[Yikes!]

Originally Posted by Ryan Hey now, she was voted in by the western part of the state. That place is fucken weird. She got elected in the same election in which Colorado voted to reintroduce wolves. The running joke is that the Western Slope voted to send Boebert to Congress so the Front Range voted to send wolves to the Western Slope.

This is inaccurate. Her district includes some very red towns/cities but also extremely blue towns and cities. The western slope of Colorado is interesting as it is predominantly “hippy” but the voting base is still very old and conservative. She won by ~500 votes not because of the overall backwards political leanings of her district but because of the poor turn out by those who live in her district. It’s a true disservice to think that glenwood springs, Carbondale, basalt and Aspen are “fucken weird”.

She will not win again.

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 Isn’t it someone’s job to check/vet that sort of stuff? You know, just so you don’t accidentally wheel in some old Nazi by mistake. Good grief.

The government's Protocol Office.

This is literally what they are paid for. This debacle happened as part of a state visit to Parliament. But that would mean it's a government failure, and Trudeau would have to bear the responsibility.

So instead, we're all supposed to pretend the Speaker of the House can just do whatever he wants. He invited some random Ukrainian - 'cause they're all alike - and everyone just said "Yes sir!"

[psmith2.0]

Sounds about right. People not doing what they’re supposed to, but shielded/protected for reasons removed from the actual ball-dropping. Selective outrage at its finest, it kinda sounds like.

Why/how, in 2023, are Nazis(!) still managing to show up and be news stories? Are we in another unasked-for Indiana Jones movie where these idiots are just background/set dressing and we’re just somehow not supposed to notice or find it weird?

Have they not had their moment/“time to shine”?! What gives? I don’t wanna see, hear or read about these guys, real life, ever again, in whatever time I’ve got left, be it five years or 30. Enough! They lost, last I checked. Doesn’t that kinda mean a few things?

[drewprops]

Update.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...ar-ncna1290946

Apparently, Ukraine *was* a hotbed of Nazism and atrocities against Jews. It's useful to have a broader context on the history of the region, to better understand how Putin employed that history to justify his actions. I don't live there, so everything I understand is filtered through what I'm told.

...

[PB PM]

Ukraine did have a high population of people with German backgrounds in the first half of the 20th century, so that might have had something to do with it. Most of them fled with the Germans in 1944 though, fearing Soviet retaliation for what the German army had done to the Russians.

[psmith2.0]

Awesome. So we're still fighting shit from 75-80 years ago. Just the players/geography have shifted a bit.

There will never be "peace". We, as a species, won't allow it. Would've happened by now.

Because if you go far enough back in time, someone's always wrong about something (and grounds for further "us v them". All the handshaking and treaties signed don't seem to amount to much. Even as a kid, I recognized that. I remember the Sadat/Begin stuff as a kid and my dad saying how important it was, and, even as a kid, me seeing wild-eyed idiots throwing shit in the streets and thinking "are they gonna stick to it? Are they seeing these news reports too?" Or was it all just photo ops for politicians in suits who aren't doing the actual fighting/blowing stuff up?

The latter.

People who've been going at it for decades (wearing the wrong color, or spray painting a wall, in the wrong neighborhood) or centuries (somebody's great-great-great grandfather fucked a goat belonging to an important chief in another tribe/clan, without permission or payment) are never going to act right. Or lay down their arms and embrace peace. The word doesn't exist to them. All they've ever known is the opposite, and I'm not so naive/brain-dead to think that somehow magically goes away via wishing and John Lennon songs.

If that's all it took, then I could take a nice stroll through Coolidge Park in downtown Chattanooga at 11pm without worrying about catching a stray bullet in the neck because two local gangs are beefing (again). And there's a new death toll/body count on the local evening news, every night at 6pm (and pleas of "stay away from..." areas I've spent my entire life enjoying/visiting, until the past 5-8 years because the shitheads have taken it over.

[Ryan]

My great-grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled after WW1 and the Bolshevik revolution, then their (US-born) son enlisted as soon as he was 18 and went back to Europe to kill some Nazis. He landed at Normandy as a private and entered Leipzig as a lieutenant captain. Along the way he led his unit in defending the Remagen Bridge after it was captured by the Allies, a little north of Frankfurt over the Rhine. This was the last intact bridge over the Rhine—Hitler ordered them all destroyed to slow the Allied advance, but nothing the Nazis threw at this one worked.

The largest antiaircraft artillery battle in US history took place over this bridge as the Nazis desperately tried to sink it. Didn't work. Underwater Nazi frogmen tried to attach explosives but Allied snipers picked them off in the water. They even launched their own V2 rockets at it but the damn thing was unsinkable.

That is, until 40,000 Allied troops rushed across it in the first 48 hours after its capture, beginning the Allied liberation of the Rhineland. The bridge collapsed after that but fortunately the Army Corps of Engineers had already built additional pontoon bridges by then. Eisenhower called the bridge "worth its weight in gold" and historians believe the capture of this bridge accelerated Allied victory in Europe by weeks to months, saving tens of thousands of lives.

My grandfather tore down the Nazi flag that flew over the bridge's eastern ramparts and raised the first American flag east of the Rhine, which my family still owns, along with a set of ceremonial Nazi officer daggers that he confiscated from the troops he took prisoner. There was a Hollywood movie about it back in the 60s and about ten years ago I visited the remnants of the bridge myself.

[psmith2.0]

Wow. I could see all that in my head, how it played out. Great story and family history!

My grandpa drove a supply truck in Burma (Myanmar) and I'd look at all his souvenirs or things he brought back, decades before I was born. He lost most of his hearing and the doctors said it was likely due to all the shelling/bomb-dropping in/around their base. It progressed during my childhood, but in his final 4-5 years of life, he was stone-cold deaf. His photos (and stories) are amazing. I regret not capturing them somehow, before he died in late 2007. I wish I had voice recordings of him talking and telling things, because every time I'd go to visit him, the subject would eventually make its way around to the war. Sometimes just kinda naturally and roundabout meandering. But then sometimes I'd be like "Pappaw, tell me about that time you guys had to drive those nine trucks up that mountain road to the other side...", and off he'd go. *sniff* My favorite times throughout 2005-2007.

I know I have it good, and easy, due to the things others did and went through.

[Matsu]

Frank, you're not quite right in your assessment, and most people would think it works the way you suggest, but they're wrong. This one falls 1000% on the Speaker, and he should offer his immediate resignation.

The speaker is elected by the house, not appointed by the Prime Minister. Basically, the majority party almost always gets one of their own, though often that doesn't mean it's the PMO's pick for the job. It's super inside baseball, but because the House elects the speaker by secret ballot, this one is a bit of a popularity contest: it is often not quite so easy (and admittedly often not so important) to whip the vote. The opposition often sways the choice (even against a majority) by propping up someone who may only be the second or third favorite choice of the majority caucus. In this case of a minority Parliament, BTW, the Speaker (Rota) would have had to have won his job with support from the Conservative benches to put him over the top...

What's at stake is essentially controllership of the legislature, the Speaker in addition to ceremonial/procedural duties, functions as the CEO of the entire legislative precinct; agenda; schedules; etc..., he/she does not caucus with his/her party; is restricted from certain political events; is given an official residence within the Parliament, and a cottage if I'm not mistaken... As the Governor General represents the Crown, the Speaker represents the Legislature itself and its various offices, including Protocol and Parliamentary relations, or whatever it's called now. But while the GG is appointed, the Speaker is elected for a two-year term beginning with his/her election by a majority of sitting Parliamentarians.

That said, I wouldn't neccessarily blame protocol office staffers just yet. Guests to the gallery are not vetted as a matter of general protocol. You and I can show up to Parliament tomorrow and be seated in the gallery for any public session so long as there is space. I've done this in Ottawa and a few Provincial Legislatures: there's nothing quite like being disappointed by your leaders live and in person

Interestingly, this old Nazi is from the Speaker's home constituency. He is not part of an official Ukrainian delegation. Obviously, someone invited him to make the trip; my strong guess is that the Speaker was introduced to this guy at some constituency level event, or he was recommended by some trusted community person at that level. He likely went looking for a good bit of theatre and asked someone to feel around for someone to "recognize" from his area, an "easy win." He wouldn't have had to tell anyone in Parliament about his wishes. If I know anything about Canadian politicians, they fucking love first responders and vets, the older the better in the latter case. Not always enough to do anything for them, but certainly enough to put them into the dog and pony show whenever they want a photo or a headline...

Well, it definitely turned out to be a good bit of theatre...

[kscherer]

I'm not in their heads, but who says the Speaker had no idea the dude was a Nazi? Maybe he did know!

That would make for even better theater.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by Ryan My great-grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled after WW1 and the Bolshevik revolution, then their (US-born) son enlisted as soon as he was 18 and went back to Europe to kill some Nazis. He landed at Normandy as a private and entered Leipzig as a lieutenant captain. Along the way he led his unit in defending the Remagen Bridge after it was captured by the Allies, a little north of Frankfurt over the Rhine. This was the last intact bridge over the Rhine—Hitler ordered them all destroyed to slow the Allied advance, but nothing the Nazis threw at this one worked. The largest antiaircraft artillery battle in US history took place over this bridge as the Nazis desperately tried to sink it. Didn't work. Underwater Nazi frogmen tried to attach explosives but Allied snipers picked them off in the water. They even launched their own V2 rockets at it but the damn thing was unsinkable. That is, until 40,000 Allied troops rushed across it in the first 48 hours after its capture, beginning the Allied liberation of the Rhineland. The bridge collapsed after that but fortunately the Army Corps of Engineers had already built additional pontoon bridges by then. Eisenhower called the bridge "worth its weight in gold" and historians believe the capture of this bridge accelerated Allied victory in Europe by weeks to months, saving tens of thousands of lives. My grandfather tore down the Nazi flag that flew over the bridge's eastern ramparts and raised the first American flag east of the Rhine, which my family still owns, along with a set of ceremonial Nazi officer daggers that he confiscated from the troops he took prisoner. There was a Hollywood movie about it back in the 60s and about ten years ago I visited the remnants of the bridge myself.

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 Wow. I could see all that in my head, how it played out. Great story and family history! My grandpa drove a supply truck in Burma (Myanmar) and I'd look at all his souvenirs or things he brought back, decades before I was born. He lost most of his hearing and the doctors said it was likely due to all the shelling/bomb-dropping in/around their base. It progressed during my childhood, but in his final 4-5 years of life, he was stone-cold deaf. His photos (and stories) are amazing. I regret not capturing them somehow, before he died in late 2007. I wish I had voice recordings of him talking and telling things, because every time I'd go to visit him, the subject would eventually make its way around to the war. Sometimes just kinda naturally and roundabout meandering. But then sometimes I'd be like "Pappaw, tell me about that time you guys had to drive those nine trucks up that mountain road to the other side...", and off he'd go. *sniff* My favorite times throughout 2005-2007. I know I have it good, and easy, due to the things others did and went through.

Both of these stories remind me how close some of us are in history. My great uncle John was aboard the USS Vestal. For anyone who doesn't know, the Vestal was a support ship that was moored up against he USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

My uncle never spoke about the war. I know only that he served throughout and only left in ~1945-46 after it was over.

[kieran]

I "think" I'm a little younger than most who are still posting here, but for me, the Vietnam War is the one that I have relatives that fought in that I remember.

But, even still, I have family that fought in that war and died before I as even born.

My great Uncle ended up on the cover of Vietnam Magazine 30 years after he was killed by friendly fire.



We still think about him every year as there is a memorial lifeguard race in the town he grew up in New Jersey. He spent summers as a lifeguard before he joined the Marines.

[psmith2.0]

Both of my grandfathers were in WWII, nobody I know was in Korea and my Dad was in Vietnam.

I’m sure I had relatives in WWI, the Civil War (what a goofy name/word) and others, but the above three are the ones I know of for sure. Dad was a radio operator and was based on the side of a ridge looking down into a valley. He has two photo albums from his time there and I used to look at them. There would be huge fireball explosions down in the valley that he’d capture and mostly lots of goofing around with others. I know he lost a few friends. He said the only time he was truly scared/wanted out was on night he had to guard the perimeter. It was so dark. He said he never knew if the enemy had crawled up to just feet of him. The sounds from the woods/fields, he was never sure if legit wildlife or enemy soldiers communicating with each other. He talked about the monsoons coming through and just soaking everything/everyone, the heat/humidity, bugs, etc. According to him, my mom and my grandparents, it changed him. He volunteered, joined the Natines and went in Mr. Clean Cut, class President, Wally Cleaver type. Mom said when she saw him afterward, he’d grown his hair, was foul-mouthed and was super liberal/hippie, anti-everything, etc. he was kinda that way growing up, but he’s circled back around to Mr. Hardcore Right-Winger Conservative in the past decade or so. Life, I guess.

[Matsu]

And he's now resigned following his meeting with all party caucus leaders:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/hous...vite-1.6577796

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by Ryan My great-grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who fled after WW1 and the Bolshevik revolution,..

Seems to be a common occurrence! My step grandmother’s family came to Canada from the Ukraine at the same time. Almost the entire town she grew up in had the same story, mostly Ukrainians or Ukrainian Germans. She served with the women’s auxiliary near Winnipeg during WW2.

She loved Ukraine, so glad she passed in 2019 and didn’t have to watch this war in their homeland. She was so excited when one of the nurses she had in the seniors home was from there.

My high school physics teacher also had the same background as well.

[kscherer]

"It is with a heavy heart that I did not think things through and caused yet more embarrassment to His Royal Highness, whose uncle was a Nazi sympathizer. Oh, how I wish I were smarter, but I'm not and now I must tuck my tail between my legs and self-cancel. Perhaps I will find mercy when I move to Argentina. Until then, heil Charles!"

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by Matsu Frank, you're not quite right in your assessment, and most people would think it works the way you suggest, but they're wrong. This one falls 1000% on the Speaker, and he should offer his immediate resignation.

Point taken, but the guy met personally with the Prime Minister. After Trudeau's 2018 trip to India, when a guy convicted of attempted murder met with the PM's delegation, one would think someone would have been charged with vetting the PM's visitor list.

I mean, this is a political party that goes apoplectic on social media if the Conservative leader shakes hands with some random nut bar at wide open campaign events, and views that as disqualifying. This is a million times worse.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by Frank777 Point taken, but the guy met personally with the Prime Minister. After Trudeau's 2018 trip to India, when a guy convicted of attempted murder met with the PM's delegation, one would think someone would have been charged with vetting the PM's visitor list. I mean, this is a political party that goes apoplectic on social media if the Conservative leader shakes hands with some random nut bar at wide open campaign events, and views that as disqualifying. This is a million times worse.

Yeah, it's a big failure of the vetting process. I dislike Trudeau and Poilievre equally, so I say that with no trepidation.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by kscherer Both of these stories remind me how close some of us are in history. My great uncle John was aboard the USS Vestal. For anyone who doesn't know, the Vestal was a support ship that was moored up against he USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. My uncle never spoke about the war. I know only that he served throughout and only left in ~1945-46 after it was over.

My grandfather never spoke about it, but he wrote a short memoir about ten years before his passing. I was also able to visit the American cemetery at Normandy and photograph the seven graves of his brothers-in-arms who died there. My aunt printed them out and brought the photos to him, he was moved to tears.

My brother and I are planning a trip next year to take my father to Europe and retrace his father's steps from Normandy to Leipzig.

When I was walking the Camino de Santiago last year I met a 90-year-old German pilgrim from Leipzig. He would've been 12 when the Allies reached that city and I have to wonder if he saw my grandfather marching into Leipzig in 1945.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by Ryan My grandfather never spoke about it, but he wrote a short memoir about ten years before his passing. I was also able to visit the American cemetery at Normandy and photograph the seven graves of his brothers-in-arms who died there. My aunt printed them out and brought the photos to him, he was moved to tears. My brother and I are planning a trip next year to take my father to Europe and retrace his father's steps from Normandy to Leipzig. When I was walking the Camino de Santiago last year I met a 90-year-old German pilgrim from Leipzig. He would've been 12 when the Allies reached that city and I have to wonder if he saw my grandfather marching into Leipzig in 1945.

I'm headed to Washington DC tomorrow evening to take the fam on vacation*. Be there for a week+. Two must-stops: Arlington and The Wall. I have a name to find (my best friend's uncle). The last time I visited, I hunted down my pop-in-law's neighbor's son. I had no paper or pencil with me, so I used a brochure and a ball-point pen. I had to keep wiping the pen on my pants because the tip would run dry. But I powered on. To my right was this old couple standing arm-in-arm. When I was finished I asked who they knew, and they said their son was on the wall. They hadn't brought paper or pencil either, so I tore a page from the brochure and went back to work.

I don't think I've ever had to wipe my face so many times!

Anyway, the memorials are enough to keep a person busy for hours and hours. I'd love to visit Normandy (and perhaps one day I will get the chance). Until then, the memorial grounds are sufficient.

Also, next Friday we're making the drive to the birthplace of America**: Gettysburg! Woohoo!

* And, now, with the government shutdown looming as a possibility, the museums may be closed the week we're there. Repubilcrat bastards!

* IMHO, America was conceived in Philadelphia, but she was born in Gettysburg!

[Ryan]

I thought DC did a great job with the WWII monument and make sure to also see the new(ish) Eisenhower memorial. It doesn't have the raw power of the Lincoln Memorial or grandiosity of the Jefferson, but I think it's a fitting memory to his leadership.

[kscherer]

"Today is a day of days!"

We'll be sure to check it out. We'll be walking the entirety of the Mall, and visiting as many memorials in the area as we can.

[psmith2.0]

Back in 1996, my wife attended Officers' Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia, so we lived in that area for a while (Prince William County, the town of Woodbridge). We loved it. Out of all the places I/we have lived since leaving Chattanooga in late 1993, Northern Virginia was my favorite (of all the places/beauty of Southern California). The fall was crisp and colorful and it just felt "right" to me, geographically, visually, etc.

Anyway, it's basically the southern suburbs of Washington, DC, just a quick drive up I-95 from our place to be right smack in the heart of DC, the Mall and everything you kinda want to see.

We went up on a COLD winter Saturday, snow still on the ground in places, but windy and in the single digits, I recall.

We went to the Vietnam Wall because I just wanted to see it. It's one things, from a distance, just a "black slab", but when you get there and you see all those names. All those young lives lost who never got to come home and see Foghot, Skynyrd or Rush, or a Braves or Mets game, or marry their true love, etc., it hits you like a freight train. I walked the entire length, just looking at all and trying to wrap my head around the enormity of it, what each of those engraved names truly meant/represented. This wave of sadness washed over me as I've never experienced.

It's a powerful monument, just in its stark, simplicity. And I'd look around to see grown men - veterans, presumably, finding the names of their buddies, many of them - and...when you cry in 8-degree temps, it HURTS. We revisited the following spring, a lot more people around, the temps were pleasant. But there were so many mourners and people there having moments that it just made me sad all over again.

I loved my time spent at the mall. It's really something to see, in real life, all these structures/monuments that you've spent an entire lifetime seeing only on TV, movies, news reports, etc. The Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the Washington Monument, the White House, the reflecting pool, etc. It's a beautiful, solemn place. And then, of course, all those museums. The Air and Space one, Natural History, the one with Archie Bunker's chair and Fonzie's jacket, etc. We spent several entire Saturdays up there on several occasions. All that, plus all the more suburban/rural Northern Virginia area just felt wonderful to me. Manassas, Fredericksburg, etc. Being born and raised where I was, the Civil War, from childhood, looms large, and seeing some of those other important locations was so interesting to me. Several large national battlefield/parks in Chattanooga, random cannons in unexpected places, museums, etc. It's just part of the region, and trying to explain it to some handwringing Millennial or Zoomer who can't stop pissing their pants over a flag is just an exercise in futility/aggravation. It's history. It happened. Very few of us are "proud", but you don't just wish it away because it rubs up against the standards and mores and P.C./Woke thinking of 2022-2023. All the morons tearing down statues and monuments on your own...kindly go fuck yourself. You're doing it wrong too. Dang, I've wanted to say that for a long while.

[Kickaha]

The Vietnam Memorial was utterly panned when the design was first revealed. Rah rah patriots were horrified that it wasn't the traditional guts and glory style, all flags and strident stances looking over the horizon.

Frankly, it's only one of two war memorials I've ever been to that felt right.

It's a broken gash in the ground. It's an open wound. It's simple, plain, elegant, and nothing more than a list of the dead, in chronological order of their deaths. It requires getting up close and *looking*, *searching* for the names of the dead, getting personal and intimate with the scale of loss. You can't just salute it from 100m and call it patriotism. You can't say "yup, we kicked ASS, back when we were MEN!" and call it a day while standing back to take in the grandeur.

It shows the only real cost of war, plain and simple. Just loss, and pain, and wounds. It's genius in its design, and emotional impact.

But DAMN was it vilified when first proposed, by those who couldn't accept war as anything other than pedestals and glory.

Fuck the pedestals, IMO. They're just useless bullshit, at best, and more commonly, a way of whitewashing history to avoid context and any factual narrative. They shoot past all the uncomfortable reality, and jump straight to "look how awesome we are!" That's not history, that's just chest-thumping. No one learns anything from that.

[psmith2.0]

Yeah. I never believed a big black slab with some names could elicit such a reaction. I wasn't even in Vietnam, but you can't help but tear up, seeing all those names. What, 500,000+? A lot. I hope some folks were proofreading their asses off too. You don't wanna be the Polish guy from Chicago whose last name they royally botched. Wychzkowskii...

[Kickaha]

Yeah, it's one of those "... oh... oh fuck..." moments when you approach it. The only memorials that matter are those that have that impact. The rest are just propaganda and puffery.

The other one that hit like that was a small chapel in Polebrook, England. A few years ago I wrote this for Veteran's Day:

Years ago, I was backpacking in Europe and the UK. I was on the train from London to York, and decided almost on a whim to stop off at Polebrook, where my grandfather had been stationed as a B-17 pilot in WWII with the 351st Bomb Sq of, at the time, the 8th Army Air Corps. A couple of years before, they had had their official memorial dedication, and he hadn't been able to make it due to medical issues. I wanted to get him some pictures, at the very least. It was sort of along the way, but I figured that I could spend the day exploring off the railways, and perhaps find something new.


I got off the train in Peterborough, and walked to the bus depot, taking a wrong turn along the way and ending up taking just a couple of very fateful minutes more than I had expected. It turned out that I had just missed the bus to Polebrook by mere seconds, and had an hour before the next one arrived. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't changed the battery in my camera in two months, so after asking around a bit, I found a nearby photo shop and bought a new one. I got back to the station just in time to board the bus for the ride to Polebrook with my 60+lbs of backpacks, when three elderly women struck up a conversation with me. All had grown up in the area, and remembered the 'flyboys' with awe and undying gratitude. When they found out what I was there for, and for whom, I was immediately adopted family. They remembered, and placed the lion's share of reason for them not speaking German today, on the B-17 squadrons.


The bus was to drop me off a mile from the memorial, but these old women badgered the bus driver (on his first day no less) to drive me straight to the memorial, and I was invited back to Mrs. Daugherty's house for tea afterwards. I got off the bus, and... there was essentially nothing there.

There was a small stone marker, and a wooden podium with a guestbook in it, at the edge of plowed fields. I signed the guestbook, and went to snap the photos I had come there to take, when the battery in my camera suddenly died, and I was grateful for the small window of time I had had previously. I took some photos, and despite my disappointment, was glad I made the trip. While I was standing there contemplating the three mile hike back to Mrs. Daugherty's with my heavy load, trying to decide what to do next, a Benz drove up; a man got out, and started replacing sheaves in the guestbook. He asked me if there was something he could help me with. "Yes... I came here looking for the Polebrook Memorial... is this it?" He confirmed that yes, this was it. But...


It turned out he was the President of the Polebrook Memorial Society, and would I like to see his private museum?


He had purchased one of the remaining hangers and converted it to a storage company, but it was a treasure trove of memorabilia. As we drove in, I noticed that both the UK and US flags flew at the entrance... at the same height. He has special dispensation from the Queen to do so, and it is, to the best of his knowledge, the only place on British soil where it occurs.


The photos and relics were incredible. Candid shots, formal posed group photos, you name it, he had it. Engine parts, plane parts, both pristine and battle-damaged, canteen kits, uniforms, it was all there. We talked for a good hour about the effect of the base on the local populace, and the reverence in which they held the flight crews.


He then took me on a driving tour of the village - I got to see and snap photos of the pub where my grandfather had shared pints with friends soon lost, and hoisted pints in remembrance of those past. Sadly, it was closed. I saw the dance hall where the local girls would come to flirt with the flyboys. And then he took me to the church.


In a small alcove, they had a memorial set up to the local men and boys who had lost their lives in WWII. For the Americans... they had an entire wing.


Photos adorned the walls, letters of thanks were framed and hung in places of note. And there was the book.


The Book of Honor, inscribed on the front. Inside, painstakingly hand-lettered calligraphy of the thousands of names of every man who had served at Polebrook in the US forces. It was a simple but massive tribute of passion and gratitude. If their name was in red, they were alive. If their name was black, written over the red, they had died. If their name was gold... they had died in service defending Britain.


Nearly half the book was gold.


I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks, as it hit me what sacrifice had been made. All those young men, most barely out of their teens, if that. Dead. Violently and terrifyingly, their vitality removed from the world through their deaths. The enormity of it became clear for the first time in my life, and I've never forgotten that moment. That simple book, in that simple chapel, said more to me than any parade, any tribute before ever had, or has since.


Never forget names of gold. Or black. Or red. They are the cost, and the weight of what we have. On this day, we honor them, we remember them, and we thank them, no matter their homeland, or their faith, or their path.


They were, and are, human, with all the weaknesses and flaws therein. But there is, if not glory in war, honor in sacrifice.


A few hours later, after tea with the Daughertys, I returned on the bus, and the ticket clerk asked me how the trip was. I told her it was positively incredible, and that I was glad I decided to do it on the spur of the moment. She said I was quite lucky I had when I did. Why, I asked?


"Today is the only day of the week the bus runs to Polebrook."

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by Kickaha It's a broken gash in the ground. It's an open wound. It's simple, plain, elegant, and nothing more than a list of the dead, in chronological order of their deaths. It requires getting up close and *looking*, *searching* for the names of the dead, getting personal and intimate with the scale of loss. You can't just salute it from 100m and call it patriotism. You can't say "yup, we kicked ASS, back when we were MEN!" and call it a day while standing back to take in the grandeur. It shows the only real cost of war, plain and simple. Just loss, and pain, and wounds. It's genius in its design, and emotional impact.

The Arizona memorial and Gettysburg are the others that I really want to see. This year we had a choice of going to Hawaii or Washington DC. The girls really wanted to go to Maui, but I'm not going to Hawaii and not visiting the Arizona and the Missouri. On one side, you have the white temple and the silent graveyard it oversees, and on the other the result of all that needless suffering. It's both silent, sad — a memorial — and straight up "we're gonna kick your ass with guns-a-blazin'" all in the same 1/2 mile stretch.

On the other side of the country, Gettysburg decided the fate of our nation, and the graves stand as a testament to the cost of ignorance. I cannot wait to visit.

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 Yeah. I never believed a big black slab with some names could elicit such a reaction. I wasn't even in Vietnam, but you can't help but tear up, seeing all those names. What, 500,000+? A lot. I hope some folks were proofreading their asses off too. You don't wanna be the Polish guy from Chicago whose last name they royally botched. Wychzkowskii...

58,000 and some change. But you were close.

The one time I visited I never got passed about the tenth panel from the south. That's where I stopped to copy the name I went there to find. The rest of it we just didn't have time for. This year, we're going further — if my mind can handle it. Too much suffering on that wall, but perhaps that needs to be evermore etched into my conscious.

[psmith2.0]

Sadly, we don't seem to learn/take anything from these memorials. We're a fightin' bunch o' people. Anything, anytime.

I always think back to my favorite sequence in JFK (a movie full of great sequences), where Donald Sutherland is laying everything out for Costner's Jim Garrison.

"...the organizing principle of any society is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers."

Seems to be the case, 'cause we're always in 'em! In a few decades there will be another big memorial in DC for some war that never needed to happen, with a few thousand more names of young dead Americans on it. Maybe I'll be gone by then and won't even have to know.

Sometimes they're necessary, and unavoidable. But far less than the opposite.

If global affairs were only like grade school playground, where a single, troublemaking bully can be punched squarely in the nose and adjust hit shit real quick, and stop being a moron pretty much immediately, that would be nice. Or, anytime a madman/dictator/pot-stirrer type cropped up, his own citizenry/countrymen would just be like "nope, not today" and take care of the problem before everyone had to get involved. Saddam Hussein, that Libyan asshat whose name can be spelled about 16 different ways, ol' Adolf, the Russian midget, etc. Some people just richly deserve to have that ass beat while on the up-and-coming, before they wield any real power/control, and sparing the planet a lot of loss and heartache.

Does no good to wait until they're dictator/president for life with allies from other asshat regimes/nations running cover for them. Then it's too complicated/risky and becomes a messy, out-of-control cowboy movie saloon fight with the piano player and whores getting hurt.

If people just had less of a tolerance/patience with nonsense and horseshit from complete whackjobs, at lost of the world's ugliness would've been nipped in the bud, before it ever got to war and thousands of dead people.

We've talked about this, in that Elon thread of all places. Some people just need a beating (or worse).

And it ain't no big mystery or moral juggling act to figure out who, either. Put me on that selection committee!

[kieran]

Originally Posted by kscherer "Today is a day of days!" We'll be sure to check it out. We'll be walking the entirety of the Mall, and visiting as many memorials in the area as we can.

Not sure if you have the time, but taking the drive out to Udder-Hazy to see the Air & Space museum. The portion on the Mail is cool, but the annex is just awesome.

Having the Space Shuttle there and the way it's framed when you walk in....Damn.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by kieran Not sure if you have the time, but taking the drive out to Udder-Hazy to see the Air & Space museum. The portion on the Mail is cool, but the annex is just awesome. Having the Space Shuttle there and the way it's framed when you walk in....Damn.

I put it on my list. If the silly politickers can get their respective acts together and stuff doesn't get shut down …