Quote of the day - Wisdom from Criminal Minds

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."
- Herman Melville

Remembering Operation Tidal Wave

72 years ago today Operation Tidal Wave was launched against Nazi oilfields in Ploesti, Romania.

According to Wikipedia it was one of the costliest operations in Europe with 53 aircraft and 660 aircrewmen lost. I have a couple books on the subject, but I'll use those numbers for illustration.

One of my favorite quotes is this:

"He was convinced most of the planes would go down and there would be enough wandering Americans in Romania 'to call a general election, vote the Germans out, and make peace with the allies'"

from Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan and Carroll Stewart

M. Gerald Kennedy

My uncle, M. Gerald Kennedy was one of the "lucky" ones to survive that day...oddly enough in a plane named "Lucky"...only to go MIA/KIA 3 months later over Bremen, Germany

This is how the story goes:

The "Lucky" and part of her crew before Operation Tidal Wave. 

"Some of the Libs [B-24 Liberators] landed in Turkey - some of them even got down okay in Romania - some landed in Malta - some even went on and found freshly conquered fields in Sicily to land on. Capt. Harold Kendall, from Charlton, Iowa, was one of the joes who landed in Sicily.
     They found a half-finished fighter field. The crew was still standing by inside the "Lucky" with ears cocked for the bail-out gong when Kendall landed, with all the red lights showing on the last drops of gas in the tanks. "Lucky" hit the end of the landing strip, plowed into a flock of P-40's dispersed beyond the runway, and came to a stop, literally leaning against the sides of a hill. The crew piled out and kissed the ground, and waited to be congratulated by the ground crews on their magnificent emergency landing. Top-turret gunner Jim Goodgion, from Ruston, Lousiana, described a very different welcome from what they expected:

"Them grease monkeys, instead of giving us a glad hand, damn near blew their tops. They had just taken seven cracked-up P-40's and made two good ones out of them and here we come along and mash the hell out of the whole seven of them all over again." "

citation: I don't have it in front of me, but if you want it, I can find it.

All that being said, I have been unable to actually identify my uncle in any of the crew photos associated with the "Lucky" or Harold "Hap" Kendall's crew. My information comes from various sources identifying him as the navigator of that crew.

Thinking today of the heroes of that day, those that survived and those that were lost, and of the good people of Romania who, by most accounts, were hospitable and helpful to our downed airmen.

Five years ago...

Five years ago today I posted this on my Facebook:

"I never get tired of this....Wonderful voice, classical guitar, desert evening, and hot brunettes...what's to get tired of?"

Still true.

Questions that bother me so....

If you don't know where I get the reference, it is here:



...but more on that later perhaps. On to the questions:

1) Why are so many people all fired up about a lion being killed in Africa, and so few people fired up about Planned Parenthood selling baby parts?

2) Why do we listen to the men who are making millions of dollars a year complain about how raising the minimum wage is "outrageous"?

3) Why do people want to believe that the "automation" being found at McDonald's is a direct response to raising the minimum wage?

4) Why do people believe everything they read on Facebook, and take it as gospel?

I'm sure there are more, but those are at the top of my list today, and each is probably fodder for it's own blog post. I think that in lieu of that I will pour another whiskey, grab a book, and sit on the balcony.

Some if it's magic, and some of it's tragic, but I've had a good life all the way.

I don't know....

Ok...let's see...today is Saturday, right? I worked day shift Thursday....slept for 8 hours...ran errands and did housework for a while and slept (kind of) for 4 hours...then to the House of Mouse for an 8 hour graveyard. Came home and slept (kind of) for 3 hours until the damn phone woke me up (reminder to self: when you're working graves, turn the phone to silent).  Now I've been up for 3 hours, and in about an hour and a half I need to lie back down in the heat of the day and put my sleep mask back on and try to rest for a few hours before I go back to the House of Mouse for another 8 hours from 2200 today until 0600 tomorrow....then I will probably sleep for another 3 hours so that I don't lose my whole Sunday..then graves back to back Monday and Tuesday night....

Wtf.

A "series of events" led me to search my old blog posts for a particular post. While I did not find it, I did find this one, written almost five years go: Musing on an empty nest. 

Not much has changed, and in an already melancholy mood, that is just damn depressing. Sarah is now 23, and still lives with me, so the "empty nest" has not happened, but the feeling is much the same most of the time. She has her work, her friends, her life....and that doesn't include me for the most part...as it should be at this point. 

To make matters "worse", I retired from my full-time job, of over 30 years, three years ago. I am not complaining. It's just that I never saw this coming....I thought that retirement would be great....not having to get up every day and go to work. Not great. At least not from my point of view. As I said in the earlier post, "I don't know how to do alone". Well, it seems at this point that I don't know how to do "not working" either. You see, there's no one to spend the days with, and since I am an apartment dweller, there's no home upkeep or yard work to do. You can only clean an apartment, polish a motorcycle, do laundry so much before there's nothing to do.

I know this is true...I did one thing for over 30 years, since I was 18 years old....through lots of other stuff in life, I did one thing five days a week, fifty or so weeks a year, and I was good at it. And for 18 or so of those I had a second thing, Dad, that I was at least competent, if not "good", at. They were my "raison d'être", according to Webster, my "reason or justification for existence."

They are gone. While I am still Dad, and my usefulness as such still comes in to play now and then, it is not the same. And I still work part-time at that same 30+ year job, but it is sporadic, and not the same.

I have lost my train of thought. I don't know what to do, and that's the problem.

I just want you to understand....

We don't think we're "better" than you. The few that tarnish the badge, the uniform, don't represent the thousands of us on the streets, all over the United States, and the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the rain, in the snow, in the heat....there when you call us....just as soon as we can be.

Yes, there are few that tarnish the uniform or the badge....we despise them. We do NOT stand with them....no matter what mainstream media tells you.

Yes, we do violent things sometimes. Things you do not understand. Things we walk the streets so you do not HAVE to understand.

We wear the badge, the emblem, the uniform, proudly. To paraphrase Lt. Col Dave Grossman, the badge, the shield, the patch, is a direct, intentional reference to the Knights of Old that carried their shield in their left hand to protect their hearts.

We are ready to do violence on your behalf, so you don't have to suffer. Please understand that.

#uniform #badge #knight #understand