Thank You..

**Broken Link(s) Removed**

Good, simple, idea . They deserve it.

I like it, if I`m not close enough to say something being a vet I normally just give a salute but this works for everyone.

Thanks for the link - great idea. Any way to thank our vets is great with me.

Outstanding post grumpy

I go out of my way to say thank you. Those guys and gals do a hell of a job. More than I ever could. They deserve it.

Glad you guys liked it.

Yesterday was my lucky day!!! The timing of this is incredulos. Yesterday while picking up a few items in the local food store,I quickly passed a frail man who was slowly pushing his cart in the opposite direction.He was moving slowly and favoring his right leg.He had a well used ball cap that had DAV in tall letters on it.Since I am a student of WWII and since he certainly fit the age brackets,I wondered if the V could be Veteran.I decided to turn around and see if it were so.In small letters under DAV it said disabled american veteran.I asked what theatre he was in during the war. He said South Pacific.I asked Marines? No,it was the Army Air Corps.He went on to explain he was shot up when his B17 took enemy fire and he wound up in a hospital in Manila. I knew that 4 engined aircraft [ B17's and B24's] were used for reconissence and submarine hunting.He said when the japanese overran the Philipines he and 28,000 American troops were captured.He was a Japanese POW for three and one half years.I knew just what type of treatment that meant.I asked him if ever once he received a Red Cross package.He explained that European POW's got a Red Cross package about every 2 weeks. In the 3 and one half years of captivity he said he got one single package in 1944 that was parceled up among his group. He said beheadings were a form of punishment.He said once the sword was flashed overtop of him and to this day can't understand why he was alive past that moment.I asked him if he ever got clothes or shoes.Wore the same as when taken prisoner for 3 1/2 years he answered.When he was freed from the camp he said he only weighed 100 pounds.They captured 28,000 and liberated 16,000.I asked how he was able to survive when so many did not.He told me that it was attitude and trying to make the most out of a very bad fix that he was in.He told me that there are only a little more than 200 men left today out of the 16,000 that were liberated. His handshake was slight,his hand was cool but I have read enough to know it was tougher than I could ever imagine.I was in the presence of a true hero if ever there was one.I told him so. Go out of your way to find them and tell them about the debt we cannot imagine how to repay.I remain humbled. Mike

I swear I had a dream last night about saluting some soldiers! ( probably because I play WWII strategy video games...)
I saw a couple Viet Vets outside Home Depot last year, it was on their motorcycle jackets. I thanked them as I walked by, should have offered to buy them lunch.
Some liberals will call this rank sentimentality and warmongering. That kind of mentality opposes the very citizens that sacrifice so much for the love and good of our USA.
Some vets in my family, my dad was a severe alcoholic, maybe because he had cargo ships torpedoed out from under him twice in WWII. He was a Merchant Marine, and this was way before the term PTSD was coined.
When my brother went into the Marine Reserves during the Vietnam era, he weighed 185; when I went with his wife to pick him up from boot camp, he weighed 135, and knew 53 ways to kill you with his bare hands. He joined to avoid being conscripted, both my brothers drew low lottery numbers. The draft would send a lot of today's kids scurrying
Mike, a great book is "Ghost Soldiers" about prisoners in Bataan and their liberation by Army Rangers.

If you can, send what you can to http://www.fisherhouse.org Bill O'Reilly has raised a million bucks for that worthy charity in about two months..