Posted on 05/25/2020 2:18:06 AM PDT by Jacquerie
“If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” - a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were KIA and another 5,000 wounded.
War naturally conjures images of courageous soldiers. Flanders Fields, Charge of the Light Brigade, and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf.
Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine sailors felled at sea. It’s understandable; there are no battlefield memorials, no marked graves, no poppies, no flags. Presidents and dignitaries visit Normandy and not Midway or Iron Bottom Sound. Few are the photo memoirs of engineering room slaughter-by-steam, of those who inhaled fire, of those blown overboard, of those who survived the battle only to die of burns, thirst, or sharks.
Hoses washed the remains of many off their ships. Some had proper burials. Did boot camp recruits know their Navy-issue hammocks did double duty as burial shrouds? I don’t know, but should your Memorial Day weekend find you on an Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico beach, you are graveside. Take time to say a few words of thanks.
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
If the captain uttered those words in 2020, he would be pilloried by the media and the Navy, demoted, stripped of command, and humiliated.
Shows you what America is made of.
I’ve made it a “fun” habit of telling nurses of my WWII war-time birth date.
Then, I follow up with, “At that time, my father was dropping bombs on the Japanese”.
Most of the time, the nurses will say, “OH, NO!”
When my time on Earth is done, I will join them in a burial at sea.
Important to remember. I recall reading that some sailors on one of the Pearl Harbor ships survived the attack but were trapped in the hull In the partially capsized ship. The ship had been beached and for weeks new recruits, when they were training on the beach, would hear the sailors tapping from the inside the ship. They couldn’t be rescued because the hull was too thick and the navy couldn’t divert wartime resources to getting them out. Gradually the tapping stopped but it took a long time.
Just tragic, and I think it’s true that the naval sacrifices aren’t recognized enough. Prayers for them all.
My uncle made 7 trips to Mermansk as a merchantman. SO bad a^%!
I remember my shipmate and friend AW2 John Taylor, rescue swimmer, who died when his helicopter crashed at sea during a search and rescue mission on 04 October 1988.
Bttt
BTW - would it kill Google to include the Colors today in their Google doodle or whatever the hell it's called ? It's just "Google" in gray font. BS !
To ALL of those that fed the tree of Liberty with their blood so that our One nation under God could move forward, I thank thee from the bottom of my heart and I will do my best with your guidanmce to continue what you started. May God bless your souls .
That was the USS Oklahoma
I doubt they will, but they probably have the rainbow cued up for pride month.
As I remember the story, they could have opened the hull, but as soon as they punctured it and released the trapped air it would have flooded and drowned all the trapped sailor before they could open it enough to get them out. It was a tragic catch 22.
That’s a more-likely explanation; when steel meets an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, steel generally loses.
In memoriam:
James Ray Dodson was my late mother’s cousin. She told me that he came by her apartment in Rosebud, Texas in 1943 on his way to the Pacific where he would serve as a coxswain on the submarine USS Grayback. I was born on May 15 of that year so I was actually in his presence for a short while. Unfortunately he and the rest of the crew were sunk by a Japanese torpedo bomber. They are on “Eternal Patrol” at the bottom of the South China Sea - near 25° 47’N x 128° 45’E, south of Okinawa. God bless
his soul.
It’s not entirely unreasonable; by it’s nature, Memorial Day is intrinsically a dour event.
That said, Google is Evil!
In reality, the waters of the world are Holy Ground”, sanctified by the sacrifice of so many brave men and women.
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