Good
morning,
Quote
of the day:
“Limitations
live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations the
possibilities are limitless.”
Jamie Paolinetti
A
friend sent me a vignette about the US Marines and it reminded me of
this story. When I was an air traffic controller in Greenville I had
a supervisor named Ralph that was a Marine pilot in WWII. He told me
that on one occasion he was doing gunnery practice out over the
Pacific Ocean and the target was a flag towed by another aircraft
using a long cable. The target was stabilized by a large lead weight
in the front of the flag. Ralph had not been scoring well in gunnery
and he was determined to make this practice count. He bored in so
close to the flag that the lead weight struck the oil cooler in one
of the wings and the engine froze immediately. He was flying an F4U
Corsair. Ralph bailed out and was rescued by a destroyer that was on
station for just that purpose. I asked him if he was scared. He
said “A nineteen year old Marine is not afraid of anything.”
Ralph was back in the air the next day doing gunnery practice over
the Pacific Ocean. He was also aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Franklin when it was hit by a Kamikaze while on station near Okinawa.
The Franklin was fatally struck. Ralph said that he was in a
briefing room when the plane hit and all the lights went out and the
room filled with smoke. All of the people in the room held hands and
felt their way up several ladders, climbed out onto the flight deck,
ran across the deck and jumped over the side. He was rescued by a
destroyer once again. The Franklin sank a flaming wreck. I asked
Ralph if he was scared that time. He said that he did not remember
anything after they grabbed hands. But when he was picked up by the
destroyer he determined that he had to have done all that maneuvering
to have ended up where he was. The mind takes care of itself when it
needs to.
I
was reading about the Punic Wars (Rome vs. Carthage) about the 3rd
century
BC. Rome had not appreciable navy because they conquered all they
needed to with infantry. Carthage (present day Tunisia) had a
formidable navy because they did all of their exploring and
conquering by crossing over from North Africa to Europe via the
Mediterranean Sea. Eventually Rome realized that Carthage was taking
over many of their trading posts and decided that a war would be
necessary. The problem was they had no combat ready navy and if they
challenged Carthage at sea they would received the mother of all
ass-kickings. Rome decided the way to win this war was to get their
first class infantry aboard the Carthaginian ships and let them take
care of business. The Romans designed a walkway that was 40 to 50
feet long and 4 feet wide and made of heavy timbers so they would
support the heavily armed and armored infantry making the walkway
very heavy. The walkway had a large iron spike on the front. The
walkway was held vertical in the front of the Roman ships and dropped
when they got close enough to an enemy ship. The iron spike would
penetrate the deck of the enemy ship and hold them together while the
infantry crossed over. The ship builders told the Roman military
that the walkway was too heavy and that much weight above the
waterline would make the Roman ships unstable. The Roman military
thought it would work and launched 500 ships with 100 infantrymen
aboard each ship. After the 500 ships were several miles off shore a
severe storm showed up and every one of the ships capsized and each
and every infantryman drowned. That, my friends is a casualty list
of over 50,000. That is the worst naval disaster in recorded history
to that time. The worst one came in the 13th
century in the times of Kublai Khan, but that is another story.
This
Date in History March 2
1776
Finally all the hard work and sacrifices made by our ancestors is
paying off. With all the military battles fought by Nathaniel Greene
and Benedict Arnold in capturing the British artillery pieces in Fort
Ticonderoga, and General Henry Knox bringing them back to Boston
undetected and General John Thomas getting those bad boys up on
Dorchester Ridge that ended up staring down the throats of the hated
British led by Sir Charles Howe. Howe had no choice but board his
ships and sail his army up to the safety of Nova Scotia. The siege
of Boston was over. Brigadier John Thomas was rewarded with another
star for his actions here and he became Major General John Thomas.
Thomas was assigned to replace General Richard Montgomery who was
killed at the Battle of Quebec. Even with the addition of General
Thomas, it was found that Quebec could not be taken and the
Continental army began retreat back into New York. During this
retreat General Thomas, a physician by trade, fell ill and died of
smallpox on June 2. A terrific loss for the Continental army.
1836
On this date the state of Texas declared its independence from
Mexico. A group of hard-assed Texans arrived on the
Washington-on-the-Brazos and declared David Burnet as provisional
Governor and Sam Houston as commander-in-chief of all military
forces. Importantly, they adopted a constitution that allowed the
institution of slavery which had not been allowed by the Mexicans.
During this time Mexican General Santa Anna had the Alamo church in
San Antonio surrounded with 2,000 of his troops against 237 Patriots.
Earlier in 1821 after Mexico won their independence from Spain,
Moses Austin had petitioned the Mexican government to allow him to
bring 300 families to settle sparsely populated lands on the Brazos
River. The Mexicans agreed as long as the settlers were Catholic.
Moses Austin died soon after this and the cause was taken up by his
son Stephen A. Austin. Austin brought in mostly southern states
Protestants because they knew how to run plantations. More and more
Americans flooded the land and soon had the resident Mexicans
outnumbered. In 1830 the Mexican Government took steps to prevent
the hordes of honkies headed their way. All of this sounds familiar
except in reverse, doesn’t it? Anyway, Austin plead for statehood
in the Mexican Federation but was imprisoned for it because he told
his settlers to declare themselves a Mexican state anyway. He was
released in 1835. In 1834 Santa Anna had told the people in
Gonzales, Texas to relinquish the cannon that had been given to them
by Santa Anna as protection from the wild-eyed Comanche. The
hard-asses in Gonzales sent a message back “Come and take it”.
Santa Anna send 100 men to get the cannon but they were driven off by
the settlers and the cannon stayed. This was considered the first
battle for Texas Independence. In 1835 Santa Anna amassed a large
force south of the Rio Grande and an invasion appeared to be on the
horizon and Sam Houston ordered the Alamo abandoned. Colonel James
Bowie saw that all the artillery in the Alamo could not be moved
before Santa Anna arrived and requested permission to stay so that
would give Sam Houston more time to raise an army large enough to
combat Santa Anna. Bowie was joined by a small cavalry under the
command of Colonel William Travis bringing the total count to about
140 men. One week later they were joined by the frontiersman Davy
Crockett and his entourage bringing the total to about 155. On
February 23 Santa Anna and his 2,000 troops set siege to the Alamo.
During the chaos a few men from Gonzales broke through and joined
with the rest and brought the total up to 237. On March 5th
Santa Anna ordered an all out assault with no quarter. In about an
hour it was over and all the Patriot men were killed in savage hand
to hand combat. There were a few women and children allowed to
leave. Six weeks later Sam Houston surprised Santa Anna and his army
near the town of San Jacinto and those Texans herded the Mexicans
into waist deep water in a swamp and killed them wholesale. Santa
Anna was captured and brought before Sam Houston and Houston told him
that his life would be spared but he had better take what was left of
his army and get his young ass back across the Rio Grande and don’t
ever come back. The Mexican dictator had to acknowledge the
independence of Texas. Texas petitioned to be annexed into the
United States but anti-slavery forces opposed it. So Texas rocked
along there as an independent nation for 10 years (this is where the
Lone Star comes from) with Sam Houston as President of the Republic
of Texas. In 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union and soon
thereafter the Mexican War erupted.
Born
today:
1810
Pope Leo XIII. He said “It is quite unlawful to demand, defend,
or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, or writing
or worship as if these were so many gifts given by nature to man.”
I had to read this statement over and over again to make sure that I
copied it right from the text. Pope Leo XIII has since gone on to
his reward.
Thanks for listening
I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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