To My Band Of Brothers, Defending U.S. Freedom Here

In America On This Memorial Day...

War is indeed hell when two opposing sides go at each other full throttle to a final blood and guts end. In almost every war one side has represented some sort of evil philosophy, and initiates the first attack. The other side, defending their freedom and national welfare is forced to respond.  Our nation is now involved, to some degree, in several, defensive, small wars in distant places, but the most damaging war we are fighting involves political, moral and spiritual ideologies, here at home. The two sides are clearly at opposite extremes politically, morally and spiritually. There is a broadly diverse "In God We Trust" side and an "In us we trust side" and everyone in the U.S. is either fighting or supporting one of the two sides knowingly or unknowingly.

People who read this blog have some things in common.... Love of God, love of country, love of the U.S. Constitution and love of all who share those values. We are, in a sense, akin to those who have been comrades in armed battle, a band of brothers. Honesty compels me to admit that there is only a short list of people I would willingly die for, but an innumerable number I would risk it to save, which I have proven in battle. I must also confess there are some people I would not risk my life for, and, there are a few I might assist in their departure... if their actions required it.

Every war creates a depth of love for fellow combatants that is unequaled in any other secular endeavor. Sixty eight years ago I had the experience of many months of constant battle with my own Marine band of brothers, in the Korean War ... I love them still and weep at their passing. Here is a page, taken from that war, written by my friend and fellow Marine warrior, Dr. James Nicholson MD, known by those who served with him in battle as Nick the BARman.

From the pages of George -3-7th Marines
"The Communists hurled troops by the thousands against the Marines almost every night. There were 3,500 Chinese bodies around the outposts during one 24-hour period of bloody insanity. The terrain was reduced to the consistency of talcum powder by tens of thousands of artillery and mortar rounds. One outpost changed hands eight times in a two-day period. Victory was as deadly as defeat. The issue of the ownership of the outposts was usually settled with bayonets and bushels of grenades. Often after the deadly man-to man combat, the worst was yet to come. Both sides rained down pre-coordinated explosives on the new tenants, if they lost the terrain. And heroism ... so much heroism. The senses become numb even in the retelling.

Grenades were a common killing tool during the bunker wars (in Korea). Grenades mean up close combat. A grenade is as personal as a fist in the nose. When the pin is pulled on a grenade, someone dies or is mutilated. Night after night, Marines were seen throwing Chinese grenades back where they came from... sometimes leaping high in the air to catch grenades that were headed for their wounded comrades when they could have postponed their own death by cowering in relative safety in their fighting holes.

Several Congressional Medals of Honor and Navy Crosses were awarded posthumously to Marines who leaped on grenades, clutching them to their bellies in order to save a bunker full of fighting, wounded buddies. And the men who were there say that this ultimate act of sacrifice was committed unacknowledged as often as was recorded in the official annals of the brave.

Weeks and months passed. New replacement drafts from the combat units were almost never at full strength and still the Marines fought. And they fought as if their backs were against the wall, as though, if they took one step backwards, the enemy would seize their colors, their flag, their oath of allegiance, and all else that they held dear. After unbroken weeks, our senses were battered to the edge of our ability to absorb.

Hundreds of Chinese bodies ... rotting in grotesquely bloated, stinking, fly-encrusted... lay where they had fallen. They lay mostly on the forward slope, but also among the fighting trenches and the rearward slope where they had died while overrunning Marine positions. Forming burial details was not possible due to the instant response of mortars and artillery upon the work detail ... and human excrement was thrown out of the trenches in C-ration boxes to soak into the soil of this damned and evil place.

Wide open eyes of dead men, gazed and seeing nothing, mouths agape and vomit filled ... it was as if the fetid breath of those no longer breathing was polluting the air we breathed for hundreds of yards around. And we could not, day or night escape the stench. The  smells had permeated our clothes, our food, our water and the pores of our skin. We had been reduced in our psyche to being a living part of a putrefying hell.

And we turned to our buddies to affirm that we were, in fact, something more than animals, that we were more than road-kill in the world of global politics. And in their nobility, their courage beyond belief, we were re-affirmed that we were more than road-kill in the world of Machiavellian politicians."