Ex-Boatswains Mate, US Coast Guard

I Remember Barry, South Wales

     I was 17 when the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, I enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and was involved in rescue and anti-submarine patrol until early 1943 when I was assigned to Landing Ship, Tanks (LSTs).  Our ship, LST-381 took part in the invasions of Gela, Sicily; Salerno, Italy and Anzio, Italy in 1943 and 1944.  We arrived at Port Talbot, South Wales and took part in the assault at Normandy.  It was during our second trip to Normandy, about 3:00 AM, June 15, 1944 hat a lone German bomber dropped a string of four bombs.

     One of these struck about 50′ off our port bow and another, close in on our starboard quarter.  Most of the damage was above our waterline, so we continued operating until June 27th, when we arrived off of Barry, South Wales.  We rode at anchor until June 29th.  I remember we had to shorten or lengthen our anchor chain due to the extreme tide runs, about every six hours.  For the next 20 days our crew was able to alternate “liberty” for half the crew each day.

     The work on our ship was done in the Barry Graving Dock and involved welding over 150 holes in the hull, repairs to our main engine clutches and both shaft bearings as well as damages to our bottom.  I recall the workmen arrived at about 7:00 AM and worked until dark each day.   They had morning coffee with our crew and we had afternoon tea with them.  Most of my liberties, I went to Bindle’s Ball Room.  A young lady, Joyce Trask (a nice young lady), spent a lot of time improving my dancing.

     We also walked about the town and looked at the shop windows or walked through a nice park west (?) of Bindles.  Joyce lived with her mother and neither she or her mother allowed any “hanky panky”.  If Joyce is still living, she would be about 91 years old now!  My most distinct memory of Barry is how friendly the people were.  The workers on our ship were always in good humor, even though they were working over twelve hours, every day of the week, with only a couple of short breaks each day.

     The Dancing at Bindle’s ended before dark and, since we were “free”, most of us sailors found our way to the Barry Dock Hotel where they had a quiet bar.  The price for ale was sixpence and a single “neat” whiskey was a shilling.  The overnight rate for a room was five shillings.

     All the work done on our ship was excellent.  No problems at all with our clutches or shaft bearings for the next six months, when we transferred LST-381 to the Royal Navy at Roseneath, Scotland on December 19, 1944.  Our crew returned to the U.S. aboard RMS Queen Elizabeth, arriving in New York City on January 3, 1945.

     Shortly, I was sent to hospital for three months and received my discharge on June 18, 1945.

P.S. Joyce taught me how to pronounce “Llellaven”.

Read more about Gordon Lease . . .

      Learning key languages should be a major emphasis in every officer’s training, highly visible in the promotion process.  The process isn’t difficult or expensive.  All officers going to Afghanistan or Iraq, for example, should know how to speak, read, and write the languages of those countries.  Click the picture above.

      The European languages–such as German, French, and Italian–aren’t as important as they once were.  Besides, secondary school students can pick them up as options.

     But officers need to know the languages of countries they’ll be deployed to.  Service there will be much more enjoyable and interesting.  Winning the hearts and minds of people will certainly help in the nation-building efforts that are so important after the fighting comes under control.

     If the Middle East will continue to be a military hotspot for America, then all of the languages should be learned, beyond just a few phrases.  Hiring interpreters can be risky because much can be lost in translation–or deliberately misconstrued for political reasons.

    To be sure, fighting is the primary mission of our armed forces, and combat means that we have to dehumanize an enemy that we may have to kill.  But nation-building is different.

     Unlike neutral language courses, “sensitivity” training is in danger of being ideologically hijacked by one side or another, so should be minimized. Remember when colleges decided to teach more “World History”?  Some might have thought of the great civilizations of the past–China, Germany, India, and so on.  But liberals running universities quickly channeled all attention to Third World advocacy and anti-colonialism, ridiculing America and its military.

     With a greater volume of officers learning key foreign languages, courses can be taught on local bases rather than sending a few off to national military training centers.  Knowing these languages will make officers attractive to businesses and government agencies after they retire.  More Americans will be out and about in parts of the world they might not otherwise feel comfortable in.  Better for world harmony than a thousand United Nations.

      Today conditions are worse, with organized-crime drug cartels no better than ruthless armed gangs with operation bases throughout the US.  Money that fuels the cartels comes from America, where drug trafficking is more or less tolerated, along with illegals crossing the border.  Our government similarly looks the other way in Afghanistan as the massive drug trade there flourishes.

     The cartels aren’t humble peasants looking for work, however, but aggressive terrorists.  There’s opportunity to succeed in a weak-willed America.  National defense should begin at home before more innocent people die.  Drugs could be stopped if the right military tactics were applied.

    In his article “The War Next Door,” Newt Gingrich argues that weakness and fear will come back to haunt us: ‘Much of this violence constitutes nothing less than terrorism, publicly displayed to inspire fear in the Mexican people and government authorities who are fighting to re-establish security. And with some of these massacres taking place just a few miles from southern Texas, it’s a problem we shouldn’t take lightly”:

     Every single day, atrocities take place just south of our border in Mexico that are nearly unimaginable in the United States. The results of drug-related violence in our most populous neighbor are truly horrific: just this week, 49 mutilated and decapitated bodies were found in a city just 80 miles from the United States.  In May alone, the Christian Science Monitor reports that 23 bodies have been found “either strewn or hanging off bridges and underpasses” in Nuevo Laredo, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

     Americans may not realize the extraordinary level of violence in our most populous neighbor, but we should all be aware of it. Since 2006, 47,000 people have died in violence connected to Mexico’s out-of-control drug cartels.

      Americans have a deep interest in helping the government of Mexico establish safety for all its citizens. We owe it to the people of Mexico to do everything we can to help their government defeat the drug cartels.

    New countries and cities were started where none existed, America and Singapore both transformative as positive models of social enlightenment.  You won’t find a Haiti or a Yemen so quickly.

    Like the British then, the US military today has two seemingly antithetical missions.  The first is learned in infantry training: develop a Bushido-like fighting spirit to kill an evil enemy.  The second relates to nation-building or “winning the hearts and minds” of people in countries who have few choices because “freedom” isn’t even an option that can be understood.

     In its day, the British Empire was unsurpassed as a nation-building force.  The stranglehold of exploitive “native” allegiances in colonial countries was broken enough to usher-in the hope of coexisting with global nations that held greater technological advantages.

     In colonial nations, transportation infrastructure was developed to spur economic competitiveness, and military technology was introduced to thwart aggression from well-equipped adversaries.  The British Empire introduced workable models for administering justice and government.

      Countries today that were once part of the British Empire owe much of their success to the tutelage of British administrators and military who sacrificed staying-at-home security and comfort for life on the dangerous frontier.  Americans know what this was all about.

       Military officers intimately knew the languages of the people they were helping.  Orde Wingate eventually became a British general, but when he was sent to Palestine during the 1930s, the region was in chaos.  Vigilant Jews and internationals knew what was happening in the Third Reich.

      Wingate studied both Arab and Hebrew until he became fluent.  His military leadership helped organize a Jewish fighting response to Muslim terrorism that sought to annihilate the incipient state of Israel.  Sound familiar?

     His lifelong immersion in Old Testament stories made this fundamentalist Christian decidedly pro-Jewish in a latter-day British Empire that was already being eroded by liberal and anarchistic alternatives.  With an anchor in heritage and tradition, Wingate brought forward the guiding conservative ethos of the British past.

What  a comfort that must have been to our troops!

Four Democratic women were with Pelosi on this important (?) trip; Reps. Susan Davis (Calif.), Madeleine Bordallo (Guam), Niki Tsongas (Mass.) and Donna Edwards (Md.).

No Republicans… No men…  hmmm….

Regardless, it must have been a HUGE encouragement to our soldiers to have them there over Mothers Day. (sarcasm)

The Congressional Quintet was briefed by U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and General Stanley McChrystal.

They also met with President Hamid Karzai.

Pelosi issued this statement,”We are grateful for the service of our brave men and women in Afghanistan, for their commitment to America’s security, and their unwavering dedication to their mission.”

On Sunday, the delegation was in Kabul, where they were scheduled to meet with U.S. troops and with Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the country’s leader.  They also met with female Afghan lawmakers and civic leaders and participated in discussions on “increasing the role of women in governance, security business development and education.”  Sounds like important stuff!

Some in the media have called this a “bipartisan delegation”.  That simply demonstrates the unbelievable media bias.  Remember, no men… no Republicans.  How is this “bipartisan”?  Just a little Democratic womens group out for a little pilgrimage.  

Not much has been reported about the cost of this little junket. 

 Two things are certain:  It wasn’t cheap and it didn’t accomplish anything. 

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

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    Walker served with US Marines during the Vietnam War, and his book provides vivid description of jungle combat and the anguish of life on the front.   He looks at the warrior tradition as part and parcel of being an Indian, throughout history and in recent wars: “The Ho-Chunk warriors told many stories about World War II and some the great things that our Winnebagos had done while in service.  As I grew older, I knew that I wanted to be a warrior and wondered if I had the right stuff. “

    In Vietnam, Indian warriors sought out the toughest assignments to test their mettle.  Desk jobs or well-planned rear-echelon support duty helped the country, but didn’t meet the challenge of being brave and becoming a man.

     As Walker points out,”A tattoo on a Marine reads, ‘To really live you must nearly die.’  Only those that were in the bush that have survived the gore of firefight or lived through the charging of NVA soldiers in full battle dress, throwing grenades and spitting lead from an AK-47, will know what it means.”

    Walker enlisted to serve “as a grunt in Vietnam,” not a safe clerk or cook job.  “Like my great-great-grandfather, I wanted to serve my country.”  Photo on book cover above left is Walker’s grandfather.

     You are invited to hear Alan Walker (photo above right) speak on June 9, 2012, at Western Dakota Technical Institute in Rapid City, South Dakota, 9-11 am, an event sponsored by the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group, with a website at www.battlestory.org.

Today’s pleasures will surely be tomorrow’s vices.  We can hardly think of World War II without noticing that smoking was almost part of being in the military.  Some avoided the practice, so were able to trade the cigarettes that came in packaged meals for other things they wanted.

     Why did they smoke?  It was one of the few pleasures widely available in combat.  The cold that soldiers experienced during the Battle of the Bulge, for example, was made more tolerable by a bit of warmth from the smoke.  It was calming to the point that some casualties wanted a cigarette almost before receiving treatment.  Best of all, cigarettes were portable.

     Was smoking terrible and unhealthy?  Not if we judge a culture by its own standards and state of knowledge.   Sure, Hitler didn’t smoke and the German zeitgeist fully supported public campaigns that we would associate with anti-cancer, diet-restricting, nanny-state awareness of health matters that seem very contemporary to us.

     Cigarettes helped to make the war years more tolerable.  Alcohol continues to do the same for some.  Moderation is always offered as the line to be drawn to avoid problems.  Genetics play a role as well.  Many of those who fought and smoked during the war are still with us today.  Like the Germans back then, we prefer socialized public pressure to manage what’s perceived as good or bad for people.

     Lucky Strike was typical of companies that built war themes into their advertising.  Wikipedia helps establish the link between that company and America’s wartime society:

     The brand’s signature dark green pack was changed to white in 1942. In a famous advertising campaign that used the slogan “Lucky Strike Green has gone to war”, the company claimed the change was made because the copper used in the green color was needed for World War II. American Tobacco actually used chromium to produce the green ink, and copper to produce the gold-colored trim.

   A limited supply of each was available, and substitute materials made the package look drab. However, the truth of the matter was that the white package was introduced to modernize the label and to increase the appeal of the package among female smokers; market studies showed that the green package was not found attractive to women, who had become an important consumer of tobacco products.

     The war effort became a convenient way to make the product more marketable while appearing patriotic at the same time. Famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy was challenged by company president George Washington Hill to improve the existing green and red package, with a $50,000 bet at stake. Loewy changed the background from green to white, making it more attractive to women as well as cutting printing costs by eliminating the need for green dye. He also placed the Lucky Strike target logo on both sides of the package, a move that increased both visibility and sales. Hill paid off the bet.

Watch this WWII-style Lucky Strike commercial:

Fighter_Pilot_Old_Commercial

America is!!!

At least that’s what Vice President Joe Biden thinks!

“Uncle Joe” is at it again.  “When we took office…..We were the problem.”  His assertion was, of course, that it is George W. Bush who is to blame.

This guy really doesn’t get it.  It’s no wonder that John McCain said recently, ” He has been wrong on every single issue for years”.

Makes us wonder what he would do with America’s military if he were in charge!

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

You can help us share this important message with others by clicking the DONATE button on this page. You can also help by SHARING this article with your facebook friends and email list!

     One of the first photos (click above for more detail) shows landing boats at Massacre Bay on Attu unloading soldiers of the US 7th Division and equipment on black volcanic sand similar to what the Marines found at Iwo Jima.  The battle lasted until May 30 and was the only Arctic-type battle fought between the two countries.

       Admiral Kinkaid’s Task Force 16 supported the battle, with its 3 battleships, 1 escort carrier, and various cruisers and destroyers.  Though majestic, the mountainous terrain was difficult against dug-in Japanese defenders in hand-to-hand combat.

        Army Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki led Imperial Japanese forces during the Battle of Attu and died in the battle, with the American military experiencing fearsome banzai charges, the last of which broke through US lines.

     The date was February 22, 1967.  Rapid City’s Col. Dale Friend led the assault into combat.

    It was the first American combat parachute assault in the war against the enemy in South Vietnam.  Really, the first such assault since the Korean War, a war that Friend also served in.

       The combat jump was conducted by one reinforced Combat Battalion (2nd Battalion 503rd) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Friend says that “845 of us made the jump in war zone D close to the Cambodian Border.”

     When not leading soldiers into jungle combat, then Captain Friend was stationed at a base camp in Bien Hoa. “You’d go out for about a month and then go back to base camp for three or four days and get your act together.”

    Those visiting the Vietnam Memorial Wall will find the names of more than 1,700 of the 173rd Brigade’s soldiers.

     Friend will speak on Saturday, May 12th, at the Western Dakota Technical Institute, along with WWII Pacific Invasion veteran Dr. Vic Weidensee, 9-11 am.