From The News Desk

[joed47]

Well boys and girls I guess we're in the CHIT now. I really hope someone comes up with a solution that works. How in the hell did we breed so many crooks. JoeD.

[swanny]

Joe, Its to bad we don't have term limits in the congress and the senate. I think that is the only way we might be able to curb all of the corruption. We have term limits for the President. It sure seems that once these clowns arrive in DC the power seems to kick in and they forget who sent them there and whom they are to represent!! How in the world does Barney Frank and our own Maxine Waters keep getting re-elected?! I mean the old Fox is in the hen house and now he is going to have a blank check for a Trillion dollars!! Shoot maybe we should just all go on welfare and sign up for the gravy train! I surely am tired of paying for all of this Sh@#%$!!! Semper Fi!......Dale

[TERRY TRUE]

Dale,
My friend,I believe this is only the begining of this. We might even see bread lines again.

Believe in our LORD,

Terry

[joed47]

I hope not,but you may be right. I am taking the weekend off and enjoy life while I can. My brother is comming up. We'll tip a few and tell some lies about who was the best Marine . LOL Semper Fi everyone and have a great weekend. JoeD. ;D

[LarryK]

From the NEWS DESK................

This is an article I picked up from a good friend and a fellow Vet.

JoeD.....................It's called

"WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?"

I think you'll like it..................Thank you JoeD


WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?"
A college student posted a request on an INTERNET newsgroup asking
for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the
question: "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" This is what I wrote back:

[Author Unknown]
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were
destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We
lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were
Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all
sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some
were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.

Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great bit--closer
to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ
from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us
never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and
mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like
folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often
haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears
that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death
for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day's work.
Life's a pregnant dog then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy,
worried, sad.

We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and
drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We
are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college
professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the
history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are
sleepless. Often sleepless.

We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated
bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush,
deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and
rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high
mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or
on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.

We wore berets, bandannas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets,
canvas, rash and rot. We ate chloroquine and got malaria anyway. We
got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent
our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high
water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie
behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or
barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.

We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared,
and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best
thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and
their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough
or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.

Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we had
not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably
most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world,"
shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-agonized and taught to
kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and
were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back
in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank
heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our
friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.

And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as
if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest
or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.

Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly
or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different--what makes
us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody
else will. But we appreciate your asking.

Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in
comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely
black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or
they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and
formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or
farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names
like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans,
Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are
Vietnamese.

We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and
priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams
and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters
and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and
lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or
not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and
bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards
and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.

Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we
loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others,
our loved ones came back but never would be the same.

We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and
shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in
small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy
ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians
and Buddhists and Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the
atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.

We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death.
We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or
lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up.
We want, desperately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites
of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it,
its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could
remember.

Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of
us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody
will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.

Adam, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car
next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to
Washington. Go to the Wall. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend.
There will be hundreds there...no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to
them. I'll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry
a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I'm a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30
years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means.

Author Unknown


Again I like to thank JoeD for this article............................

This is LarryK............Semper FI and God Bless You...............

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[mikeyb]

To all My fellow Marines past and present,

Happy Birthday and Semper Fi and a shout out to our beloved Corps. May God keep our troops safe and bring them home soon. As I have always told my family, one of the proudest days in my life was the day I became a Marine and my time in Crash Crew. Semper Fi to all and God Bless America.
PS God night Chesty wherever you are.

Mikeyb

[LarryK]

From The NEWS DESK..................................

This came passed my desk and wanted to shear it with you.



The Sack Lunches

I put my carry-on in the luggage compartment and sat down in my assigned seat. It was going to be a long flight. 'I'm glad I have a good book to read Perhaps I will get a short nap,' I thought.

Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation. 'Where are you headed?' I asked the soldier seated nearest to me.

'Petawawa. We'll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we're being deployed to Afghanistan

After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sack lunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hours before we reached the east, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time..

As I reached for my wallet, I overheard soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. 'No, that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn't be worth five bucks. I'll wait till we get to base '

His friend agreed.

I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch. I walked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty dollar bill. 'Take a lunch to all those soldiers.' She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. 'My son was a soldier in Iraq ; it's almost like you are doing it for him.'

Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, 'Which do you like best - beef or chicken?'

'Chicken,' I replied, wondering why she asked. She turned and went to the front of plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class. 'This is your thanks.'

After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room. A man stopped me. 'I saw what you did. I want to be part of it. Here, take this.' He handed me twenty-five dollars.

Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked, I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand, an said, 'I want to shake your hand.'

Quickly unfastening my seatbelt I stood and took the Captain's hand. With a booming voice he said, 'I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot.' I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.

Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.

When we landed I gathered my belongings and started to deplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!

Upon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. 'It will take you some time to reach the base. It will be about time for a sandwich. God Bless You.'

Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travelers. As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals.

It seemed so little...

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life,wrote a blank check made payable to ' America for an amount of 'up to and including my life.'

That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.'



I JUST DID


HOW ABOUT YOU...................From the news desk......LarryK




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