14 Replies to “Memorial Day 2013 open thread [Darleen Click]”

1. charlesaustin says:

   May 27, 2013 at 10:47 am

   Thanks to all who obtained our liberty and preserved it from Lexington Green to Kandahar and all points in between.

2. 11B40 says:

   May 27, 2013 at 11:11 am

   Greetings:

   Back in the summer of the last ’68, I was doing my military service down in Texas, which, besides the Bronx, is the place I’d most like to be from. For several months, I was assigned to the base’s funeral detail. We would provide pallbearers and a rifle squad for those requesting military funerals in the local area.

   Military-wise, it wasn’t bad duty. On the days when we weren’t scheduled for a funeral, we would spend several hours practicing our “drill & ceremonies” and a couple more squaring
   away our uniforms and equipment. On funeral days, we would head out as early as necessary on a 44-passenger bus, often in civilian clothes or else fatigues with our first-class uniforms and equipment in tow. Often we would change into our duty uniforms at the funeral home, once in the casket display room, or on the bus itself.

   It being Texas and the Viet Nam war being in full swing, we often had several funerals a week to perform. There was a certain spectrum from the World War graduates through the Viet Nam casualties. The former might involve a local veterans’ group and an afterward BBQ or such. The latter were somewhat more emotionally raw as most of us were facing our own deployments in the near future.

   Two funerals of the latter sort have stayed with me through the years. The first was of a young Private First Class who had been MIA for several months before his remains were recovered. I was on the pallbearer squad that day and when we went to lift the casket, it almost flew up in the air. There was so little of the young soldier left that we totally overestimated the weight we were lifting and almost looked decidedly unprofessional.

   The other was that of a Negro Specialist 4th Class. I was in the rifle squad that day. In the rendering of military honors, there is a momentary pause between the end of the (21-gun) rifle salute and the beginning of the playing of “Taps”. It is a moment of profound silence in most cases. During that moment, the young soldier’s mother gave out a yowl from the depths of her grief that so startled me that I almost dropped the rifle out of my hands. That yowl echoes within me still.

   I’ll readily admit that, as a result of my experiences, I became much imbued with a sense of duty and respect to and for our fallen. Hopefully, this year, when our media do their reporting they will show some of the same and let “Taps” be played out in its entirety. It would be nice for a change.

3. BigBangHunter says:

   May 27, 2013 at 11:42 am

   – Pause and reflect in the words of a true American, no teleprompter needed.

4. BigBangHunter says:

   May 27, 2013 at 12:19 pm

   – Unclear on the concept: “Wait….you’re saying they DON’T have valee parking at Burger King?

5. dicentra says:

   May 27, 2013 at 2:43 pm

   Today I’m wearing my stars-n-stripes tie-dyed tee shirt, a blue bandana, and listening to my Americana iTunes mix, which consists of everything from Sousa to The Grand Canyon Suite to the theme songs from “Rockford Files,” “SWAT,” and “Indiana Jones.”

   God Bless America, and God grant those who crossed the veil for our freedom some extra celestial-ale on us.

6. dicentra says:

   May 27, 2013 at 2:45 pm

   Check out the Google compromise they’ve got going on.

   They’re still evil, trust me.

7. TaiChiWawa says:

   May 27, 2013 at 6:31 pm

   Although a sense of grief is unavoidable today when we remember the sacrifice of those killed in battle, I’d like to think that their spirits would also want us to celebrate their lives with good cheer.

8. Merovign says:

   May 27, 2013 at 6:42 pm

   Thanks to all who have given their all, I wish the giving was done, but it never is.

9. BigBangHunter says:

   May 27, 2013 at 8:04 pm

   – Just another chance for the Progressive bottom feeders of HBO to drum up some Libtard viewers and show their total lack of decency and class.

10. BigBangHunter says:

    May 27, 2013 at 8:18 pm

    – McOldFart is now down to acting as Bumblefucks bagman, and his daughter is learning new things every day. Next week she’ll learn about fire and water.

11. BT says:

    May 27, 2013 at 8:54 pm

    Meanwhile at Bing

12. bour3 says:

    May 28, 2013 at 12:11 am

    I’ve been to a lot of funerals what with AIDS and all but I hadn’t been to one so outstanding as my own father’s funeral at Ft. Logan.

    Dad would drive by the place on the way to his favorite bar on South Sheridan and remark about his future occupancy.

    It is the most precise funeral I’ve ever seen. Very snappy. No time at all for maudlin sentimentality, no Siree, but not an avoidance of emotional issues either, the women and men too were sobbing. It sounded to me very Klingonesque compared to the many others I’d been to by then, yes, a lot of language they use that sounds out of place elsewhere, “call to duty” — who says that? — responsibility, honor, patriotism, terms that sound jingoistic outside of military places like Logan, Fitzsimmons, Academy, Lowery, and such. It is bucolic with ponds, a totally cold November and right at the point where my father’s loyalty to family and country his response to challenges were enumerated and his reward for a life lived well acknowledged, right at that point at the end preceding the rifle shots, where one imagines my father reaching toward heaven the Canadian geese honking out of sight behind the pavilion took flight as if choreographed by heavenly hosts and we all stood there in the cold stunned speechless.

    “Somebody was down there and threw a rock in the pond.”

    That is teenage bathos.

    But I would like to say that I’ve hear Taps many times and it is not one of my favorite tunes. It means go to bed, doesn’t it? I recall Boy Scouts doing that very poorly. And High School players doing that poorly too, and on tv, of course, and movies, but I have never heard it played so expertly and so compelling clear as that. It was a VFW guy, I think. I suddenly understood it. And it totally got me. I expected a recording, but no, it was a real guy, and man, can he ever play that.

13. RI Red says:

    May 28, 2013 at 9:33 am

    11B40, four years later I was doing the same thing out of Ft. Wolters, TX. Just finished Primary Rotary Wing and had a week or two before Advanced began at Ft, Rucker, AL. Lots of Vietnam casualties, the war was winding down, and the funerals were very intense.
    100Bravo.

14. wally says:

    May 28, 2013 at 11:37 pm

    Yesterday I was working a little on a project and listening to old guy radio. (American standards, that kind of thing) The thought hit me, when I was 20 in Viet Nam, I never imagined being old. The World War II. vets were middle-aged. Now they’re all dying off.
    Here’s a list of guys I knew who didn’t get the chance to grow old:
    James Lane
    Kenneth Pavan
    Ricky Welch
    Phil DiGregorio
    Robert Brown
    Mike Simpson
    Mark Longdin
    Fred Cadille
    Rodney Crane
    Gene Sampler
    Sandy Hooker
    I could think of some more, but those are enough. They weren’t all heroes in a classic sense, a couple were. They were factory kids, surfers, farm boys, juvenile delinquents, the whole gamut, but they put on a uniform and died in a land they never heard of because their country asked. That has to count for something.

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