D-Day

Aproximately 80 years ago.    That there are ANY still ambulant enough to even walk in a parade ALONE,,,

The Body count on both sides was staggering, the stories from those there, unbelievable but true, the amount of material literally thrown into an all or nothing gambit; Material that 4  years prior, had not existed.  Material that was on both sides of the planet from home.  

This country geared up for war and was churning out mega-tons of gear, material, ammo, weapons, ships

And of course, an entire generation of MEN. (HT to Ragin’ Dave for the Patton Speech)

Look around you.  Could this Level of Commitment be replicated today?

Even with the increase in population between now and then, I can’t see it.   Our manufacturing base has been gutted for the almighty dollar and bottom line, our People are much much lazier, more sedentary in physiology as well as psychologically.  

And we are much much more tech driven where those guys were used to hard efforts and less than perfect ‘climate controlled’ conditions such as we have grown accustomed.

Admittedly, I had a laugh reading Pattons speech, where he was dogging his ‘boys’ to ‘get this job done so we can hit the Pacific before those Marines take all the glory’,, Dumb Jarhead pride here, The Devil Dawgs kicked butt in that theater.

I knew one man from that war, My Step-dad: Dempsey Ruggles.   He passed away a few years before my mother, and did not actually fight in the war, but was a merchant Marine and had his ship torpedoed out from under him in the Atlantic somewhere between the Canary Islands and Brazil.   He spent quite a time afloat in a life boat with several others of the crew, many of whom did not make it. 

I still hold one of his souvenirs from then.

One of several items;  but the image says all about the time it’s from, no?  He told me that the captain of the ‘Kraut sub’ that torpedoed them, gave each of those on the boat, one of those five pfenny coins, and pointed them to the nearest land they could reach considering weather and current patterns.    Just doing a job, nothing personal.   Far better than surfacing and machinegunning the boats, condemning them all to Davey Jones’ locker.

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That generation is fading into history, I can only hope the legends created that day, do not: in both forms, the personal stories passed down from father to son to son, and the fact that when the call was serious, this Country STOOD UP, and DELIVERED COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF EVERYTHING.

keep on livin’