{"id":32347,"date":"2012-10-11T10:59:52","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T14:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32347"},"modified":"2012-10-11T11:06:29","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T15:06:29","slug":"rip-sam-gibbons-democratic-rep-501st-pir-schlitz-drinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32347","title":{"rendered":"RIP Sam Gibbons, Democratic Rep, 501st PIR, Schlitz drinker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wanted to highlight the death of Sam Gibbons <\/a>here today as well, since he passed yesterday. He was an irascible old bastard, and as left wing as the day is long, but man did that dude amuse me. He was much like Mr Rangel in that regard, who I’ve loved ever since a 3 minute ride on the trolley under the Capital one day when he berated me with a smile. <\/p>\n

Sam M. Gibbons, a 17-term Democratic congressman from Florida who championed free trade and government support of health care, castigated Republican colleagues for \u201cwhimpering\u201d and for six months was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, died Wednesday at his home in Tampa. He was 92. <\/p>\n

He was a student at the University of Florida and a member of R.O.T.C. when he was called to Army duty as a second lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division. The night before the invasion of Normandy, he parachuted behind enemy lines at Utah Beach and led troops in a bloody battle. He won [Received you dumbasses] a Bronze Star and other medals. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a pretty good post up at this site <\/a>that talks more about him.<\/p>\n

In Gibbons’ memoir I Was There – he described his experiences in WWII. It is peppered with details like how he replaced his gas mask with two cans of Schlitz beer before the D-Day drop.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo with all this gear on me (the same for about 12,000 others), I was the third man to step out of plane #42, and dropping 800 feet to start what some have called \u2018The Longest Day.\u2019”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The story of how the paratroopers were dropped off course and scattered across the French countryside is widely known. Gibbons and a few other paratroopers managed to pull together and planned an attack on a nearby town.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of this council I brought out my two cans of beer, which we shared,\u201d Gibbons wrote. \u201cWhen the cans were empty we decided to leave them in the middle of the road as a monument to the first cans of Schlitz consumed in France and moved on.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chuck Oldham of Defense Media Network wrote that Gibbons’ story of the Allied landing in Normandy has always stuck with him:<\/p>\n

Of all those stories … Gibbons\u2019 story, written in a self-deprecating tone as it was in I Was There and popularized in Tom Brokaw\u2019s The Greatest Generation, remains one that has always struck me as somehow being indicative of the American paratroopers\u2019 fight during that early morning of June 6, 1944, with a young captain abruptly thrust into an unexpected leadership role, he and his men dropped far from their objectives, lost and improvising their way through a night of combat, and \u2018marching toward the sound of gunfire.\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The young captain was with the 101st as it helped hold Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and captured Hitler\u2019s \u201cEagles Nest\u201d facility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope he and CSM Plumley are in Valhalla right now, bickering over a few cold ones. I’m going to buy one Schlitz on the way home, and consume in his honor. (At home mind you, not while travelling.)<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Just a page from Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation discussing Mr. Gibbons:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wanted to highlight the death of Sam Gibbons here today as well, since he passed yesterday. … RIP Sam Gibbons, Democratic Rep, 501st PIR, Schlitz drinker<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}