D-Day, seventy years ago, remembering the trips to Normandy...

Talking to Mike at church fellowship last week, about how one has to teach the new soldiers to run through the machine gun fire, Mike's eyes got big. He had been taught that one can't do that, and I said you can's stay still and be anything but a target.Yesterday I watched Saving Private Ryan, have owned it for years but hadn't watched it ever. The big screen movie had been a solid lock in my mind. A powerful movie, and then I stayed for the credits and Mister Spielberg's comments after. Then I put Band of Brothers Part 2, Day of Days, on and watched as the paratroopers came in and tried to live through the drop.

The choice of movies had others clamoring for Longest Day, which I had read while young, I read all his books. But I will save it for today, it is too star studded but a great overall view of the span of the battle.

One of my cousins is on a honor tour of Normandy this week with his wife and other old folks.

I was stationed at Pinder Kaserne in Zirndorf, BRD from1978-1982, four years. One of the soldiers from that tour reminded me of where the name was earned. MOH John J. Pinder,

He died on his birthday, on D-Day, doing all he could to get communications established for the unit.

The same posting got more about Pinder, seems he played baseball and is considered by those that follow the game to have been one of many that would have made a difference. So Facebook makes a difference and does spread knowledge. And I know more about the day. Difficult to honor all those that served and died. While we had a large military presence in Europe, staff tours and studies relived all the battles.

Politicians posed and post and think about the effort. But like my American History teacher, that taught and coached the high school rifle team, took a trip to Gettysburg every summer. We have to connect, to honor and to grow into the best we can be during our time. And to ensure that our current politicians don't bend our admiration for the past into a very stupid future, where we have to do it all again.

So olde, I probably need a nap...

so I started today off missing one wife, and a bottle of milk.

No problem, pour last nights coffee on the rolled oats/raisins and nuke for two minutes, add one egg, and another minute. Eat with peach yogurt.

 Wife returns with milk and eggs and I go off to the YMCA. Told to buy beans and hot sausage at the Commissary on the way back. Did so. Only a light work out today, 5k rowing, 7.22 miles on bicycle machine, effort about an hour total.

Then off to range 15 at JBLM. To shoot of course. One redcoat target one AQT. Then back home to rest or finish lawn before Bible Study tonight. Life is so easy, something is going to be very bad soon.

Shot the target from largest to smallest.. I scored 200 rds of CCI 22LR by asking at the range. Keep asking, it is flowing slowly into the system.

So how would I address the graduates of the USAMA?

or how would you?

What is important that they know walking off as young new officers?

What must they be ready for?

What do you want them to report after having done their duty?

For sure the Command in Chief didn't cover my points.

It would be an interesting exercise to see how they would have written their graduation speech, or the one they want to deliver in thirty to forty years to another class.

Something to think about, we are talking about the nation's future and who we trust to hold it dear.

Finished reading "Lexington and Concord" by Athur B. Tourtellot...

The beginning of the war of the American Revolution -- pretty good read, has some information that I hadn't read before, and is presented differently than Paul Revere's Ride, which is not in the Bibliography for this author. Well cited, with footnotes and maps and illustrations and portraits from the period.

Mostly outside of reading and walking the park with my wife, I spent the day remembering those that stopped living for their country, giving it all up. My obsession with my passing age was well summed up by NFO on his post Facts on Vietnam Service , time is flowing. I was in that war late.

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But mostly I dwell thinking about Rim Michael Dungey, born in 1946, member of the 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Washington - by transport ship to the Republic of Vietnam. Where as an infantryman, grunt, Private First Class he would give up his life to a booby trap? At about the same time I was on my way to Fort Benning's school for boys, Infantry Officer Candidate School.

Nope, he isn't related that I know about. Born in South Dakota, raised in Southern California, Crawford High School graduate. Well thought of By those that knew and wanted to write about him. One of over fifty plus thousand that died in service, names upon a wall.

I have always asked the question, am I worth it? Was their sacrifice, death and effort for me to honor with the best life they could never live? Have I lived up to what they could have done if they hadn't paid the piper? too early, so needlessly? But then I was willing, and I feel a brotherhood with them, as they did their best to win wars and give the next generations their finest gift -- their life and their love. Honor them eternally.

It is Memorial Day Observed...

Ever walk the grave yards looking at the fallen service people? One should try to do so every Memorial Day. Go out and find you can't read all the names, appreciate all that they gave up on - representing us on some battlefield, somewhere, some time ago... or even not so long ago. They are still in danger, still targets of our enemies and so will become one day one of those you won't give enough time to remember, consider, to ponder the price.

I worked an Appleseed shoot this weekend, in a small Victorian Town marketing itself as such, at their shooting club. We took time to fire a volley in honor of thirteen of the fallen of Massachusetts from 19 April, 1775. Not sure they get a nudge in Heaven every time some one remembers to say their name, so the effect is for the many that just want to understand the price: the real price of our Liberty, our Land and their love for it, something we may never completely understand.

So find them, respect them, remember them.

Jonas Parker
Isaac Muzzy
Jonathan Harrington, Jr.
Samuel Hadley
Caleb Harrrington

Robert Monroe
John Brown
Ashabel Porter
Abner Homer
Isaac Davis
John Raymond
Jason Russell
Deacon Haynes. 


But for sure, don't forget that all the wars and troubles, battles won and lost, had two sides - and they will all be drinking mead in Valhalla, such a price to pay for a mark carved in stone - remember the fallen and respect their lives and deaths.

Been playing in the dirt... a real boy...

My cousin mentioned that Dungeys were tenant farmers or just farm workers as a general rule of kind of folks they was... long ago and far away, and then not so far away and not so many generations back. Hmm, and the problem with that is? None that I can see. Yeomen, is just fine, bauer ist besser, and cattlemen just raise all their vegetables and grains into steaks. Works for me.

Was it Esau that was the hunter, and Jacob the farmer? and who got all the women? Not that that was my point but one can play foolish with Bible stories read or told wrong. Still, I was turning soil, cutting grass and weeds, making the home better for my wife as I will be on the trail again this weekend. Port Townsend, Appleseed. Looking on the internet, there are some fine gardens much bigger and better than my wife's, but we are just little old people and must watch some television mindless entertainment - ever notice you never miss what you didn't miss while you weren't looking? When I would return home from long periods overseas on government grievance work, I noticed that the soap operas hadn't moved that far along from what I remembered the last time I was in the States.

YMCA and shooting stuff readied tomorrow, pack up my Caravan, early departure on Saturday morning.

I walk alone, but not really...

Loner, not part of the pack nor the group or the gang... alone but watching. Friendly enough, but not overwhelming, hopefully not smothering. Strange until close to eccentric, but odd is closer.

I have ridden my motorcycle with other cyclists, but mostly I ride alone to my own destination, riding with my bother and nephew was neat, but they actually talked to each other while they rode and I just go in silence, or all the silence the wind and wheels will give me on top of an active engine. I am content with the ride, as long as I maintain upright, when I am down a little help is appreciated. And I do go down, not as hard as I once did, but hard enough.

It has taken my wife years to get accustomed to me not doing what everyone else does, she has to explain me to her friends and relatives. I shouldn't burden her, but I am going to remain myself and she accepts me, her friends and relatives that haven't really met me only feel a little sorry for her. She is my lover, and that has been a real stretch to love enough to not be truly alone. We ignored two governments as much as possible, but they did get involved in making our partnership legal and binding. Duh, like we couldn't find a way out of their paperwork - lots of others have. It took my mother a few years to figure out how strong we were committed. If one or two are crazy enough they will be committed. But it isn't the paperwork with some unloving government agency.

Instant communication has made me farther away rather than closer. I start ignoring telephone rings because there are so many I have no interest in listening to trying to persuade me of something. Call blocking worked for a bit, but ignoring the rings always works. Emails are easier to delete without opening, and if it is someone that I want to read or hear from I can open my end and do so.

Facebook has pictures, posted by interesting folks, relatives and friends, and I always love to see me in actions (if he would just get younger and thinner). So even with NSA storing all my bits and bytes, I don't mind for my own utility, their foolish storing of everything because they don't know what it is they really need to do their job. Government job, they only have to show you something to make it look like they are critical, not actually productive.

Sent a message to my sister with our parents slides, looking for a picture of a younger me and my Harley-Davidson 1948 flathead with the tank shift and the rocking clutch pedal. Dad had to have taken some kind of a photograph, he really rebuilt it, I only rode it. Pennsylvania to Coral Gables, Florida and back, alone but not lonely.

For Facebook folks: You need something to feel guilty about? How about the number of friends that you never hear from now, because you are so strange, in what you share, post and postulate? Yes, they only thought they really knew you....

From a Facebook Friend:

Reread Dune this weekend. Perhaps the 6th time I have read it.
I am struck by how much more the details emerge in the story as I, the reader, have matured with age.

Was this Herberts plan all along?
 
My comment: I am sure that great books speak to a new you, every time you return, the words didn't change, but you have.