Veterans...Get the hell in here now!

BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
At 90, Air Force veteran expelled in 1955 for being a lesbian gets her honorable discharge​

"In 1955, Airman Second Class Helen Grace James was targeted and investigated by Air Force officials for her sexuality, part of a massive effort to remove gay and lesbian service members known as the "Lavender Scare." James's attorney recently received word the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records has agreed to change her status. "The Board has decided to upgrade Helen's discharge status to Honorable," James's attorney, J. Cacilia Kim, told The Washington Post."

https://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/in-1955-she-was-kicked-out-of-the-air-force-for-being-a-lesbian-at-90-she-s-fighting-back-1.506214

 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Say what you will about the Brit's...

All surviving World War Two veterans are being offered the chance to return to where they served, and pay their respects to comrades, free of charge.​

"The project is being funded by the Treasury, which has committed over £5m raised through London inter-bank lending rate (Libor) fines. Veterans who avail of the tour will be accompanied by a medic - paid for by the scheme."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-42796411

although the US does have a Honor Flight program
https://www.honorflight.org/about-honor-flight-networtk/
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
He was one of the first. Now, the last: A Navajo code talker remembers Iwo Jima...
Thomas Begay, right, a Navajo code talker and survivor of the World War II battle of Iwo Jima, receives a portrait presented by artist Val Benavidez at Camp Pendleton, Calif., on February 17, 2018. - DRAKE NICKELS/U.S. MARINE CORPS
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By CARL PRINE | The San Diego Union-Tribune (TNS) | Published: February 18, 2018
CAMP PENDLETON, California — Swirled in cannon smoke from a 21-gun salute and washed in the applause Iwo Jima’s survivors have come to anticipate during their annual reunions at Camp Pendleton, one of the 27 veterans stood out.

Wearing a crimson garrison cap, his chest spangled with a giant silver medal rimmed in turquoise, Thomas Begay stared at the wreath commemorating the scores of dead from that World War II battle 73 years ago, but his mind wasn’t fully on the spectacle.

He was thinking about fellow Navajo code talker Teddy Draper Sr., who died Dec. 14 at 96. His death came nine days after fellow Arizonan George B. Willie Sr. passed. He was 92.

“There were 33 of us assigned as Navajo code talkers but now there are no more. They’ve died,” said Begay, 92, who is believed to be the last surviving member of the 5th Marine Division’s famed bilingual radio unit on Iwo Jima.

He spoke softly to the Union-Tribune after making the long trek from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to California with retired Army lieutenant colonel Ronald Begay, the son who used to sit on his lap at these reunions.

He made a longer trip in World War II. It was that trip that would take him from boot camp in 1943 to the black sands of Iwo Jim on H-Hour, Feb. 19, 1945.

By the time he’d splashed ashore with the 27th Marines, his regiment already had lost two code talkers and he figured his odds were good to be the next.

“One was killed by a sniper. The other was a direct hit with a mortar,” said Begay, recalling 38 days of hell “and only one hot meal, when I was getting off the ship.”

They weren’t alone. Of the 110,000 GIs who stormed ashore Iwo Jima — mostly Marines and Navy corpsmen — nearly one out of every four became a casualty, including 6,821 killed in action.

Begay’s 27th Marine infantry regiment recorded 566 killed and 1,706 wounded.

“I got scared. I got really scared. My body, the whole thing got numb. I had no feeling. I was walking with my radio and it was hard, man. It’s huge and you’re by yourself and they’re trying to kill you,” he said.

Begay whispered about how Marines slapped corrugated metal across beach sand so they could scamper past the gunfire to safety.

He drew the route his 5th Marine Division took across the island, from raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi to the final, suicidal counterattack by the Japanese across a valley they called “Bloody Gorge.”

There also was the sickness that put him into a transport ship’s hospital after he left the island, probably malaria.

He pointed to the Congressional Silver Medal awarded to him and 300 other Navajo code talkers by President George W. Bush in 2001. The Marines estimate that they recruited about 400 Navajos into the program and 13 died in combat.

But mostly he wanted to bear witness to those initial 33 Navajos dragooned into the top secret code talker program inside Camp Pendleton’s 5th Marine Division in 1942 and 1943.

It started with 29 Navajos. They arrived May 5, 1942 at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.

After graduating, they received special instruction at Camp Elliott’s Fleet Marine Training Center — now part of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar — in how to encrypt messages and to operate radios before moving on to Camp Pendleton.

“I didn’t want to join the code talkers. I signed up for aerial gunnery school,” said Begay. “I went to boot camp and they gave me a PFC stripe. I went to Camp Pendleton and walked into a barracks and I didn’t know any of them.

“I turned to the sergeant and said, ‘I think you made a mistake. I signed up to be an aerial gunner. I don’t want to be a code talker. I don’t know the code. I don’t know anything about code talking.’

“He said, ‘Too bad. If you leave, desert, we’re going to shoot you. If you refuse or disobey an order, we’re going to bust you to private and put you in the brig.’ So I was threatened. I had no choice.”

But Begay was a natural — smart enough to learn a 20-code primer the sergeant made him memorize the first day but also highly immersed in Navajo language and culture.

Born near the New Mexican hamlet of Two Wells in 1926, Begay was herding 2,000 sheep by the time he turned six. He never spoke English until he was 13, when he was sent to school in Arizona, about three years before he joined the Marines.

“My mom said, ‘Your name is Thomas. When the white man comes, say ‘Thomas.’ So whenever someone came up to me and said something in English, I said ‘Thomas,’ ” Begay recalled.

That pastoral upbringing was key to mastering the code.

The first part of the cipher relied on a phonetic alphabet linked to unwritten Navajo nouns. The other was a list of borrowed phrases the radiomen used to describe Japanese weapons and units.

For example, “S” in the phonetic alphabet was “dibeh” — Navajo for sheep. “L” was “dibeh-yazzie,” lamb. “Y” was “tsah-as-zih,” the yucca shrub prized for its fibers used in sacred ceremonies and the roots, which were boiled into soap.

A Japanese bomber became the Navajo noun for “buzzard.” A fighter was a “hummingbird.” A submarine, “iron fish.”

When Begay and his fellow code talkers seamlessly strung the letters and words together in radio traffic, it boggled Japanese code crackers but allowed American commanders to plot openly through their Najavo translators how to beat their enemies.

It was so successful on Iwo Jima that for two decades past the war, Begay and his fellow code talkers weren’t allowed to divulge the classified program’s existence, a promise they kept but one that delayed widespread acclaim for their role in helping to win the war.

Shortly before Saturday’s service, Begay spoke of his eternal pride in being a Marine and marveled at the sacrifices he saw on Iwo Jima, but he also recalled the pain he and fellow Indians like Ira Hayes -- the famous Akimel O’odham Marine who helped raised an American flag atop Suribachi on the first day of battle — endured in uniform.

“They made fun of us,” said Begay, breaking into a chant white Marines would use to lampoon them. “You know. It was really sad how some people are so mean.”

Begay never quit serving his country. A year after his discharge from the Marines, he enlisted in the Army.

In late 1950, he found himself weighed down by a radio, scrabbling behind an artillery forward observer as they dodged Chinese sniper fire.

“He said, ‘Just follow me. I’ll tell you.’ I had a grease gun, but they were trying to get us,” Begay said.

After his Army tour and two years of correspondence classes, he became a line officer in the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. He rose to helm the Chinle Agency, where he was responsible for the Navajo Nation tribal trust program.

He retired in 1984, finishing four decades of distinguished federal service in and out of uniform.

Before he left Saturday’s ceremony, he lingered a few moments to talk alone to Kathy Painton, the vice president of the 5th Marine Division Association, one of the nonprofits that has organized reunions and has kept the memory of the dead alive in the souls of younger infantrymen.

Last year, they brought 15 Iwo Jima veterans to meet grunts training in Hawaii for different wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Painton was a baby when Iwo Jima was fought. Her dad, 25-year-old Private 1st Class George Addison Dunn of Danville, Illinois, died there.

She still wears a silver heart pendant he bought for her before he shipped out, the Marines’ eagle, globe and anchor insignia carved across it.

“They’re turning it over to us now,” she said. “It’s only us. We’ll carry on their memory.”
****************************************************************************
Victory in the Pacific: 1945
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/USN-Ops-XIV/index.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Iwo/index.html

 
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BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Army awards heroism medals to JROTC cadets killed in Florida school shooting
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"Three junior ROTC cadets who were killed in the Florida high school shooting last week will be honored with heroism medals by the U.S. Army. A spokesman for the U.S. Army told Fox News on Tuesday that Cadet Command approved Junior ROTC Heroism Medals for cadets Alaina Petty, Peter Wang and Martin Duque. According to students and teachers, Wang, 15, died in his junior ROTC uniform while helping students, teachers and staff escape from the shooting rampage."

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/20/army-awards-heroism-medals-to-jrotc-cadets-killed-in-florida-school-shooting.html
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West Point posthumously admits shooting victim Peter Wang to Class of 2025​

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/west-point-posthumously-admits-shooting-victim-peter-wang-to-class-of-2025-1.512708

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curious2garden

curious2garden

Well-Known Mod
Staff member
BarnBuster said:
......snip...... Wang, 15, died in his junior ROTC uniform while helping students, teachers and staff escape from the shooting rampage."

West Point posthumously admits shooting victim Peter Wang to Class of 2025​

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/west-point-posthumously-admits-shooting-victim-peter-wang-to-class-of-2025-1.512708

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Click to expand...
What were adults doing being helped by children? Wasn't it their job to help the students get out? What a tragedy.
 
Dankonomics_genetics

Dankonomics_genetics

Well-Known Member
My gramps ww2, another uncle got hit by a vc ambush near Saigon, died. My stepdad was in Saigon I think during tet too. My dad said he was in contien and the central highlands. And def was in Ireland too. Myself too as a child saw the war in Ireland.
 
Dankonomics_genetics

Dankonomics_genetics

Well-Known Member
And my Irish family too were are republicans. I comsidsr them soldiers in a war. But the world didn’t. Ones a national hero who was with bobby sands. I have a lot of respect though for them. I do the vc too and the nva. The afghan I pity a little if you see the videos? their fucked. I don’t agree with war cuz no one wins In war. Only the bankers and war profiteers do. But I see our fight as all one in the same. Oppression and imperialism and tyranny
 
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