Tuesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

After the 1^st and 5^th Marines among others had successfully fought for and taken control of the island of Guadalcanal in WWII, news reporters came ashore to get interviews and take pictures. The battle for Guadalcanal was one of most bloody and savage battles ever documented. The American combat troops had been in a constant battle for two months. A news reporter saw a ragged Marine with a two month growth of beard and smelling like a garbage dump and went over and asked him if he knew where the headquarters of the 1^st Marines was. The Marine just looked at him and said “Mister, there ain’t no more 1^st Marines.”

I watched “Tootsie” Sunday night on the Sundance channel. I had forgotten how good an actor Dustin Hoffman is...now I remember.

I might have told y'all this in the past but here it is again. I was in the USAF assigned to the control tower at Moody AFB near Valdosta, Ga. Moody was an all weather interceptor training base. A drone would be launched from Tyndall AFB near Panama City, Fl and interceptors from Moody would try to it them and shoot it down. One night there was “maximum effort” meaning nearly all the fighters would take off at close intervals, go out over the Gulf and do a hunt and kill operation and return. It seems that one of the pilots was having a problem with his wife being scared for him flying fighters. Somehow the pilot persuaded authorities on base to allow his wife to watch the night launch from the control tower. She was very pregnant. She knew her husband's call sign and watched him take off. About two miles after takeoff a burst of flame came from the side of the aircraft (F-86D) and it exploded into a fireball. Chaos reigned for quite a spell in the control tower that night.

                                       Crazy as Hell

Chapter 11

Essex knew that any staircase would be heavily guarded and elected to stay on the roof. The stairway doors on the roof were enclosed in a cement block cubicle. Essex stayed inside one of these cubicles until dark and then would dart out take a few shot then quickly retreat back into the cubicle followed by a hailstorm of police fire but he was not hit because the roof was totally dark. All of this was being watched on TV by US Marine Lt. Col. Charles “Chuck” Pitman who was based at Belle Chase MCAS down river from New Orleans. I met this man and chatted with him several times with the last couple of years. He retired as a Lt. General (three stars) and lives on Pensacola Beach. He was at Belle Chase recovering from .50 caliber bullet wound to the leg received during a combat helicopter mission in Nam. It was obvious the New Orleans police needed a combat helicopter to get to Essex. Pitman contacted the Coast Guard to send a helicopter to help the police but they refused saying the visibility was too low. He contacted the New Orleans police and asked if a helicopter would help. The police said “Hell yes, especially if it has a searchlight”. There was an H-46 helicopter on the ramp at Belle Chase that had a searchlight. An H-46 has two rotors one on the front and one on the back and is fairly large. Under normal circumstances Pitman would have to get orders to go on a mission of any kind but he chose to go ahead on his own and took the H-46 to help the police. This action could have cost him his career and his life but he went anyway. The visibility was so bad that he had to hover taxi just a few feet off the ground and go very slow. He maneuvered to the middle of the river and slowly headed upstream. He flew under the Mississippi River Bridge avoiding a few barges and ships along the way. He eventually spotted the site where the Superdome was under construction and headed for it.

Someone asked how Sergeant Major Joe Daly received his second Medal of Honor. It was when the Marines were involved in a rebellion in Nicaragua. Daly's unit had been overrun by the rebels and all they had left was a few rifles and grenades and the rebels knew this. The Marines had established a defensive position but knew the rebels would be coming in force the following morning and it would be the end of all of the Marines if they did not have more firepower. That night Sergeant Daly crawled on his belly through rebel lines to the previous Marine position where they had left two .50 caliber machine guns and 1,000 rounds of ammo. Daly made three trips back and forth bringing the machine guns and the ammo to their new position. The next morning as expected, the rebels launched a mass attack. Instead of a few Marines with rifles, they were met with two .50 cals, spraying death and destruction and the attack was quickly suppressed. The Marines were saved. Many times Daly was asked if he wanted to become an officer and he always refused saying “I would rather be an outstanding enlisted man than a mediocre officer.” He was awarded several other medals and after every award ceremony he would say “There is no need for all this foolishness.” He was a Marine's Marine. He did not drink and only smoked a pipe stuffed with plug tobacco. He never married, the Marine Corp was his bride. 

I heard from a very reliable source that there will be a music venue similar to Branson, Missouri built near Foley, Alabama in the near future. Supposedly 500 acres has been purchased already by a conglomerate headed by Tony Orlando. It was Tony that lit the fire that resulted in Branson. Foley is already famous for high end discount stores and is located about 20 miles north of Gulf Shores, Alabama. The only problem I see is an airport. It will have to be either Pensacola or Mobile...both are about 40 miles from Foley. But shuttle buses would be a good way for mobile advertising.

This Date in History November 11

1918 On the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month an armistice was signed in a rail car near Compeigne, France ending four years of one of the bloodiest conflicts in the history of warfare called World War I. This war began in 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the apparent heir to the Austria-Hungary Empire. The Archduke was inspecting his uncle’s troops in Sarajevo, Bosnia when he and his wife were gunned down by a Bosnian Serb nationalist. There had been bad blood between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in the past and Austria-Hungary chose this opportunity to settle the issue once and for all. After Austria-Hungary had received assurances that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany would support Austria-Hungary if they declared war on Serbia and Russia intervened, they declared war on Serbia and began shelling the capitol of Belgrade. Russia was an ally of Serbia and began mobilization to support Serbia and Germany began mobilization in support of Austria-Hungary. Well, the rest of Europe began taking sides and it eventually ended up being Europe (France, Belgium, England and eventually the US) against Germany combined with Austria-Hungary. The war cost the lives of over 9 million and 26 million wounded. Finally the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was signed which officially ended the conflict. The Treaty was so harsh to the German people that many German civilians died of starvation and disease afterward. All this did was to anger the German people and they almost immediately began seeking revenge. And sure enough, a German madman named Adolph Hitler said the right words In the early 1930’s and instilled a pride back into the German people and he also engineered the re-birth of the German military expertise and equipment in spite of the Treaty of Versailles and in 1938, they launched the most effective and deadly assemblage of military might the world had ever seen. But this time, they had control of the air over Europe, something never seen in WWI, WWII was underway.

1988 On this date the Sacramento, California police make a grisly discovery on the front lawn of Dorothea Puente. It was the corpse of an elderly woman. The police found out that Puente ran a residential home for the elderly. They also found six more buried corpses and not only that, she had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic years before. This bitch had previously done hard time for forging checks and going to bars and slipping drugs into people’s drinks and the robbing them. After she got out of prison she decides to open a residential home for the elderly, if y’all can believe that. A social worker had sent 19 people to stay with Dorothea and many of them just disappeared. Finally, the neighbors began smelling the aroma of rotting flesh which brought the police into the act. All of the corpses found on her property had been drugged with a sedative but the coroner could not name that as the cause of death nor could the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that good old Dorothea had even buried the bodies that were found there in spite of 3,100 exhibits. The prosecution had charged Puente with nine murders but she was convicted of just three and sentenced to life and she died in prison. The police believed that she was responsible for the disappearance of 25 people that had been staying there. I wonder where she is today.

1933 On this day a sustained wind out of the west arrives in the farmlands of South Dakota. This was the beginning of one of the largest dust storms in American history. The Great Plains of American had been suffering from 6 year long drought that added to the misery of the Great Depression. This particular dust storm arising out of what was called the “Dust Bowl” lifted tons and tons of topsoil and took much of it as far east as Albany, New York. There were many factors that brought this misery to the fore. There was the drought of course plus the farmers plowing up nearly all of the prairie grasses and then planting a less hearty plant such as wheat or barley. They also had no clue as to contour plowing and other modern techniques. There was a story about a representative of the US Department of Agriculture that giving a seminar to the farmers in the Dust Bowl on how to farm more productively when one older farmer rose up and said “Sonny, You can’t tell me about how to farm. I have worn out three farms already.”

Born today:

1744 Wife of President John Adams, Abigail Smith Adams. She said “We have too many high sounding words and not enough action.” Abigail was not afraid to state her opinion, no matter who was listening. There is a country song that has the phrase “A little less talk and a lot more action”, that sounds like Abigail to me.

1885 US General (and my hero) George S. Patton. He said “No good decision was ever made from a swivel chair.” Hey George add to that “nor in committee meetings”.

1964 US actress Calista Flockhart. While on the David Letterman Show she said “I just want to take this opportunity to tell the press to KISS MY SKINNY WHITE ASS!” Good job, but you don’t have to prove your description to us, Calista.

1962 US actress Demi Moore. She said “There are a lot of people out there that think I am a bitch.” Yes Demi, there are.

         Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow