Happy Veteran's Day!!!!

[silver_bullet]

Just a friendly reminder... Tomorrow is Veteran's Day! Please be sure to thank the veterans you see for the freedoms we enjoy due to their sacrifices as well as their families sacrifices... Fly the flag with pride!

[Deaf Bob]

With all my heart I thank every veteran for my freedoms!
Thank You!

[Barry Donovan]

Another veterans day.

I feel I am more into it, as the mercenary I am.. no less.
Truth wins. Truth loses. Truth does it all.



I got the life member stuff from DAV yesterday. Not sure how strict they stay, but feel they acknowledge the reality of each person that joins.
A general can only get 5 stars during war.

Truth can also hide... like a staff sargent with a distinguished flying cross.

Looking up as every veteran should continue to do..
There is more honor before us, than anything we could ever give...sometimes with no name at all.

My greatest respect goes to infantry. The greatest people in the world are down on the ground.

I was a crew chief in tactical quagmires.. all by myself. the awakening for me was psychology of infantry.. just listening. Just the psychology of infantry kept me going. Actions. My oh my. That is something else.



I found I am naturally helping already, I give my neighbor the 222 mile round trip ride to Togus all the time. Now with my own vehicle.. I don't ask or question what gas money or a coffee he may be able to give. As that turned out, they found a way to reimburse me instead..keep the old iron v8 fed.

There is common sense out there, getting just a few together.

Happy Veteran's Day.

[DanStokes]

I have the most profound gratitude for all who serve and have served. My hope is that no one from either side would ever have to die in battle - but that isn't real and won't happen, certainly in the small amount of life I have left (no, I'm not dying, just an old fart). So given the world as it is, huge THANKS to our vets and current servicefolks.

Dan

[fatguyzinc]

yep, thanks to all our service men and women.
so many people take for granted the fact that they
CAN go out and protest ( like idiots...) without being
thrown in jail or just shot in the street by whomevers
in charge...

without the sacrifices all of our service people past
and present have given, life as we know it today for
the rest of us wouldnt be what it is.

a giant heartfelt thank you and tons of gratitude go
out to all our service people of yesterday and today.
thanks to you, what YOU gave up and sacrificed--
sometimes even your lives-- is what lets me and
millions of others live the way we do and enjoy
the freedoms we have.

although it seems woefully inadequate---thank you.

[John Brewer]

Happy Veterans Day to all veterans. May we all continue to remember the sacrifices made by all veterans and their families.

Proud to serve USAF 1966-1969

[Barry Donovan]

here is something new for this year.
Heroes and Legends for the astronauts hall of fame..
kennedy space florida.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/explore-attractions

the opening ceremony was today.

the X15 sticking out of the building, as a little silhouette, has the top speed since 1967..
it was 4520 miles an hour, or mach 6.72
record unbroken.
my 87 subaru is limited to 4500, very close.

Some do not know they are pioneers, or the power of it.
Even I was a guinea pig for a wing design, kc135e. All the crews and chiefs, boomers.. some never even knew that, the early 90s. All that stuff feeds planes to follow.

[pdub]

THANK YOU vets! Thank you all. Y'all are why we can still do what all we do and we sometimes take it for granted because y'all have done your jobs so well for so long. Thank you.

[Barry Donovan]

I do not talk to any one from the past, and am an example.. it does not need a bullet to your own head. Veterans day, I think of what has gone even after surviving the bad tour.

anyway, I was a perfect candidate for the big nap. I guess "hits" victims need to retreat. I was grateful to be informed some years later.

I was looking through modern air force times,
found the head of the air national guard, he leads all 105,500 air guardsmen.

I am looking through the current and history, and as it turns out he was a flight instructor in barnes mass. at the time one of maines kc135e's came crashing down into their tiny runway...shaking an entire neighborhood.
Two of us jumped out, I was gimping with a fresh metal plate in my foot, bleeding..
and we continued to run in front of the plane as we ripped the blue taxi lights out of the ground and chucked them away from the screaming outboard engines.

I wonder what he would think of that today.

those outboards were shut down, I kept looking back waiting to see intervals in the blades to tell me they were going slow enough not to worry about. It was shredding the lawn when we first jumped out of the plane... big thing to worry about is compression stall with debris, as we were in front of them.

We finally get to spot to park, right on the ramp and realized I was deaf, and my head was swelling. My headset moved off my head while running. The other crew chief had me find a seat, deep breath signals. We had talked without words much more than once... we were in a life and death situation with an APU a few years prior. We could have let that plane burn. 57-1491. It lived to see 13 more years.

I took my boot off and found the blood. Checked to see the metal plate and flesh was not ripped open or hanging out.. I was good to go. Simply challenged a young scar.

that silly day was "active duty for training" orders, and they disappeared. That is just one of the orders that disappeared....

feeling unsafe? realizing you have not talked for years? there is places to go to, and phone numbers to dial.
I started with the V.A. hotline in 1998, I could not speak clearly, and hung up. I do not know to this day why I was shutting down, hands, mouth, fingers, legs and arms...
I thought I was going to be dead.
A most peculiar thought is why 911 did not get called first.
well, my brain was missing some functions too...
I was ready. I was ready to sleep. 2 years of non stop paralyzing pain...
could not hurt myself. Tears ended up fixing a few things instead.

don't bother with suicide, something else is the greater judge.

[Monster]

To my brothers and sisters in arms, Thank you! To those that served before me and made the path clear for me to carry on, Thank you! To those of you who support us with such unconditional love, Thank you! We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love our country and countrymen so much!

[Deaf Bob]

A cousin who served on a ship off the coast of Nam and 2nd tour in the riverboats just humphed..
Guess he'd rather forget..
Somebody asked if we pitched in would he want to go back and sightsee "HELL NO"
same thing with Styeve the APV driver.
Guess some stuff best tucked away..

[Barry Donovan]

the mars hill bank robbery

the darker side of veterans tours.
If I was even local police who grew up with him, and went in the buddy system.
I would have blown his head off.

*kabboom* like a ripe pumpkin.
no mercy.

the only drawback to infantry... you could be the biggest pile of thieving shit, and you will get through.
It makes the good survivors even more heroic.
if not seeing the chance..
that chance is to live good, take your tangent and live the tough luck.
leave me alone...and everyone else that suffered the similar bad tours.

it is ashame about the fairy tale, its almost like a lusty clap brain.
X heads and tangents well known today.
America is getting damn smart.

keep the faith is not a happy command...if you don't by nature.

I have even seen leaders go blank face to a mishap attempted to be spoke, or something bad witnessed.
pretending its a chalkboard to be erased for the lesson of the moment...
killing and snapping true souls on the spot for the remainder of their days.

I even found one, his decision helped finalize my unnecessary life of disabled..blank faced pansy of big rank.
"I was born and bred for this stuff," he said. This was decades later.

Tyrants always are. Just ask them.
imagine knowing you will outlive them, with more brain cells.

A true veteran wins...
the truth.
A most peculiar thing unfolded for me as decades go by:
I am the damn general. It plays with a delusion.
my surname and tricks..
oh my goodness.

my laugh will echo for hundreds of years to the same lesson looking down.

"Happy" veteran's day.



I have reached out, fed necessity. that is my new mission...for all I am worth, I find the tangent victims.
I have the suicide stories, I have the tangents, the climbers, cannibals thieves rapists, thugs, snappers and psychopaths...
all there together. We all had to die together.

how did most of us keep going...