Moonhowlings

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, is dead at age 82.  He is best remembered for his famous words:

“One small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”

He had had heart surgery 3 weeks ago and was thought to be recovering without complications.

He had a long, distinguished career in the NASA Space Program.  He commanded the Apollo 11 mission and landed on the moon in July 1969.  He was truly a great American hero.  Many of us remember where we were when we sat breathlessly and heard those words….one small step for man.  No one today can imagine our excitement and yes, fear, for those astronauts.  We Americans were so proud that summer of 1969 when much of America had been divided by the Vietnam War. Neil Armstrong and those other astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, united the nation like no one else could.

Please leave your own tributes to Neil Armstrong. Neil slipped the surly bonds of earth today…

Happy Memorial Day weekend. I usually overdo it with my rememberances so please just bear with me.  I love Memorial Day.  I love the sound of Rolling Thunder and I love to grab hold of that American feeling and hold it as tightly as I can.  I love a weekend that forces us to say thank you to those who are dead and gone and were it not for this national day of thanksgiving, might be forgotten.  I love the PBS Memorial Day tribute on Sunday nights each Memorial Day weekend.  I like that Memorial Day forces me to think and yes, shed a few tears.  I owe it to my country.

 People sometimes confuse Veterans Day with Memorial Day. I think that is a forgivable sin, actually. Memorial Day grew out of Decoration Day, which started during the Civil War to honor those who had fallen. Many boys were buried in far off states and the good people of the towns where they lay cleaned up the graves and decorated with flowers on Decoration Day.

In Virginia, perhaps they weren’t as charitable at northern grave sites except they thought of their own sons, husbands brothers, fathers and uncles lying in some distant land and suddenly, it didn’t matter whose side the soldier had been fighting for.

I would like to thank my dad, a vet who made it home from WWII, for teaching me to remember those who have fallen, not just on Memorial Day, but every day. It’s hard to go through Virginia without passing one of the many cemeteries lined with Civil War dead. There is a particular one, on route 250 as you head into Staunton where I first learned about recognition- Staunton National Cemetery.

Read more…

The 11th hour on the 11th day of of the 11th month in the 11th year….This is a special Veterans Day just because of the date.   Today there is a contest.  Each year since 1978 the Department of Veterans Affairs  has created a special poster for the year.  Please chose your favorite poster  from the list, by year.  We will have an honorary poster winner  at the end of the day.  I already know my favorite. 

For our contributor vets, thank you for your service. 

Please don’t forget to chose a favorite Veterans Day Poster. 

There are many Veterans Day posts today because Veterans are special.

The Daily Caller:

It was the news the world breathlessly waited for immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks: a report of the first American troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

All at once the world’s attention focused on an iconic photo of those Special Operations Forces doing something no American military had done in nearly a century: They rode horses into combat.

Their secret mission: secure northern Afghanistan by advising the warring tribal factions that formed the Northern Alliance. During the 2011 Veterans Day Parade on November 11, a new monument to these men — and to all Americans in uniform — will make its way down New York City’s famed Fifth Avenue on the way to its final home, a stone’s throw from Ground Zero.

Military men and women, along with New York City firefighters, policemen, emergency responders and other marchers, 50,000 in all, will escort the monument on its televised journey. The spectacle will feature members of the three original Special Operations teams — some on horseback, others walking alongside surviving spouses of fallen heroes.

Retired Army general and current CIA director David Petraeus will be among the parade marshals. Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer is producing a future movie about America’s “Horse Soldiers.”

Read more: httpdailycaller.com/2011/10/14/secret://-mission-the-horse-soldiers-of-911/#ixzz1bYl8J2Qi

Not all our vets have been human.  Reckless makes Traveler, Little Sorrel, Comanche and countless other horses look like ‘also rans.’ 

Reckless was definitely like the little engine who could. 

She was retired at the Marine Corps Base in Camp Pendleton where a General issued the following order…she was never to carry any more weight on her back except her own blankets. She died in 1968 at the age of 20.

h/t, Reckless

Lyrics | Dire Straits lyrics – Brothers In Arms lyrics

At what point do we get tired of burying our dead and having to prop up our mangled and wounded?

When do we stop all the chest thumping  and mission accomplished bravado while hiding our tears?

How many thousands have come home with life altering injuries, never to be whole again?

Half of those men and women would have died even 40 years ago.  Modern medicine has kept them alive and has  chased off the grim reaper. 

If we can land a man on the moon, we can find other ways to resolve conflict rather than blowing each other to kingdom come as we have done since the beginning of time. 

To all our veterans, we are glad you are here.  Thank you for your service–

I am a  proud daughter and niece of veterans.  My father and uncle  came home in one piece.  Not everyone did. I was one of the lucky ones. 

*******************************************************************************************************

Alternate version of  Brothers in Arms  featuring Mark Knopfler, one of my favorite artists.  Knopfler, from Dire Straits, is one of the gods of guitar, like Clapton. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_Jzgnrpv8&feature=related

I just finished watching Restrepo.  It is available on Netflix.  It will also be shown again on NatGeo Monday night at 9 pm.  We have been so protected from our wars.  Only military families have suffered.  Industry and defense contractors have gotten rich.  The rest of us have basically remained untouched.

The war in Afghanistan is costing 2 billion dollars a week.  Our troops are being asked to be social workers.  Meanwhile, those same troops are suffering death, horrible brain injuries, loss of limb and overall life-altering injuries.  Military families have suffered because also because of the multiply deployments.  Children have grown up without a parent and spouses have spent 10 years with partners popping in and out of their lives. 

Read more…

Remember last week when the Frank Buckles, the only surviving veteran of WWI died?  His death is not without controversy.  From Foxnews.com:

CHARLES TOWN, West Virginia — The daughter of Frank Buckles, who was the last American veteran of World War I, is urging lawmakers to let him lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Sunday.

Susannah Buckles Flanagan said her father, who served as a military ambulance driver, wanted to lie in the rotunda to honor the memory of all WWI veterans.

“He looked upon this as his final duty, which he took seriously,” she said.

“If the last American soldier surviving is not suitable to serve as a symbol around which we can rally to honor those who served their country in the Great War, then who can serve that purpose? There is no one left,” she said in a letter released Saturday. Read more…

When we are at war, Americans observe days of commemorance such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day just a little more carefully and with a little more reverence.  We have been at war since Fall of 2001. 

From the US Navy Seals Website:

The Story Behind Veterans Day

In honor of all American veterans:

Credits to fivemumaw | November 09, 2007 on youtube.com
who states this is a:Tribute to his late father who served in Vietnam and to all who’ve served in the U.S. Military… Past and Present:  A Veterans Day Montage

From Guitar Guy 41503 on youtube.com:

Veterans Day is to honor all those who have served in an American branch of the armed services.

Please use this thread to remember friends and family members who have put on the uniform both in times of war and in times of peace.

Today’s Memorial Day Tribute comes from our dear friend Captain George Harris.  He was kind enough to write the Memorial Day  thread for today as a special favor for Elena and me.   I know it was not an easy task.   I would like our readers to know a bit about George before you read his tribute:

Captain George S. Harris, U.S. Navy (Retired) served in the Navy from August 1951 to July 1990.  He rose from Seaman Recruit to the rank of Captain.  During his career he served as a Senior Company Corpsman in a Marine rifle company in Korea, and several tours as a medical company commander in the First and Third Marine Corps Medical Battalions.  As the commanding officer of B Company, First Medical Battalion, he served in Vietnam in 1966-67.  Unlike many officers in his field he had “hands on” experience in treating wounded Marines in Vietnam.

 His military decorations include Legion of Merit with Two Gold Stars, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Meritorious Unit Citation, Navy Good Conduct Medal with Bronze Star, National Defense Service Medal with Bronze Star, Korean Service Medal with Marine Corps Device, Vietnam Service Medal with Two Bronze Stars and Marine Corps Device, United Nations Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Navy Expert Pistol Ribbon. 

 Here are my thoughts this Memorial Day–  

Memorial Day is here once again.  It is not to be confused with Veterans’ Day, which used to be called Armistice Day but few remember what happened at the “eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. 1918” when the armistice was signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany in a railroad car in France and all was quiet on the Western Front. 

 Memorial Day  is when we, as a Nation, are supposed to stop and remember all those brave men and women who gave the last full measure, laying down their life for their countrymen.  At our National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia the sixty-year old ceremony known as “Flags In” was completed a few days ago when more than 350,000 small American flags were carefully placed one foot in front of each tombstone and on “The Day” a wreath will be placed in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns.  People will gather in cemeteries around the nation to honor our military dead. 

 Just who is it exactly that we’re remembering?  From our very beginning at the Battle of Concord when citizen soldiers stood,

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;

Here once the embattled farmers stood;

And fired the shot heard round the world.”   

                                                                    Concord Hymn

                                                                    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1837)

 

until today, almost 42 million Americans have answered our Nation’s call to arms.  Some 1.2 million have been killed or died in the service of their country and another 1.4 million have been wounded.  In our most recent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 5,300 have been killed and nearly 37,000 have suffered what are now known as life altering injuries.  You know who they are—they’re the ones with missing arms, legs, eyes and assorted chunks of flesh and those whose minds that have been forever stained with the memories of war. 

 In Vietnam, I held young men and watched as the light left their eyes and my strongest memory of that terrible time is still the smell of blood.  I have stood by that “rude bridge” in Concord and if you listen very closely you can hear the sound of musketry and the cries of the wounded and dying.  I have walked through Arlington National Cemetery where some 30 funerals a day take place.  I am always awed at the sight of all those gravestones lined up so precisely.  I have attended the funerals of many friends there and listened to the beat of the muffled drums and the clip-clop of the horses drawing the caisson. 

 Not all died a “hero’s death” on the battlefield. Some, like me, served their nation and long after the smoke of battle has cleared they join that band brothers lying beneath gravestones scattered around the world.  One last crackle of rifle fire and the mournful sound of Taps echoes across the land as they are laid to rest. 

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the skies
All is well, safely rest;
God is nigh

From the News and Messenger:

Manassas National Battlefield Park will be marking Memorial Day with a commemorative ceremony on Monday.

The event will begin at noon at Groveton Confederate Cemetery and New York Avenue and will feature Union and Confederate flags, state flowers and wreaths of spring blooms decorating the battlefield in memory of the fallen of the two Civil War battles of Manassas in 1861 and 1862, and in commemoration of the nation’s war dead through history.

Members of the 42nd Virginia Infantry and 14th Brooklyn Militia reenactment groups will represent Con-federate and Union troops in conducting funeral musketry salutes at the cemetery and at the 14th Brooklyn Monument.

The park’s artillery detachment will fire a salute from a 10-pounder Parrott gun in honor of the war dead, and members of the 42nd Virginia will perform guard duty at the cemetery through the afternoon.

The ceremony will begin with the raising of flags to the peak of the cemetery flagstaff at noon. Musketry and artillery salutes will follow at the cemetery and a final musketry salute will be fired at the 14th Brook-lyn Monument at about 1 p.m.

The Groveton Cemetery is located on U.S. 29 about one mile west of Va.234. Parking for the cemetery is located immediately to the west of the site, off U.S. 29.

The 14th Brooklyn Monument is across U.S. 29 from the cemetery, with public access and parking located on New York Avenue, a park tour road.

Hopefully these brave soldiers will continue to be honored in this way, regardless of time.   Many of those young men are buried far from their homes.  Their families didn’t have the comfort of visting their graves.  Virginia is full of civil war graveyards.  My favorite one is a Union cemetery over on route 250, just east of Staunton.  My father always tipped his hat when we drove by on the way to visit my grandparents and said ‘hello buddies.’  He did that every time he passed a military cemetery.

"To All Confederates"

Over in the Valley and down I 81 lies the hamlet of Mt. Jackson. All of us have seen the exit. My dear friends Jane and Bob live there. They returned home after many years out of the area to settle into retirement with family and friends. Bob served in the Coast Guard and Jane served in the school systems in Tidewater and Prince William County. It is difficult to catch up with either of them because they are so busy. But I digress….

I recently spoke with Bob about his membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I wanted to know more. Many people think of the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a bunch of moonshine drinking, beer bellied, hell raising, flag waving bearded old grizzlies who continually shout “Forgit? Hell no!” every other word while they pet their 10 coon hounds yapping at their heels. Not Bob and not many others.

Bob is one of the most genteel, educated, Virginia gentlemen I know. He does not fit the image painted above. In speaking to Bob, I almost got a mystical sense of a desire to stay connected to his past and his roots–not just stay connected but to honor that past and those roots. He and Jane both have a strong sense of history. There was an unmistakable message that we do not allow our collective regional heritage to be distorted and conveniently swept under the rug in favor of a more politically correct image of what we were not.

I share much of Bob and Jane’s heritage and I think it is important for all sons and daughters of the South to admit, like all Americans, those chapters of our history that are ugly and we certainly have some. But all of our heritage is not ugly. Much of it is good, gracious, and a great source of pride. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. Honoring this past honors your family; those people who, in most cases, were just ordinary people trying to go about their everyday lives doing what they had to do to get along in the world they knew.

One of the first Decoration Days was held in Mt. Jackson at their local Confederate Cemetery. Soldiers from 11 different Confederate states are buried there. Very few families could travel to honor their dead. Many wars later, as we commemorate Memorial Day 2010, let’s go back some 144 years ago to a little place in the Valley:

From Virginia.org

Our Soldiers Cemetery was established in 1861 on land obtained from Col. Levi Rinker. The cemetery, containing about 400 graves, was first dedicated on 10 May 1866 by a memorial association. The entire community, including the nearby town of New Market and Edinburg, participated in the dedication of the cemetery. A wreath of flowers was placed on each of the graves. The ceremonies included addresses in the church by Maj. H.K. Douglas (an aide of gen. Stonewall Jackson) and others.

Because of the efforts of Raymond Watkins of Falls Church, VA, and others, the list of Confederate soldiers buried here is complete and there are no longer any unknowns. There are soldiers from eleven southern states buried here: AL, FL, GA, LA, MD, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, and VA.

Decoration Day in Virginia

Inscription:

“The Mount Jackson Confederate Hospital’s Cemetery, now called Our Soldiers Cemetery, was dedicated on May 10, 1866 the third anniversary of Stonewall Jackson’s death. The “Memorial and Decoration Day” organized by the local ladies was one of the first such observances in the South. The service began with an address in the church by Major Henry Kyd Douglas, the youngest of Jackson’s staff officers. Afterward, a participant wrote that “ladies, gentlemen and children as well as many ex-Confederates, all carrying wreaths prepared the day before, marched to the cemetery ¾ of a mile north of town to place those wreaths on each of the 400 graves.”

The Third and final Confederate National Flag waves over the dead

Much honor and thanks to my mother, Betty, who taught her kids to have pride in their heritage during times when frankly, it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.

Resource: The Historical Marker Database

…

I love Rolling Thunder! They evolved out of the Vietnam War. As they came back from Vietnam, often bewildered, it was like time had stood still. Did they quietly accept that they had fought in an unpopular war and to suck it up and move on? Oh hell no.

Enjoy the roar

And from another perspective…ride along with them.

Rolling Thunder 2009 – Ride of the Patriots – Fairfax to Arlington

The former home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee is now the final resting place for more than 300,000 people.  Memorial DayArlington National Cemetery.  President Herbert Hoover conducted   the first national Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1929. 

Before every Memorial Day, soldiers put a flag at each grave.  This tradition creates a beautiful scene.