling Thunder, on the back of his bike, and it went to like a level of 100.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Here are some apps for Arlington.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy: This reminds me of a throwaway gag in the Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye White Christmas, where Danny offers to take Bing to a Haynes Sisters performance, as a favor to their buddy from the Army, since they’re his sisters. Bing is a bit hesitant, given what a dogface their buddy is (imagine that on a woman! Yikes!) but of course is pleasantly surprised by Vera Allen and Rosemary Clooney.
Bex
@Tommy: Here’s another song that should only be played on bagpipes. http://youtu.be/MR87LsmXzBs
Ruckus
Just went and checked out tickets.
$1400 includes air and hotel for 6 days in June. Plus transportation around town, food and all, probably easily hit $2200. Not really doable now. Maybe a better time would be not summer. Or next year.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: The GPS overall system can, what you’re wrestling with is probably the system on top of it, the address-matching front end which is approximating coordinates from addresses. Possibly there will be street centerline file or basemap issues. both of which are distinct from the GPS thing which is really just providing you a coordinate interpolated from a system of satellites. Sometimes you can enter lat-long directly into GPS / SatNav systems, sometimes not. Sometimes the coordinates you’ve got don’t align well with the digital base maps stored in the system so you can still end up in the wrong place.
Ben Cisco
@Ruckus: Let me just add…
My time in service was much less fraught with peril than probably every other veteran on this board. Is it still OK to say that I have a distinct loathing for those who cheerlead for wars they never manage to fight in themselves? “Daddy’s Little Deferments,” “Too Many Important Things To Do,” that kind of crap? Because I do. Cannot stand ‘em. I feel that the lives of those we lost had far more value than any chickenhawk.
That is all.
Tommy
@Bex: Very nice. I didn’t get it until like 1996 when my grandfather passed away. As his body was being put into the ground, in the distance, and as fate would have it in a mist, a bag piper played Amazing Grace. One of the first times my parents talked to me about being a Scot. I didn’t know and had never asked where we came from. I am not dumb to say “America” but it was telling.
Now I have a family tree back almost 500 years to Scotland (more complex, making it easy to say). I guess family was always keeping it. Heck got mom and dad a DNA test for Christmas this year to learn more ….
Roger Moore
@scav:
It sounds as if the real problem is not the address matching but the point of interest database system, which is suggesting businesses named after the landmark instead of the landmark itself. Some of the problem is that most GPS systems are really designed to look for single addresses rather than large, diffuse landmarks. They also seem to be pretty dumb about recognizing that when you ask for a famous landmark you’re most likely to be interested in the landmark itself rather than the dozens of nearby businesses that are named after it, so the one thing you’re most interested in is buried in a big list of crap.
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco:
That is enough.
Tommy
@Ben Cisco: As a military brat, but not served I think you can. I freaked out my co-workers years ago when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where full on. I told them I found myself driving by recruitment offices that were not on the way home. That I might be 37 but I was both fit and able. And if our nation is going to fight I can help. Freaked them the fuck out. Honestly I am the most anti-war person you might find. But I sat in a parking lot or two thinking to enlist, just never got out of the car.
Keith P
It’s also about SAVINGS SAVINGS SAVINGS!
gogol's wife
@Ruckus:
Well, I’m not a veteran and it made me sob, so it may be too strong for you — but it’s very meaningful.
Schlemizel
@Ruckus:
I went. I have a good friend and a cousin, I had to look them up. I wish I hadn’t.
I was 4F (spina bifada) so my fight was to end the war. But it brought back a lot of pain. I can never forgive Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon for their parts in this. Whatever good they did will always have a shadow.
I respect the sacrifice made by those who served by have a very hard time getting past the anger over what a waste all the sacrifices made over the last 70 years have been. So many crimes committed on the backs of young men and women who only wanted to serve their country. We owe them so much better than what we have given.
Roger Moore
@Ben Cisco:
I don’t see why not. Plenty of us who never served at all feel the same way about them without anyone criticizing us, so I don’t see why you would get any more criticism.
gogol's wife
@Ruckus:
Plan it out and go at a non-tourist time. Washington has nice weather many different times of the year. Summer is steamy hot so maybe not even the best time anyway. There are DC people on here who can probably advise you the best time to visit. I’d probably say April.
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
The NRA should be referred to as the LDA – the little dick association. The asshats fondling their long guns in public are poster children for their obvious shortcomings,
HinTN
I come from a military family but did not serve. High draft number. My respects to all who have, especially those who paid the ultimate price.
gogol's wife
@the Conster:
Did you catch Betty’s “ammosexuals” thread?
Schlemizel
@Ruckus:
See: sociopath
the Conster
@gogol’s wife:
Yes – ammosexual works as shorthand, but I still think the thrill for these losers is in the length and diameter of their… barrel. UGH.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
@gogol’s wife:
Thanks.
And….
Thanks. Was thinking summer may just be too many tourists. But living in socal I’m back to the low humidity lifestyle(sweating and not even knowing!) so sometimes I forget how much fun hot and steamy is. A non summer time and yet without snow would be best. Cold is no problem but living in the snow belt for a decade made me hate snow.
JoyfulA
My hometown Civil War memorial will turn 100 on the thirtieth of May.
Tommy
Neil Young’s Keeping in the Free World:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdiCJUysIT0&feature=kp
I recall coming back from an early class in 1990. About a half mile away I hear this song. My pace gets faster as I get it can only be coming from my Frat house, where I was in charge (and many “noise” complaints against me). It was.
I slam open the doors to find two of my best friends, vets that served already and using the GI Bill. Fucking bad ass mother fuckers* (they were going to jail) before the military and now 4.0 students (I know cause I was asked to mentor them). They had been activated, Army Rangers, going to Iraq.
I was like they already served, how can this be?
They both never came back to college. I kept in contact with them for many years, and lets just say they made it, but could have done so much more.
Update: I should note this song played on repeat, as loud as we could play it, for a few days.
*I recall them telling me a story where they got into a fight over a flat tire. One of them started it. They bet each other bloody. I was like how long ago was that. They said a few weeks.
Schlemizel
@trollhattan:
Not too dissimilar story. I was trained by a retired Marine who would smack me upside the head if I screwed up while shooting not by the NRA. But I hunted until I was in my 40’s. I had seen the asshole but managed to avoid them. But one deer opener it was raining and deer were not moving. We decided to break for the morning, have lunch and get dry cloths then come back toward evening.. As I walked to my stand I saw two greasy losers enjoying a beer and a smoke. One in my stand & one on the ground. there were about 6-8 empty beer cans on the ground. I asked them how it was going, they oddly enough had not seen anything. Then I slowly backed away and got the hell out of there.
scav
@Roger Moore: That bias could be better addressed by how they rank order the sets of POI’s they’ve pre-calculated coords for. They need to get better quality coords for certain places (airports, those large areas where you don’t just want to send them to the centoid, etc, and they generally do businesses so they can throw the symbols on the maps) anyway, and if you start typing in a name rather than address, they should suggest the landmark POIs higher than the business POIs they seen to be tossing up first. So yes, not the address matching exactly, more doing a cheap and easy name match from among the precalculated points rather than an intelligent one.
Ruckus
@HinTN:
To show you how my life works, my number was 15 and I had been 1A for a yr and a half. But I had joined just before the lottery was announced so that number was just icing. My two best friends, one had 120 but he had joined the National Guard and they only went to about 115 so he was a little better than me. My other friend had 315. Now that stung just a little. But at least you knew where you stood.
Mnemosyne
Much of my family ended up in some weird in-between generational spots, so we have veterans, but not really anyone for Memorial Day. My maternal grandfather served in WWI (and came home with a Purple Heart) but was too old for WWII. I honestly don’t know if my paternal grandfather ever served — he was an Italian immigrant who came here as a toddler who was too young for WWI but had too many children to be draft-eligible for WWII. My dad was technically “Vietnam-era,” but he was in that spot right between the end of Korea and the escalation in Vietnam, so he got out of the service without ever going further than Ft. Benning, GA. My stepbrother was in Beirut but washed out of the Marines before anything happened to him.
Ruckus
@Schlemizel:
A nice catch phrase for all the assholes in politics. And many not in politics.
I have more than a few FB “friends” that I regularly open their page with the sole intent of unfriending them. I wonder why I don’t always pull the plug. Waiting to see if it is a temporary illness or maybe they are clinically insane and just can’t make normal human responses. But then they post some other bullshit and I realize that they just like being selfish assholes.
In other words, sociopaths.
Tommy
@JoyfulA: I beg you to watch this. It is 3:38.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2huQB-DmE
If you want words, heck the best starts at 1:41.
I’ve said this here a lot. My father’s PhD is in civil war history. When you as a kid might have gone to Disney World I went to Gettysburg and Antietam.
This gives you an intro to a ten hour series that I think is like the best long, extended trailer ever!!!!!!!!!!!!
Higgs Boson's Mate
NICHOLAS GABRIEL SAUNDERS
is honored on Panel 10W, Row 62 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Wall Name:NICHOLAS G SAUNDERS
Date of Birth: 7/3/1948
Date of Casualty: 5/18/1970
Home of Record: GLENDORA
County of Record: LOS ANGELES COUNTY
State: CA
Branch of Service: ARMY
Rank: WO
Panel/Row:10W, 62
Casualty Province: THUA THIEN
Nick was a friend of mine in High School.
liberal
@Bob In Portland: agreed.
JPL
Happy Memorial Day. Thanks to all those that served and to the loved ones at home waiting for their return.
Monala
I posted this on Richard’s thread below, but I’ll post it here also, in case anyone has advice. I have shared before that my husband was uninsured (a contractor) for several years, and he is a diabetic. I was insured through my workplace, which only insures the employee. We are at about 350% of poverty (family of 3), but didn’t qualify for a subsidy when we bought my husband’s insurance on the exchanges, because of my being covered with affordable coverage. But his insurance was doable – $520 a month with a deductible of $1200, and 20% cost-sharing after the deductible is met.
However, all these medical bills are starting to sink us, and we’re struggling with this same thing — not going to the doctor and hoping to wait things out. We already have four medical bills we’re paying in installments, two from bills my husband generated when he was uninsured, and one from me from last year (for a breast biopsy that turned out to be negative, which I resent now, because my doctor didn’t tell me I had the choice to refuse it), and one from my husband for medical tests he received shortly after he got insurance in the new year.
We have a 9-year-old, who, like most 9-year-olds, generates her share of issues that need a doctor. A bump in the head on the playground, and now she has a headache: do we take her in to be sure it’s not a concussion? A sore throat — do we take her in to be tested for strep, or wait a few days to see whether it goes away? Because taking her in will generate a new bill, since her insurance carries a deductible, too. (We purchased insurance plans under the same coverage I have at work, which was actually the least expensive on our exchanges, since we were paying out of pocket. The difference is, we were already covering our daughter this way prior to Jan. 2014). The answer was, after wrestling with it, yes, we took her in. And now we know that some bills our coming our way.
Plus, my husband just had laser eye surgery to correct some damage that his untreated diabetes had done to his eyes, so a bill for that is also on its way. All of these things would be more expensive without insurance, but they’re still eating away at us now. The way our insurer works, if you have a current payment arrangement, you have to pay that off before they’ll let you set up a new one. All the four payment arrangements I currently mentioned will be paid off in 6 to 7 months. But when these new bills arrive, they’ll expect full payment, and won’t let us wait the 6-7 months before we can pay them.
Any suggestions?
raven
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Given the date and unit he was probably killed in the fight for Ripcord. It was a year after Hamburger Hill and should have never been fought. RIP brother.
Higgs Boson's Mate
He was. A mutual friend was talking to him on the radio when he got tagged.
debbie
@Ruckus:
I’m not a vet, but I’m close in age to them. I went with my sister-in-law soon after the memorial opened, on a horribly hot and humid August afternoon. Very few people were about. The solitude gave me a real sense of the scale of this country’s loss. It was overwhelming.
I can’t imagine there will ever be another war memorial that can equal the power of the Vietnam Wall.
raven
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Damn, my buddy had an appendicitis and didn’t go on the insertion but was on the horn with them as well.
SiubhanDuinne
I moved to Duluth, GA (a suburb northeast of Atlanta) about 10-11 years ago. One of the first things I noticed was that around Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, the main streets would suddenly blossom with crosses and American flags. Each white cross* bears a name of a Duluth resident or relative who served in combat and is now deceased, and lists his or her dates and the war (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan/Iraq). The display has a kind of home-grown look to it, but is actually very moving to see. I keep hoping some year I’ll see the crew actually setting up the crosses and flags, but they must do it in the dark of night.
*The city calls them “markers,” but I have yet to see a marker that is other than a cross. Must admit I’ve never really searched out a Star of David or non-Christian symbol. Maybe tomorrow I’ll drive around and try to spot one.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
So cool to have those stories and photos! What a great-looking guy (and it is uncanny how the young man in the first picture is in the face of the older man in the retirement picture).
I am extraordinarily fortunate that none of my male relatives lost their lives in wartime since the U.S. Civil War. I had a 2GGF and his father, my 3GGF, who were both in the Union Army, both captured and sent to Andersonville, both died there (one of dysentery and one of cholera or something like that). Neither one of them probably knew that the other was there — according to the records I’ve seen, they were in completely different units, captured at different times, and imprisoned in different and relatively distant facilities at A’ville. They both had the same name, John Hogan. I’ve visited, tracked down their markers, and paid my respects.
I had another GGF (I think I’ve mentioned him here previously) who was in both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Lied about his age both times, LOL!
An uncle (career military) was actually in Pearl Harbor on 1941.12.07, but survived the attack, served in the Pacific Theatre throughout the War, and died in 2000 in his late 70s or early 80s. My cousin and one brother both were in the Army during Vietnam — cousin was sent to Nam, brother wanted to go to Nam but was sent to Germany.
But the most interesting of my relatives, to me, is my great-aunt, who joined a nursing unit (she was not a nurse!) in WWI. She used to tell hilarious stories about her Red Cross training. Apparently the RC believed that one of the most important things an Army nurse needed to know was how to take care of newborn babies, so they trained and trained with life-sized rubber dolls, one of which, wet and soapy, went flying from my aunt’s hands and across the room during bath practice!! She served in France, fell in love with a soldier who died, came back to the U.S. to take a degree in art, and ended up teaching art in Swarthmore, PA for the next 35 or so years.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bob In Portland:
Thank you — and all the other Juicer vets — for your service. I hate stupid wars, but I would never ever attack an active or veteran member of the military for serving. And thanks to your father, also.
SiubhanDuinne
@the Conster:
Ooh, nice subtle David Niven shoutout! Well done.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Thanks.
Overwhelming is part of what I feel and I’ve only seen it in pictures. But it’s been this way for me since it was built.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I hope as well that there is never a need to build another memorial of that size. I don’t expect that hope to last though. I have become rather cynical in these, my winding down years. I don’t know how many more I’ll get but for sure it’s a much smaller number than have already passed. But I think these years are the time we reflect and ponder, maybe try to pass along a little of the knowledge that we’ve suffered through so that others don’t have to. Although we probably won’t get listened to much there is always hope that we may affect even just one person who can make a positive effort to move the human race just a little bit forward, rather than just doing the same old thing and getting the same old results.
debbie
@Ruckus:
I hear you on the cynicism. I’ve read a few books on WWI and WWII this past year, and if we haven’t learned yet what a horrible, horrible waste war is, then we never will.
As for visiting DC, I recommend April so you can also see the cherry blossoms. I think they’d be a really nice way to recover after going to the memorial.
debbie
@Tommy:
His series on WWII was maybe even better.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Raised in DC – Vietnam is easily the best of the war memorials, for my money. Appropriately sober, while still managing to find a spot to honor each and every one of the people who died in the war.
I, too, shudder to imagine what kind of monument we’ll build to the Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. Maybe a Gulf War I monument’ll go up first.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think it’ll be a long time building. Republicans are going to want to throw the whole mess down the memory hole.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
I was in the DC area for a class and a friend / co-worker dragged me to the wall. I cried, knew I would, am so glad he made me go. We were both vets in our own ways. There is a young man with the same last name as mine on the wall. But from CA, probably no close relation, I know of none out there in CA, still a shock.
Soonergrunt, thanks for the photo, I have a good friend who is a pro piper, believe it or not. I was in Pittsburgh once for a festive event, after it was over we were crossing the field belor the U of P tower. There is a gothic style chapel on one side of the field, where a wedding was winding up, and a piper began his song outside the back door of the church. I know it was George. Wonderful sound in the evening dark.
All you vets, thanks for the hard work and danger faced!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I have a somewhat common name except for the middle one which is a family name. At one temporary billet I was master of arms of a transit barracks and a guy who was waiting to be discharged checked in and his name, including middle, was the same as mine. At the VA clinic I go to there is a guy with the same name and same last 4 numbers of his SSN. I have been mistaken for him a number of times. On the first ship I was stationed on I replaced a guy who I looked exactly like. For the first 4-5 months I was on board everyone called me his last name, even though everyone’s last name is printed on their shirt. No one would believe I wasn’t him.
It really is a small world.
Monty
Grave stones: marks on a scorecard.