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| At random: Interests in submarines extends to royalty and presidents. The King of England and the King and Queen of Spain are among those who have made submerged cruises in submarines. As a result of a trip in an early United States submarine, President "Teddy" Roosevelt ordered extra compensation for personnel serving in the "Silent Service." President Harry Truman made a 440 foot dive in a captured German submarine. The first President to cruise aboard a nuclear submarine was President Eisenhower who rode the USS SEAWOLF out of Newport, Rhode Island on September 26, 1957. |
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dex armstrong |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 3202 Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: And they passed into history The survivors of a long forgotten parachute outfit, deactivated in Europe long ago....Men who had participated in and witnessed the last clean-cut, undisputed pair of UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDERS in our history...are leaving us in ever diminished and dwindling numbers. (Just this week, we of the submarine community witnessed the passing of our last Medal recipient and submariners icon, Admiral Fluckey.) So, the courageous survivors of my Father's old airborne unit...once upon a time, they had been returning, sunbronzed victorious hardbodied warriors flushed with the legend of their many hard fought victories. They were young, full of pride, piss and vinegar and secure in the knowledge that they had decidedly crushed evil. Many of their buddies and non-coms had been left behind...some resting beneath European sod still wearing their battle worn jump jackets and baggy pants. Some resting in thickets, behind rock walls, in abandoned barns and hedgerows waiting for the Army Graves Registration to match them up with their dog tags and dispose of their remains. They had returned to the waiting arms of a grateful nation. They had drifted down from C-47's or ridden CG-4A into combat and had lived to carry back their tales and perpetuate their history. And now, years later, they returned to the World War Two Memorial on the National Mall. The amblitory pushed the wheelchairs of the infirm. Others negotiated the approach walk with walkers, canes, holding onto the arms of the same buddies who had dragged them out of enemy fire and stemed the flow of their blood with field compresses, or held elevated plasma bottles for them in forward area field hospitals. Still others relied on the support of shoulders provided by "born since" decendents. The men who had gone hand-to-hand, and toe-to-toe with Hitlers best...the Third Reich supermen... had grown old, but not faint of heart. They slapped each other on the back...played the old,"Do you remember that little skinny kid from New Jersey?"game...spoke of "those goddam 88's"...the sound of incoming mortar rounds, squeeking bogey wheels on tanks and other track vehicles and eating cold rations out of olive drab tincans in the rain...They described a time in their life in 1944 when total and absolute luxury was taking ten in a Dutch ditch passing a couple of canteens through the squad and lighting up a sweat stained Camel. Months before this gathering the men of this remnant of a proud and noble parachute and glider infantry unit had voted to meet for a last time and disolve their reunion committee and sunset their organization. They had elected to turn over their wartime journals, marked maps, uniforms and insignia, yellowed snapshots and official Signal Corps photos...discolored letters and their beloved unit standard, to men of the Army History Section...most of which were not born when these guys exited aircraft over continental Europe loaded for combat. Their history like many other units will be archived for access by future generations. My Dad missed it...missed this final muster, but was very ably represented by a granddaughter in uniform with Master Parachutist wings. Wes got his final orders in January 1967. So they gathered and passed around the obligatory bottles of Calvados. Why Calvados? It is the principal product of the Normandy region...a kind of apple brandy I believe. On June 4th 1944 damn near nobody had ever heard of the stuff...by June 8th most jumpers who had exited aircraft on the night of June 5th, had tossed away their issued gas masks and crammed a jug of Calvados in the vacated gas mask case. The "Normandy Drop" resulted in the wholesale liberation of a large portion of the Calvados production. Over the years as brave men grew long in the tooth, Calvados became the unofficial libation of the WWII airborne units that participated in the Normandy Drop. "Calvados, Breakfast of Champions." Waxed paper cups appeared, brown paper bags containing corkless Calvados jugs were passed...tourist spectators asked each other,"What'n the hell do those guys have in those bottles"...cups were filled, old weary eyes twinkled...hands grown shakey and liver spotted raised their cups...and without a verbal signal they broke into song..."Oh, Stand by your glasses steady...this world is a world of lies...Here's a toast to the dead already...THREE CHEERS FOR THE NEXT MAN WHO DIES!!"....And, a tall, broad shouldered old coot yelled, "OK, You sons-a-bitches...Three minutes...STAND UP...HOOK UP...CHECK YOUR EQUIPMENT...SHUFFLE TO THE DOOR." Wish the Old Man could have hung on long enough to make it...but, wherever in the hell he was, I know his heart was there and an invisable hand held a dented canteen cup of Calvados. Thanks for wading through this. DEX....(If you take issue with anything here, please reserve comment...Just let me wander through this wonderful memory, without criticism for once. Thanks again, DEX) | ||
| Ron Wert |
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| Crew Posts: 75 | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Criticism? No way. I got started as a member of your fan club by the funny stuff you wrote for the After Battery. I still love all those stories but this makes them shrink into insignificance. This is what we're supposed to remember not just on July 4th, but on Memorial Day, VJ Day, VE Day, Hell, every day we draw a free breath. Personally, I like the misty feeling I get when I read these kind of stories. Thanks DEX. | ||
| John396 |
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| Old Salt Posts: 403 Location: Sacramento/Twain Harte | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Good rambling, any criticisem would be brought on by you.  | ||
| Donald L. Johnson |
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Great Sage of the Sea Posts: 602 Location: Visalia, Ca. | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Well said, Shipmate. | ||
| Smiley |
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| Great Sage of the Sea Posts: 811 Location: NW Connecticut | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Well said.. There is a movie.. actually a series called 'Band of Brothers' that is about an Airborne outfit in WW2.. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it yet. | ||
| Jim M. |
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Great Sage of the Sea Posts: 877 | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Smiley - 2007-07-06 5:08 AM Well said.. There is a movie.. actually a series called 'Band of Brothers' that is about an Airborne outfit in WW2.. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it yet. Band of Brothers was about E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Very good series..and I was fortunate to meet one Brother at the Frederick Airshow in 2002. I am also fortunate to be friendly with a gentleman who was in F Company, 2nd Btn., 506th... He jumped into Holland on 17 September 1944, as part of Operation Market-Garden... wounded a week later, missed Bastogne while recovering then saw more action as the 101st advanced through Germany. | ||
| Pete |
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Senior Crew Posts: 206 Location: Edina. MN | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Thanks for the memory, Dex. They still live in our hearts. | ||
| dex armstrong |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 3202 Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: And they passed into history They never considered themselves heroes. That's not false humility, they truly didn't. They didn't dwell on the carnage, but they made no apologies or ever excused or sought forgiveness for anything they visited on their enemies. Units like my Father's, liberated death camps (Dachau was their first exposure to the level of inhumanity, cruelty and wholesale horror of what the Germans caused. They NEVER forgot or forgave. In my Father's words,"When we went through the gates of Dachau we were ill prepared for the horror we faced. It was at that point that all of us realized, that from North Africa to those gates, we had not been faced by an enemy who remotely understood the concept of HONOR, instead we had been exterminating vermin."). Men who had been young lads when their country called...Soda jerks, gas station attendants, apprentice carpenters, movie ushers and ticket booth guys....lumberjacks, fishermen, school bus drivers, tractor mechanics and dairy delivery men. In a few months they had become men who stepped from the doors of C-47's over locations where everything carrying a weapon below them was there for the express purpose of killing them. They floated to earth, bringing with them the spirit of America...the honor, sense of fairplay, fairness, and honorable stewardship of the surrendered. They brought with them as they floated to earth a sense of who we were as a people and the sense of caring for the weak and oppressed that was forged into men who had been hammered into manhood on the anvil of the Great Depression. As the American Paratrooper passed through the towns liberated by their blood and courage, crowds lined the streets and soldiers who would subsequently go hungry, tossed their rations into the arms of grateful children and cigarettes to pretty girls. They were the lighthearted American lads...the men who marched with a swing in their step...with their M-1's slung at rakish angles...and a smile and twinkle in their eyes...men who sang offcolor ditties and tucked their trousers in the tops of their boots and "bloused" them. Before this happy band arrived, children had never seen anything arrive in town hauling weapons that had brought them anything but pain and darkness. As they cut their way across Europe, the American paratroopers left smiling populations in their wake. No...they never considered themselves as anything but Godsent instruments of liberation...Men given the opportunity to remove the chains of oppression of the Nazi enslaved nations. Once across the Rhine, they entered what they considered to be the vipers nest of people who pretended innocence and non-involvement. (General Chapman once said.."Hell in 1945 you copuldn't find one sonuvabitch who freely admitted that he folled Hitler." People who lived along rail lines over which literally millions of sacrificed people had passed to the death camps and extermination centers swore trhat they had no idea what was taking place. As an aging gentleman said to me..."There were no Sgt. Schultz's (Hogans Heroes), there were only brainwashed fanatics...Godless animals.". General Gavin, the CO of the 82nd rounded up mayors, councilmen, prominent females, shopkeepers, anyone connected with the Nazi administrative or justice systems and any other folks appearing on the community totem pole and had them carry out and bury the rotting corpses of the uncreamated dead...The Old Man said,"You could smell the stench for miles." There was no such thing as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome back then...they were just wartime memories the returning GI's visited in their nightime dreams....but they were tempered by the memories of the cheering of the liberated...the kisses given bearded men slogging through town after town in pursuit of a retreating enemy and the welcome of a truly grateful nation when they returned home. They returned with their history and a love and faith in their fellow jumpers that lasted for well over 50 years and continues and will continue until the last "Happy Bastard" leaves his last church goodbye...feet first. "Oh once we were happy....but now we're forlorn...We wear on our shoulder the Winged Unicorn...We fly through the air with the greatest of ease...We ain't got no motors we just ride the breeze...we land in the swamps and we land in the trees, but we're always there first in a fight...Now some ride the gliders and some ride the chutes...we don't care how we come down...So save your hot spots for the airborne gahloots...We're a pile driving mob on the ground...Oh, we fly through the air with the greatest of ease...We ain't got no motors we just ride the breeze." (Written by Major W.H. Armstrong, commanding 1st Bttn, 513th Parachute Infantry 1942-45 and sung to the pilferred tune of the MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE...renditions of which were sung in Itally, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany and various English pubs in and around Nottingham, England, former home of the Sheriff of Nottingham, advasary of Robin Hood (Earl of Locksley). Again, Thanks for wading through this. DEX | ||
| dex armstrong |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 3202 Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: And they passed into history Addendum to post directly above. A corporal in Company "B" of the 513th PIR, captured a Waffen SS colonel who was arrogant and demanded to "See zee kommandink officer, eeemeediently." The kid relieved him of his pistol...told him to remove his belt, unbutton his pants and unzip his fly. (This way he had to hold up his pants when being escorted back to a prisoner collection point...Holding up his pants was both humilliating and kept his hands fully employed.) When they reached the G-2, the kraut was given a coursury interrogation. The G-2 interpreter turned to the soldier who captured the arrogant sonuvabitch and said,"Hey this guy is Colonel Gustav Von DooDah, Prince of Dinglestein von Hertzen-go-Thingamabob." The unshaven, filthy jumper grinned and said,"Tell the smartass bastard that he just got rooted out of his hole by Wille "sockless" Jackson, White Trash outta Harlan County Kentucky...Pool Hall Prince of Hazard Kentucky....the guy whose gonna do his damndest to swap his Lugar for a bottle of smething that contains alki-holl." They were not grounded in social formality or defference to pedigreed pigs. DEX | ||
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