Jim, Sr. and I sat down at dinner last night and I asked him what he was doing on 6/5/1944. He pondered the question a moment, then said “We had been on alert for almost 30 hours.” I didn’t go into chasing that rabbit trail, but he then talked about how, on the eve of his (their) first combat, they were “relieved.” Why, you ask? Well, he explained, they had had all this training and now they were finally getting the order to “GO!” He said the apprehension of the timing of the invasion had been “horrible.”

They spent their time, packing up stuff, labeling their foot lockers and writing home, with “hints of goodbye” for they certainly couldn’t divulge any more than they were heading into combat. He talked about living in quonset huts, heated by a pot bellied stove at each end of the building. How breakfast was a big bowl of corn flakes, that you scooped into your bowl, then you scooped your powdered milk on it and you also got a boiled potato. The bacon was thick and not well cooked, when you did get it. He remarked the rations got much better when they based in France, usually having a local French woman cook up their K rations.

The gliders didn’t fly at night, but the C-47s had been flying to deliver the 82nd All American and 101st Screaming Eagles Airborne Divisions. The CG-4A gliders flew after the landings had begun.

He discussed the visions of the shores of Normandy he will never forget, and then they went further inland.

They had only practiced with maybe 24-36 gliders approaching one landing zone before, and they had practiced with a set, planned landing pattern. Not this day. More gliders, no set pattern, toss in ground fire, land mines and hedge rows.

“I watched men sacrifice themselves so others could have a clear place to land.”

They would land and jam the control column forward to bury the nose of the gliders as a landing skid, and a way to plow up dust and dirt clods as camouflage from enemy gunners in the area. They would try to bounce down hard on the tires and hopefully leap back into the air to an altitude about 10 ft or so, to maybe clear the hedge rows while getting stopped.

Jim was one who was designated a flight leader, and also had been trained to determine the airworthiness of the gliders in the landing zone. He was responsible to select one, then get it set up for a snatch recovery by a C-47 with a tailhook. The passengers on his first return leg were not wounded, but other glider pilots, so they may get airborne again for more flights into the combat area. He said he prayed as he held tight to the steering column, awaiting the catapulting force when the snatch line went taught, that the glider he had picked was sound and that they would not have the wings fall off as they began to get airborne.

After all these years, he still wonders why he survived without injury, in combat or otherwise, from 4.5 years of service, and admits he still feels some guilt for having come home, when so many other great men did not.

He will have his American flags flying this day.

MEGEN is no longer in a dark USPS box. MEGEN is far north, and has a busy schedule planned for this week, and arrangements have been made to be seen around some very memorable Navy related locations….

Plans are in the works for printable pictures of MEGEN, to be used to pose and be posed with, at the suggestion of Flag Gazer (who has a wonderful blog to memorialize those who have fallen).

Details to follow….as well as some OUTSTANDING! pictures next week – or sooner if it works out.

Stay tuned.

More random thoughts:

Nancy Pelosi chides Hugo Chavez for shutting down RCTV, while speaks of implementing the “Fairness yeah, right! Doctrine” to force conservative (read opposition) voices off the airwaves.

John Edwards and Barak Obama want universal health care. Stick with me here: Won’t that make us live longer? Excuse me, but I think this flies in the face of the humanity caused “Global Warming” syndrome currently sweeping the nation. If we are making it worse, why do they want to make sure we stay around to pollute the atmosphere that the animals have to also breath from?

Speaking of that: How about those who decide not to have offspring, as they see just another “polluting unit” (“PU” for short) being created and….as we all know, it’s a bad thing….

So now the President hops on the “Global Warming” band wagon. Either he’s trying to upstage those who set up the Kyoto Treaty, or he’s maybe looking for cross-over Democratic votes? I’m confused.

John McCain says we need to let the illegal immigrants have their way, or they might riot in our streets, but we have to stand up tall against the Islamic terrorists. I’m even more confused now.

Not only do we have to do as John McCain implies, we need these workers here because we are lacking Americans to do the work. Yes, about 40M some, many of which would have been of age by now.

Europe had to let lots of low cost, immigrant labor in for the same reason (but they never knew years ago they were helping the environment by not having little Europeans) and look what’s happening now. It doesn’t take even a homegrown experiment to see what’s coming in a few decades.

We decide to help install an anti-missile DEFENSE in eastern Europe, Russia gets upset. I guess the possibility of no longer being able to nuke your neighbors to the west has got a burr under their saddle…

A sitting President can lie to a Grand Jury while under oath and just be dis-barred and a White House staffer can make statements while not under oath during an investigation that aren’t true and he goes to jail for 2.5 years.

Something I am not confused about is that I am “extra-curricular politics.”

embedded by Embedded Video


George Carlin telling about his “moderness”And…Chap and company tell us about more robust technology (blatantly lifted from a comment section on Cdr Salamander):Regarding “wheelbooks:”

I’ve been a staff weenie too long, but I remember the half hearted attempts (at spectacular cost!) the sub force made at updating tech. Problem was, paper’s a pretty good tech.

——
You don’t have to reboot a wheelbook.

If a wheelbook falls in the water, you can retrieve the data.

Wheelbooks are EMP hardened.

If a wheelbook gets a virus, you just wipe it off and smack the guy who coughed on it.

Wheelbooks are backwards compatible. Upgrades are simpler than drag and drop.

In the event of a loss of power, your wheelbook is still perfectly useable.

Wheelbooks don’t accidentally send pr0n to five hundred of your closest friends.

If it’s ten seconds to live fire and the wheelbook is jostled and lands on the deck…you just pick it up and keep going.

Wheelbooks do not require Wheelbook IT admins, nor endless rules about what background can be put on the wheelbook.

If you have a dirty picture in your wheelbook you’re not very likely to get thrown off the boat and sent to jail.

Personal choice in wheelbooks is not prohibited.

Someone else’s personal choice in wheelbook will not cause your wheelbook to lose all the writing on the pages.

I could go on, but you get the point…
Chap | Homepage | 06.04.07 – 1:55 am |

Further augmented by other reasoned individuals, these add ons:

Wheelbooks aren’t forbidden in SCFs

Wheelbooks won’t shut down on you in the middle of a meeting when the battery rolls over and dies
– SJS
Steeljaw Scribe | Homepage | 06.04.07 – 4:18 am | #

Gravatar you don’t have to worry about a cracked screen or broken/lost stylus.
YN1(SS) | 06.04.07 – 7:08 am | #

Screencast-O-Matic is a free online tool to make screencasts. Select your screen size, audio or not and let it rip.

Possibilities here to help walk others through using software, or just to have fun without the trouble of making a movie of your screen captures.

“You don’t really learn how to swear until you learn to drive.”

May 27th, 2007 Just before sunset
June 2nd, 2007 – Early afternoonThe “blow” has headed inland, spreading the much needed rain….

Oh, the HYSTERIA! Yes, it is YOUR responsibility to have at least 3 days of MREs and stuff like that ready….

Cancel your summer vacation plans, and your Labor Day trip…we might get a CAT 5 or bigger hurricane between now and the end of October…be proactive!

MEGEN spent the afternoon at the beach the other evening and will soon be the subject of a short video. If you’ve been watching a little TV in the last few months, you might fully appreciate the theft of intellectual property used as a model, but just the same, I’m willing to bet you’ll have a wry smile on your face when you’re done watching it.

I just have to get to a computer with the right software to make sure the overlay fades in correctly….

Tomorrow, MEGEN will begin a longer journey to other distinctly naval environs, and there are more volunteers lined up with places for backdrops.

Stay tuned, tonight the snark email heads out to the other service team leaders.

OPORD and SOPs will be promulgated via “eyes only” to the Navy ValOUR-IT Team and also those who have come aboard for this operation. Check your email in boxes regularly!

Free range Open Trackbacks! What a deal!

What to discuss? How about the t-shirt?

The postal clerk had some rock music magazine he kept in his post office, up in the forward passageway. Often, on my daily messing and berthing inspections, I’d pass by and stick my head in to check the current status of the stowage of the place, which could range from neat and nearly empty to packed pretty full of large orange mail bags waiting to leave or to be sorted.

I paged through said magazine one day and noticed an article about concert shirts, which included one that said “Attila the Hun – Middle East Tour.” I commented on how I liked that one, particularly (if you caught it last week) since I had been posting sayings from “Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun” on my stateroom door during the cruise.

Very shortly before I was to leave the ship in Bharain and fly home, the PC3 handed me a folded up white t shirt. I unfolded it to see it was nicely hand lettered with “Attila the Hun Middle East Tour – Oct 89 – Mar 90.”

On the day I detached, the ship was also sailing to return to CONUS. I stood on the pier, watching my ship, my exclusive home for the last 5 months, single up, then take in all lines. As the 1MC passed the word “UNDERWAY! SHIFT COLORS!” I opened my shirt to reveal the “concert” shirt to the line handlers amidships, where the PC was.

For fear of the marker lettering running, that was the one time the shirt was worn, and only briefly. I changed out of it before I went to the airport and stowed it away for safe keeping.