The Few The Proud

My Uncle served in WWII as a Marine...he was in the 2nd Marine Division, served and fought in the epic battle of Okinawa (where his Grand-Nephew Angelo, during his Service in the U.S. Navy, visited and saw the damage that still exists today).

I will ask for some stories and memories to include here. I remember during WWII it was a time for cartoons...many political statements made each day with exaggerated drawings, satire and dark humor hung on the wall in our attic.

Who the Heck Was KILROY??

KILROY WAS HERE!

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, where his job was to go around to check the number of rivets the workers had completed. Riveters were paid piecework rates and so got paid by the rivets they installed. Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so that the rivets wouldn't be counted twice.

When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would go back and erase his marks. Later, an off-shift inspector would come on duty and go through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships which the yard had constructed. His message became a curiosity and rang the bell with the memories of the servicemen, because they picked up the phrase and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific so that before the war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable. (It is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there to add the message wherever they could think to hide it). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam Conference.

The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.

So now You Know!

THESE ARE MODERN SOLDIERS...

THE REALITY OF WAR AND COMRADERY REMAINS THE SAME.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs ~ Dire Straits

"BROTHERS IN ARMS"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XVVZPefbR4&feature=related ~ Orchestral Version, Mark Knopfler

SLEEP LAST NIGHT?

Bed a little lumpy..?

Toss and turn any....?

Wish the heat was higher...Maybe the a/c??

Had to go to the john......Need a drink of water....

?

?

Yes... It is like that!

Count your blessings, pray for them, and the next time when...the other car cuts you off and you must hit the brakes, or you have to park a little further from Walmart than you want to, or you're served slightly warm food at the restaurant, or you're sitting and cursing the traffic in front of you, or the shower runs out of hot water, think of them...

Protecting your freedom!

~Message from Iraq~

The proud warriors of Baker Company wanted to do something to pay tribute to our fallen comrades so since we are part of the only Marine Infantry Battalion left in Iraq the one way that we could think of doing that is by taking a picture of Baker Company saying the way we feel:

'WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN'

And are proud to serve our country.

Semper Fi !!

1st Sgt Dave Jobe.

Baker Company would like to let the folks back home know that they remember why they're there and that they remember those who've been lost.....

No doubt you've seen this mailing before; I thought it would be good to have it on this page to inspire reflection in the whole world.

Leading the fight is U S Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, known as 'Iron Mike' or just 'Gunny'. He is on his third tour in Iraq . He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour.

Then, on September 19, he got blown up... He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US Marines.. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. 'You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision,' he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term 'the longest walk', stepping gingerly into a 5 foot deep and 8 foot wide crater.

The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it. He cut the wire and used his 7 inch knife to probe the ground. 'I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs,' he says. 'That's when I knew I was screwed.' Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet 'A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded,' he recalls. 'As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me...' I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down.'

His fellow Marines cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there 'My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down,' says Sgt Burghardt. 'I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that...They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.' As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. 'I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.' He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. 'I flipped them one.. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week.'

Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit. Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents.

on left is the modern version, while the original version is relegated to uniform buttons.

Eagle, Globe, and Anchor for the dress uniform: officer (left) & enlisted (right)

The new seal consisted of the traditional Marine Corps Eagle, Globe, and Anchor emblem in bronze; however, an American bald eagle replaced the crested eagle depicted on the 1868 emblem, and is depicted with wings displayed, standing upon the western hemisphere of the terrestrial globe, and holding in his beak a scroll inscribed with the Marine Corps motto "Semper Fidelis" (Always Faithful) with the hemisphere superimposed on a fouled anchor. The seal is displayed on a scarlet background encircled with a Navy blue band edged in a gold rope rim and inscribed "Department of the Navy, United States Marine Corps" in gold letters.

Coincident with the approval of this seal by the President, the emblem centered on the seal was adopted in 1955 as the official Marine Corps Emblem.

The history of the United States Marine Corps began with the founding of the Continental Marines in 1775 to conduct ship-to-ship fighting, provide shipboard security and discipline enforcement, and assist in landing forces. Its mission evolved with changing military doctrine and foreign policy of the United States. Owing to the availability of Marine forces at sea, the United States Marine Corps has served in nearly every conflict in United States history. It attained prominence when its theories and practice of amphibious warfare proved prescient, and ultimately formed a cornerstone of the Pacific Theater of World War II. By the early 20th century, the Marine Corps would become one of the dominant theorists and practitioners of amphibious warfare. Its ability to rapidly respond on short notice to expeditionary crises has made and continues to make it an important tool for American foreign policy.^[1]

Dwight D. Eisenhower fought and served as Liutenant and as General in the Military...in TWO World Wars. Then he served the Nation as our President. Listen to his words regarding war and military spending: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/main.html