MIT Engineers

[hedge]

It would take the entire congregation to hold you down...

[BigRedMan]

Oh no that is where you are wrong. I am a manatee sized Mike Phelps in the water. Love swimming and being in the pool.

[hedge]

By pool I assume you're referring to Lake Michigan...

[sardis]

Another reason why Waffle House is awesome...

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/waff ... 44452.html

[eCat]

You know on Facebook how you can check into a location based on where you are? So i am in fort wayne and I am at some Italian place. But one of my options to choose where I was is a penis enlargement center .2 miles away.

Good to know.

[eCat]

this is what I did today - put those car parts (seats) and new carpeting in my truck


Before
[img2][/img2]

After
[img2][/img2]

[eCat]

did something for the old man today, 66 years after it should have happened, 73 years after it was earned

[img2][/img2]

[hedge]

Wow

[eCat]

My brother had all that in storage since Dad died and have gave it to me last week.

[hedge]

That's awesome. What's the story behind it?

[eCat]

I had to put the pieces together over time. The old man wouldn't really talk much about it but I requested information from the military and with the dates, etc I came up with this.


It’s for the New Guinea Campaign. After they flushed out the Japanese in Papau the Americans were pushing them up the Willaumez Peninsula.

In one skirmish the Japanese pushed the Americans back and some wounded men including Dad’s Lt were then behind enemy lines. Dad went into the jungle during the night and carried the Lt back on his shoulders Forrest Gump style I guess. I heard him telling the story with a couple of army buddies at a funeral when I was in middle school but whenever I asked him about the medal he'd always make up some joke like he helped an officer get dirt out of his eyes. After he died mom told me a little more about it. She'd never talk about it either when he was alive.

A month later after it happened he was in the Alamo Scouts training camp - predecessor to today's Green Beret and that was by invitation only, you couldn't volunteer.

Since he joined before the war started, I have a "yearbook" of sorts they made of the 6th Division and it has all the names and pictures of every man who was there in March of 1941. One day this winter when I'm sitting around going stir crazy, I'll start researching the officers and see if I can find which Lt is was.

[eCat]

typical 20 year old.

I remember going thru some old pictures of dad in the war when I was a kid and I found one of him with two topless New Guinea women on either side of him with his arms around their waist and a shit eating grin from ear to ear. That photo disappeared right after the first time I found it in the box and mentioned it to mom.

[hedge]

That's a great story. Your pop was a hero. I wonder if any of the guys in his division are still alive?

[eCat]

[img2][/img2]

21 of those men didn't come back alive. Pops is 3rd row, 3rd from the right

I'd love to know. I contacted one of the men still alive in his special forces group about 6 years ago but he wasn't in the same class as Dad. They kept the graduating classes together. They used to have a reunion in Kansas City every year but they stopped 2 years ago because so few were left that could make the trip.

[hedge]

Look at that little mighty mite in the bottom right corner...

[bluetick]

My dad never said much about his action in the Pacific either. He was a Gunnery Sgt. on a B-29 crew that flew a few dozen missions over Japan from Saipan and Tinian.

I knew from pictures that his plane was "The Herd of Bald Goats", so I found the history of his unit and the different crews on the web. What I knew was he and his crew sailed back to San Fran; what I read was how the maintenance crew and replacement pilots attempted to bring Dad's plane back to the States but it went down somewhere in the Pacific without a trace. Reading the history of those bomber groups, that wasn't all that uncommon an event. Damn.

[eCat]

From an article about the push up the pennisula

------
At dusk the ominous crack of two Japanese sniper shots rang out to, simultaneously, cut a radio antenna as well as a communication wire below. Men were rightly concerned that the Japanese had planned to allow them to reach the top for no good reason. There was no place to dig in on the hard coral surface of the hill that night and most of the trees were, by then, shredded stumps or logs from the artillery barrage.

The 20th Infantry regiment was in for a night in hell. With nightfall came the rain and with the dark came a brutal and furious Japanese counter offensive from all around the two battalions. American Machine Guns and BAR’s opened up to screams of “banzai” as the Japanese charged the perimeter firing as they came. The Japanese emerged from inside the perimeter and some of the fighting disintegrated into hand-to-hand combat. Soon even the supply lines would be cut off as the Japanese fought to work their lines behind the two battalions to cut them off from the rest of the Sixth Division.

------------------


Dad once told me that most of the men that lived in his group were ones with Thompson Machine guns.

I mentioned this before but there is a scene in the HBO Pacific he described to me 20 years before that show came out

At the 6:00 minute mark. Dad's version was that he was overrun by Japanese so he ran and jumped into a foxhole with the only 2 other guys with Thompson machine guns, he said they almost shot him when he jumped in, and for the rest of the night the 3 of them with Thompson Machine guns just kept spraying the Japanese when they would banzai. When daylight broke they were surrounded by piles of dead japanese soldiers. You could say I owe my existence to John T. Thompson.

He told me this story very near the end. I guess he figured he'd made his peace with it.

[youtube]4SQqVEu135E[/youtube]

[eCat]

My dad never said much about his action in the Pacific either. He was a Gunnery Sgt. on a B-29 crew that flew a few dozen missions over Japan from Saipan and Tinian.

I knew from pictures that his plane was "The Herd of Bald Goats", so I found the history of his unit and the different crews on the web. What I knew was he and his crew sailed back to San Fran; what I read was how the maintenance crew and replacement pilots attempted to bring Dad's plane back to the States but it went down somewhere in the Pacific without a trace. Reading the history of those bomber groups, that wasn't all that uncommon an event. Damn.

early in the war, to be on any bomber you had to be a special breed of man. That's why I don't think many of them ever wanted to be called a hero. Too many were asked to do tasks that no human should be asked to do. And they were asked to do it many times. I think WWII vets would cringe at how readily we use that word today.

In reading the book "The Old Breed" Eugene Sledge (great name for a war guy) comes to the realization after just finishing one of the bloodiest battles on Guadal Canal that they were expendable, the military was just going to keep sending him in to fight like this again and again, and whoever died next to him was just replaced. After the war he goes back home to a army job fair where a young woman asks him a series of questions about what skillset he has - welding , typing, accounting, etc. to which he answers no to each one. She finally asks out of exasperation if he has any skills and he responds "I'm damn good at killing Japanese, do you have any openings for that?"

That scene helped me understand alot about my old man as a 44 year old that I couldn't figure out as a teenager.

[hedge]

"My dad never said much about his action in the Pacific either."

Now that I think about it, damn, how old were your dads when you were born? eCat, your dad must've been well into his 40's when you were born. Tick, I don't know how old you are, but I always assumed it was about my age (51), in which case your dad had to be in his mid 40's at least when you were born. That was kinda old for back then...

[bluetick]

"My dad never said much about his action in the Pacific either."

Now that I think about it, damn, how old were your dads when you were born? eCat, your dad must've been well into his 40's when you were born. Tick, I don't know how old you are, but I always assumed it was about my age (51), in which case your dad had to be in his mid 40's at least when you were born. That was kinda old for back then...

Dad was born 1/10/20 and died 2/27/96. He was 37, Mom was 36 when they got one more unexpected bundle of joy.