This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Historical

  • One hero’s story

    Lucas_JH

    I got this email a little while ago;

    Sorry to send this sad note that Marine PFC. Jack Lucas, USMC is in the hospital with cancer. He is 80 years old.

    PFC Lucas is the youngest ever recipient of the Medal of Honor. At 17 years old, he earned the Medal on Iwo Jima in February 1945. Imagine what a Marine had to do, amongst all those many heroes, to earn “The Medal.”

    There is a web site, http:/www.forrestgeneral.com go to “e-mail a patient” and they ask for your name, phone number, and e-mail address. It also requires his room number. It is room 4421 This is probably to weed out the whackos. It would be great and very easy, easy to send the Marine Corps hero a note.

    Semper Fidelis,

    XXX XXX, Retired Marine

    Well, it piqued my curiosity. What does one Marine do to stand out from among the thousands of Marines on Iwo Jima? Luckily, PFC Lucas was never shy about telling his story. From the Quantico Sentry, the amazing story of a fourteen year old who lied about his age to become a Marine;

    “When I heard the news of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, a cold chill ran down me. To think that something like that could happen to my country,” Lucas could not describe his feelings as he pictured the day from 65 years ago as if it were yesterday. ‘‘I became obsessed. As of that day, I was going to fight for my country. I wasn’t really thinking about age requirements and that wasn’t going to stop me.”

    Despite his mother’s disproval, he forged his consent papers and had his stepfather lie for him so he could become a Marine.

    […]

    Lucas was working at Pearl Harbor at age 17 when Marine units were loading ships to head to the front lines. So determined to fight, he stowed away on one of the ships and was on his way to the forward edge of the battle field. He told a whole story explaining how he survived aboard the ship without being discovered, but he turned himself in after 29 days at sea to avoid being declared a deserter.

    The National World War II Museum quotes his Medal of Honor Citation;

    Jack Lucas received the Medal of Honor “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima… While creeping through a treacherous, twisting ravine which ran in close proximity to a fluid and uncertain frontline on D-plus-1 day, Pfc. Lucas and three other men were suddenly ambushed by a hostile patrol which savagely attacked with rifle fire and grenades. Quick to act when the lives of the small group were endangered by two grenades which landed directly in front of them, Pfc. Lucas unhesitatingly hurled himself over his comrades upon one grenade and pulled the other under him, absorbing the whole blasting forces of the explosions in his own body in order to shield his companions from the concussion and murderous flying fragments. By his inspiring action and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice, he not only protected his comrades from certain injury or possible death but also enabled them to rout the Japanese patrol and continue the advance. His exceptionally courageous initiative and loyalty reflect the highest credit upon Pfc. Lucas and the U.S. Naval Service. “

    MSNBC described his injuries;

    Lucas suffered more than 200 wounds from head-to-toe and was saved by dozens of surgeries. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic action at the age of 17, the youngest recipient of that honor since the Civil War.

    He is one of 27 American soldiers who were awarded the Medal of Honor during 45 days of fighting on Iwo Jima.

    Wikipedia has a little bit more of his life after saving his comrades;

    He was evacuated to the hospital ship Samaritan, and then treated at various field hospitals prior to his arrival in San Francisco, California on 28 March 1945. He eventually underwent 21 surgeries. To this day, there are still about 200 pieces of metal, some the size of 22 caliber bullets, still left in Lucas — which set off airport medal detectors.[2]

    The mark of desertion was removed from his record in August of that year while he was a patient at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Charleston, South Carolina. He was discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve because of disability resulting from his wounds on 18 September 1945, following his reappointment to the rank of Private First Class.

    In addition to the Medal of Honor, PFC Lucas was awarded the Purple Heart; Presidential Unit Citation; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one bronze star; American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.

    I’m richer because I took the time to know Jacklyn Harrell Lucas. Take a moment to send him an email at the hospital link above in the quoted email

  • Why the PhD won’t vote McCain

    Doing my evening patrolling around the internet, I stumbled over a post by Deebow at Blackfive entitled “One Reason I Will Vote For McCain“. Deebow links to an opinion piece on Military.com entitled “Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain“, written by Phillip Butler, a former Naval Academy classmate and fellow POW of John McCain’s.

    Now, Deebow did an admirable job critiquing Mr. Butler’s piece, but I’d like to pile on – seein’s how I’ve recently become a “Blog for McCain“.

    Mr. Butler begins by telling us what a piss-poor student and cadet John McCain was. I’m sure he wasn’t the first and as an ROTC instructor, I can tell you he wasn’t the last. The worst story he could recite was the time McCain took Butler, an underclassman, off of the campus grounds to a bar seven miles away and wouldn’t let Butler have a beer. GASP!

    Now Butler goes on to say “I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year…” but he doesn’t, because that’s the worst one he could tell – if he had worse stories to tell he certainly would have given the title of his article. (Emphasis is my own throughout)

    Then Butler writes;

    [H]e barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

    Ah! Speculation – not proof, just a bunch of post-pubescent boys making guesses about their elders’ judgement. Hardly evidence.

    Butler begins to veer off into the absurd;

    People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always “No – John McCain was a POW with me.” The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

    More of the same crap I’ve run into from the VVAW and IVAW people recently – an intellectually vacant discussion over whose service has the most worth. Funny how they always slip into that mode of superiority. But Butler continues along that line of reasoning;

    Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years.

    I’m not demeaning Butler’s service, but splitting hairs like that is ridiculous. It borders on being a crybaby.

    But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

    The media makes him out to be a hero, he hasn’t contributed to that not a whit. He’s always said he’s no different than from any other POW. His book is very clear on that point.

    John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case….But it must be known that many POW’s suffered similarly, not just John.

    Who has said differently? I’ve never seen any media stories, books or movies that ever said McCain’s treatment and condition was different from anyone else’s.

    John was offered, and refused, “early release.” Many of us were given this offer.

    That’s not a reason to not vote for him, Mr. Butler.

    John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many – not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

    Again, no one has ever made that distinction.

    He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

    McCain has admitted that thousands of times, so where is Butler going with this?

    We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

    So now Butler can see into the future? It’s the same thing they said about President Reagan in his 1984 campaign – not very original.

    I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

    I agree completely. If that was the only thing McCain was campaigning on as his experience I probably wouldn’t vote for him either. In fact, I voted against a guy in the 2004 election who campaigned solely on his medals and his three months in Vietnam. But John McCain isn’t even talking about his time as a POW during the campaign, is he? John Kerry, on the other hand ended each sentence with a reference to his three months service in Vietnam.

    I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

    I’m known as a hothead, too, but see we hotheads know when to turn it off. The “finger next to that red button” was just scare mongering and hyperbole, wasn’t it, Mr. Butler?

    I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right.

    I’ll bet Dennis Kuchinich is too far right for Mr. Butler. Now he’s completely outside his area of expertise since this whole thing is about how well he knows John McCain from their days in the Navy together.

    …he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately.

    “Some”? Or did Butler mean “one”? Please.

    I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man.

    How does Butler “know” John McCain hates President Bush? Did McCain tell Butler, or is this just more guesswork on his part?

    Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who “Returned With Honor.”[…]I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

    Those two sentences are at odds…well until you read Mr. Butler’s bio and get to the last line;

    He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

    So all of the previous blather and speculation can all be boiled down to it’s essence; Mr. Butler won’t vote for a Republican president. Pure and simple. He could have saved us all the time and trouble if he’d just said that upfront.

  • Drivel roundup

    There’s just too much absurdity going on in the world for you to have to surf looking for it, so I’ve rounded up much of it for you tonight;

    An Old Broad’s Ramblings and Bob’s Blog have the video of some guy who obviously knows something the rest of us should know – otherwise, why would he admit to it? But then again – who knows these days?

    Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has links to the stories of the latest in eight nights of violence in Denmark in expressions of false outrage.

    Drew M. at Ace of Spades and Brennan at the American Pundit both think that maybe Michele Obama is a little too self-centered to be comparing what is happening in her life today to what the rest of us were doing before she and her suit model came along.

    Bloodthirsty Liberal writes that village elders are outraged when women voters start voting at the women-only voting station.

    At Big Dog’s Weblog, Bill Clinton gives a lesson on “telling the truth”.

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express writes that a documentary is due out from PBS and Frontline on the Haditha incident. Speaking of Haditha, Redstate and Michele Malkin are looking for pigsuit wearers to show up at a Murtha payoff dinner in Pentagon City (I’d go if I can get a timeframe).

    Crotchety Old Bastard points us to the American Thinker‘s Ari Kaufman’s indisputable worst presidents list.

    Somehow, Kosovo independence invokes “down with America” chants according to Gateway Pundit.

    Jammie Wearing Fool reports 66,000% inflation in Zimbabwe. What did they expect with a Friend of Carter for president?

    Liberty Pundit found all you loser Patriot fans championship hats and shirts.

    Little Green Footballs reports on the Muslim Flat Earth Society.

    VanHelsing at Moonbattery writes that Brits have discovered the key to a successful socialized healthcare system – more ambulances and bigger parking lots.

    Bob Parks at Outside the Wire writes about former conservative Charles Barkley’s swipe at Christians.

    Sister Toldjah has all the relevant links for Obama/Che flag controversy while DUmmie FUnnies chronicles the KosKids stroking each other over how this won’t affect Obama. Spree writes that McCain leads Clinton and Obama in Florida. This could get interesting.

  • The legacy of Tet

    Arthur Herman writes in the Wall Street Journal today a fascinating piece entitled “The Lies of Tet” that rings strangely familiar in relation to the narrative we get from the Democrats and the media in relation to the current war against terror;

    …the desperate fury of the communist attacks including on Saigon, where most reporters lived and worked, caught the press by surprise. (Not the military: It had been expecting an attack and had been on full alert since Jan. 24.) It also put many reporters in physical danger for the first time. Braestrup, a former Marine, calculated that only 40 of 354 print and TV journalists covering the war at the time had seen any real fighting. Their own panic deeply colored their reportage, suggesting that the communist assault had flung Vietnam into chaos.

    Their editors at home, like CBS’s Walter Cronkite, seized on the distorted reporting to discredit the military’s version of events. The Viet Cong insurgency was in its death throes, just as U.S. military officials assured the American people at the time. Yet the press version painted a different picture.

    To quote Braestrup, “the media tended to leave the shock and confusion of early February, as then perceived, fixed as the final impression of Tet” and of Vietnam generally. “Drama was perpetuated at the expense of information,” and “the negative trend” of media reporting “added to the distortion of the real situation on the ground in Vietnam.”

    The North Vietnamese were delighted. On the heels of their devastating defeat, Hanoi increasingly shifted its propaganda efforts toward the media and the antiwar movement. Causing American (not South Vietnamese) casualties, even at heavy cost, became a battlefield objective in order to reinforce the American media’s narrative of a failing policy in Vietnam.

    Yet thanks to the success of Tet, the numbers of Americans dying in Vietnam steadily declined — from almost 15,000 in 1968 to 9,414 in 1969 and 4,221 in 1970 — by which time the Viet Cong had ceased to exist as a viable fighting force. One Vietnamese province after another witnessed new peace and stability. By the end of 1969 over 70% of South Vietnam’s population was under government control, compared to 42% at the beginning of 1968. In 1970 and 1971, American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker estimated that 90% of Vietnamese lived in zones under government control.

    Yesterday, I’d read one of the bloggers from our side (forgive me for forgetting whom) who’s plunged into the depths of the world of Leftism and read blog entries that called the homicide bombing attacks in the Baghdad pet market last week an indication that all was indeed not well in Iraq. Every death is seized upon as evidence that the Bush Administration and General Petreaus are liars.

    In fact you can do a Yahoo News search on “mass+graves” and see every news service seize upon the blood and gore being inflicted on the Iraqis by al Qaeda, but do a search on “Iraq+success” and see what you get. Apparently things that don’t fit the narrative are ignored. When’s the last time you read about an American hero in Iraq or Afgahnistan that wasn’t on a right-wing blog or a milblog?

    Democrats are fully invested in our failure and the media is manipulating the market for them.

  • A Farewell to Gaza

    The New York Sun has an excellent editorial on the recent wall bombing by Hamas and others:
    Rather than forcing the Gazan Arabs to join with the West Bank Arabs into a state of “Palestine” that has never before existed and has few of the elements of a successful nation-state, why not let Gaza revert to its pre-1967 status as part of Egypt? Egypt, at least is a country with which Israel has a peace treaty and diplomatic relations, which is more than can be said for the Hamas terrorist organization that now controls Gaza.

    Part of me really likes that idea. However, part of me is disgusted that Israel is alone among nations. The purpose of a military in war is to take and defend land, that Israel’s military managed to capture (Conquer) Jordanian and Egyptian land, while they were at war with Egypt and Jordan ought to be viewed as part of the common practices of nations. For some reason, however, Israel doing what nations and nation-states have done throughout the course of human history is viewed as either being wrong or onerous. That Israel’s conquest occurred in the twentieth century could be one reason, Nazi Germany’s conquest of Austria and Poland and France were not allowed to stand either. But, there is a pretty large difference between the two, Germany LOST the war in which it expanded it’s borders, Israel did not. The biggest component I can see for the widespread support of a new nation called “Palestine” is anti-Israeli sentiment, basically good old fashioned antisemitism with a new politically correct label. However, the territories in question are, for now under Israeli control, and that would make the attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups a civil war, wouldn’t it? Those funding Hamas and the other terrorist groups, therefore are actively supporting a rebellion against the rightful and lawful government.

  • Clinton, King and Johnson

    Photo from USA Today

    Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, some of us are still alive that lived in the ’60s and remember the Civil Rights movement. Last week she tried to make a point that President Johnson was a doer and Martin Luther King, Jr. was only a dreamer. She was trying to compare her record of doing stuff to Obama’s record of not doing stuff when she said;

    (more…)

  • Melanin in Politics

    The Washington Times reports this morning that Hillary Clinton is losing support of Black in her bid for another eight years in the White House;

    Black voters have been deeply loyal to the Democratic Party and to the Clintons, but they are more devoted to the dream of having a black president for the first time.

    Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been engaged in racially tinged political banter with Sen. Barack Obama since her win in New Hampshire, is losing ground in polls with black voters nationally and in South Carolina, where about half of Democratic primary voters will be black.

    (more…)

  • Zapatero & legislated history

    It’s difficult to believe that in this post-Soviet day and age, a liberal democracy in the western world would consider rewriting their history to create an official, government-approved version. But, that’s what is happening in modern Spain. In October, the Spanish parliament passed a “Law of Historical Memory”. No Pasaran’s Joe Noory warned of this impending farce last year;

      Zapatero is exercising a chilling fascist revision of the past. The Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party, Alvino-Mario Fantini reports, is even dispensing pensions to some who make a nice prop for their revision of the Spanish Civil War.

    The law, one of Zapatero’s many electoral promises, will honor the communists and socialists persecuted by Franco’s regime during his 36-year dictatorship.

    Specifically, the proposed law stipulates that the Spanish government will provide 60 million Euros–about $76,244,000–in “pensions, compensation and recognition schemes” to honor the estimated 285,000 (according to historian Hugh Thomas) Republican victims of the Civil War and the post-war dictatorship.

    It says nothing, however, of the nearly 145,000 members of the Nationalist coalition who were killed in action by Republican forces and executed by their militias. In fact, the law will ban all images, symbols and references to Franco and his regime in all public places (though most statues around the country have already been removed).

    Ian Buruma compares Zapatero’s attempt to rewrite history to dictatorships like Red China in the Japan Times;

    There are plausible reasons for enacting such a law. Many people killed by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War lie unremembered in mass graves. There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the far right for Franco’s dictatorship. People gathered at his tomb earlier this year chanted “We won the Civil War!,” while denouncing socialists and foreigners, especially Muslims. Reason enough, one might think, for Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to use the law to exorcise the demons of dictatorship for the sake of democracy’s good health.

    But legislation is a blunt instrument for dealing with history. While historical discussion won’t be out of bounds in Spain, even banning ceremonies celebrating bygone days may go a step too far. The desire to control both past and present is, of course, a common feature of dictatorships.

    In the Australian, Buruma continues;

    While the Spanish Civil War was not on par with the Holocaust, even bitter history leaves room for interpretation. Truth can be found only if people are free to pursue it. Many brave people have risked or lost their lives in defence of this freedom. It is right for a democracy to repudiate a dictatorship, and the new Spanish law is cautiously drafted, but it is better to leave people free to express even unsavoury political sympathies, for legal bans don’t foster free thinking, they impede them.Â

    Richard Rahn writes in today’s Washington Times that the law might have the effect of deepening polarization among Spaniards, already divided by language and culture. He points out the under Zapatero’s predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, Spain became a successful European nation, both economically and politically, once again, but that Zapatero threatens that stability with his socialist game-playing right out of Orwell’s “1984”.

    Beth Twiston Davies (Times Online) joins Joe Noory in the opinion that the Law of Historical Memory is an anti-Catholic swipe;

    Three days before the law of historical memory was passed, nearly 500 of those religious victims were honoured by the Catholic Church in a mass beatification ceremony. The 498 individuals now on the path to sainthood were killed, often after being tortured, in 1934, 1936 and 1937.

    The Vatican described them as “martyrs of the 21st century”. Spanish Catholics such as Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña, secretary-general of the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas (The Catholic Propagandists’ Association), describe them as innocent victims of the wave of anti-clerical persecution that swept 1930s Spain.

    “The Left wants to portray the martyrs as politicised clerics ,” says Rodríguez. “They don’t want to recognise the fact there was a religious persecution. These were simply Christians who died forgiving their assassins, and were killed out of hatred for the Christian faith.”

    Imagine if the left in the United States succeeds in forbidding the various ceremonies we’ve to which we’ve become accustomed honoring soldiers from both sides in our own Civil War. Suppose for a minute, we succumb to their demonization of those who say that Senator Joe McCarthy turns out to be right about Communists in the State Department and in Congress – and in Hollywood and ban such research and scholarly work.

    Suppose we weren’t allowed to speak out against John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” testimony of 1971 during his presidential campaign and that the thousands of veterans who gathered outside of the Capitol had been imprisoned for questioning his veracity at those hearings.

    I don’t what the Europeans are thinking when they allow their governments to limit the discussion of unpopular political opinions, but we need to be on guard against imitating them.