Memorial Day Blog
Welcome to another week at Bogworld. Lots to talk about this week so lets get right to it...
Memorial Day
I always try to do something to mark Memorial Day here at Bogworld. This year I want to talk a little bit about my Dad. A World War 2 veteran who, like most WWII vets, would probably be embarrassed that I’m going to talk about him here. Thats something truly unique about that generation. They did extraordinary things to protect this country and our way of life, yet shrugged it off like it was nothing special. In my Dad’s case, he really never even talked that much about his experiences fighting the Japanese in the Pacific until he was well into his seventies. And then only after watching Saving Private Ryan with me and my Mom. My Mom shocked at some of the battle scenes asked aloud “That’s not real is it?” To which my Dad replied, “Yeh, that’s what it was like.”
That moment opened a dialogue between my Dad and I for the first time about his war experiences. Oh once in a while he would mention being in Borneo or some other exotic place but rarely in the context of being in a war.
Something about seeing those violent moments in Saving Private Ryan opened him up a little. Never completely. But a little.
Dad and his friends had fully intended to enlist with the Army and become a Ranger. One of those crazy guys who jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines to fight the Germans. But just before, at a rather wild party, one of his buddies accidentally shot my Dad in the leg and butt with a shotgun. Because of the wound my Dad was rejected for paratroop training and ended up in the Navy instead. Oddly enough, knowing how tough the war was on Army Paratroopers on or around D-Day, perhaps I am here today writing this because of an accidental shooting. How weird is that?
He ended up on a troop transport ship and had the very dangerous job of shuttling Marines onto enemy held beaches in small landing craft boats. I often think about that scene at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan where the Higgins boats are dropping troops right into the teeth of enemy machine gun fire. My Dad saw that countless times first hand.
He started talking about how carved and filed rings and things out of coral and metal they salvaged off of downed Japanese airplanes while on long night watches on the ship. He talked about how they had to be so weary of downed Japanese pilots who would often attempt to kill themselves and rescuers rather than be taken prisoner. He talked about once being caught between shore and the ship in a typhoon. They sealed up all their hatches and rode it out only to find themselves a mile onshore of an island once the storm ended. He talked about the deafening sound of the Quad 80 anti-aircraft guns they used to protect their ship from attacking planes.
He points to the famous photo of MacArthor returning to the Philippines and points to the landing craft to the far right and says, “I was driving that boat.”
To see all the horrors of war and experience all the adventures all probably before he was 20. I wonder how that all shaped the tough quiet man who is my father.
So here I am on Memorial Day weekend thinking of my Dad and all the veterans from that war and all the wars since. The young men and women who to this day sacrifice so much for this country. Think about the families of those soldiers and sailors who gave their lives for this country. Take a moment to think about all of them today.
Try to remember them every day.
PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP!
Every once in a while there is a big national debate like the one we have right now on whether or not its right for America to be torturing prisoners. No matter what reasons we might have to do it,i s it ever right to torture someone?
There are a lot of Right Wingers, particularly in the media, who have been excusing the practice of “enhanced interrogation techniques” because there might be a doomsday ticking time bomb scenario or they claim the techniques America uses are not really torture at all. Rush Limbaugh once compared the antics at Abu Grabe to fraternity house pranks. Sean Hannity recently promised he would submit himself to water boarding to show the world how its not so bad.
Well since Hannity never followed through with that promise, a right wing radio personality out of Chicago did. Here is the video...
PLEASE CLICK HERE!!
Maybe its the phrase “water boarding”. It almost sounds fun. Like a combination of water skiing and snow boarding or something. Certainly nothing sinister. But in fact, water boarding is simulating drowning. It directly triggers your brains most base panic centers. The human body involuntarily and instinctively goes into absolute fright. Your heart begins to pound at a rate that often produces heart attack. You can very easily really drown as water is being poured directly into your mouth and nose.
This right wing radio personality now gets it. Now if we could only get Dick Cheney to give this a try. Maybe then he would shut up and disappear. Thanks to this radio guy’s attempt to show how water boarding is nothing, we now know it is absolutely undeniably torture.