Posted on 10/29/2001 5:33:17 AM PST by RaceBannon
This is an e-mail from a young ensign aboard USS Winston Churchill(DDG-81) to his parents.
(Churchill is an Arleigh Burke class AEGIS guided missile destroyer, commissioned March 10, 2001, and is the only active US Navy warship named after a foreign national.).
By now, we have heard this story here on FR, but today, I got the picture that accompnaies this greeting!! It is heartwarming!
We have seen the articles and the photographs, and they are sickening. Being isolated, I don't think we appreciate the full scope of what is happening back home, but we are definitely feeling the effects.
About two hours ago, we were hailed by a German Navy destroyer, Lutjens, requesting permission to pass close by our port side. Strange, since we're in the middle of an empty ocean, but the captain acquiesced and we prepared to render them honors from our bridgewing.
As they were making their approach, our conning officer used binoculars and announced that Lutjens was flying not the German, but the American flag. As she came alongside us, we saw the American flag flying half-mast and her entire crew topside standing at silent, rigid attention in their dress uniforms.
They had made a sign that was displayed on her side that read "We Stand By You." There was not a dry eye on the bridge as they stayed alongside us for a few minutes and saluted. It was the most powerful thing I have seen in my life. The German Navy did an incredible thing for this crew, and it has truly been the highest point in the days since the attacks. It's amazing to think that only half-century ago things were quite different.
After Lutjens pulled away, the Officer of the Deck, who had been planning to get out later this year, turned to me and said, "I'm staying Navy." I'll write you when I know more about when I'll be home, but this is it for now.
Love you guys.
. FYI, Churchill was (as far as I know) the only person ever be awarded honorary American citizenship. He was granted full rights except he could not vote. So he is not a foreign national.
Incidentally, Churchill's mother was an American, putting him half way here anyway.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Winston Churchill
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In the way he lived his life and in his leadership during WWII he certainly acted like an American.
It is a very old almost useless piece of trash by todays standards, but considering they have no naval threat it is more than enough.
The large box shaped launcher on the left is an ASROC launcher that fires rocket thrown torperdoes.
Other weaponry would be a single AA/Anti ship missile launcher, two gun mounts (five inch for the U.S. but probably something from the German arsenal retrofitted on their ship), and two triple tube torperdo tube mounts.
They may have the Phalanx if we gave it to them.
When I was on the Barney DDG-6 we were in port in the Med. and a German Adams class was berthed across the pier from us.
One of our crew came back drunk and turned left instead of right and ended up in a German rack that would have been his on our ship. The German woke him up and I would have to say he was real confused to wake up to a lot of people speaking German.
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