Veterans day, They did it for you

[bighog]

Rare film of D_DAY The greatest mission in history. Men and women that gave us all a good life by putting theirs on the line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZCDfhoNxA&feature=related

 

[circadian]

BUMP.

 

[nutmeg]

It has been quite some time since I have read a book that doesn't have anything to do with the market. I needed a change of pace. Completely different than any genre I've read before.

I bought a book on submarine warfare in WW2. That did the trick. Finished that, I picked up a book on the screaming eagles, I know nothing about paratroopers in WW2. I seldom do anything in moderation so next on my list was tank warfare of WW2. I thought I had covered the war genre, but then bought Flags of our Fathers.

I didn't know it was a movie because I seldom keep up on hollywood or tv, but that is neither here nor there.

My daughter was getting married and I had to get fitted for a tux. At the tux shop is this old geezer working by himself and I noticed his coat and hat hanging in the back room when I went to try on my tux. It was all Marine insignias, VFW hat with decorations, so I chatted the guy up, what the hell, I'm a book expert on WW2 and should be able to hold a conversation.

Turns out the guy was a sargent in Marines and fought on Iwo Jima, his picture is in the book Flags of our Fathers. I brought the rest of my kids over to meet him and gave him a case of oranges, sort of like a thank you gift.

 

[dcvtss]

Flags of our Fathers is a great book, the movie did not really do it justice in my opinion because you never got to know the characters as well as you did in the book, where you felt like you grew up with them from childhood.

WW2 is an incredibly fascinating subject and one that I believe is rushed through far too often in history curriculum. Especially for those of us in America we get a Pearl Harbor-Africa-D Day-Holocaust-A Bomb speed reading. The majority of the war, and to me the most interesting part, the Eastern Front is barely mentioned. There is nothing in human history before or after that compares to brutality and horror of the eastern front. As much as the Soviets were Red bastards, and they were, they carried the brunt of the fight and took grave losses that no country would ever take today and survive.