ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: #1 Piston Fighter was British
From: (Kevin Brooks)
Date: 6/30/03 12:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

(ArtKramr) wrote in message
...

LIke what? The war actually began on D-Day. Everythig before that was a
long
list of trivial attacks like Dieppe that mostly failed.

I can't wait to hear the result of your trying to make such an
outlandish claim to a veteran who had been slogging his way along in
Italy, or who had fought with Eigth Army (BR) in North Africa, when
you try to dump that particular load of fecal matter on him. No to
mention the odd Russian who had already started slogging his way
towards Berlin before we managed to pull off the Normandy landings.
And how about those 8th AF types who were already seeing friends dying
in droves *before* D-Day? Any natural teeth you may still enjoy the
company of will likely be a brief memory should you feel a burning
desire to share such drivel with any of the above.

This reprehensible statement rivals your past mealymouthed mutterings
in regards to how those who served during WWII without seeing combat
in the air over Europe somhow don't meet up to your own high standards
of honorable conduct, how officers are much smarter than enlisted men,
groundcrews did not experience war, etc. Stick to talking about that
small, finite element of the war about which you may have a clue (B-26
air operations in Europe); everytime you meander from that topic you
further reveal how increasingly imbecilic you really are.

Brooks


And your combat experieces were?????

Oh, grow up, Art, you've at least 75 years on this celestial orb.
You've set me off; watch and shoot.

My father, a Canadian resident in Britain, was conscripted (willingly)
into the Royal Navy in January 1940. He, and all his mates, fought
like ****! Fie, that you would devalue their effort. In *human* terms,
it was worth, second-for-second, everything your service was.
Second-for-second, in human terms, they contributed the same to the
defeat of the NAZIs. My father's class (b. 1919) at Lord William's
Grammar School was nearly wiped out à la the tradition of the Somme;
because he chose the navy he was one of the few who survived. He
sailed in the Atlantic and in the Indian, and not while it was easy --
part of his service was in a naval infantry battalion during the
invasion scare of 1940. It is a needless slight to your
brothers-in-arms -- cousins, allies, what ever you want to call them
-- to say that the war started on 6 June 1944.

Anyone who has even held a staff post knows that building an army is
like cultivating asparagus: you go back three years and dig. If you
want to wage a war, you start ten years prior. I will not say that
there was any wilful disregard of the impending storm in Europe on the
part of the U.S. When the U.S. might have been preparing for war, they
were fighting internal demons like the Great Depression. Polities
react to threats as they appear; for the U.S., the threat was not
apparent until later. Its citizens, however, should give credit to
those who did perceive the threat. They are right to chastise those
other polities (the UK and France) for not trouncing those threats
(the Rhineland in '36 and Czechoslovakia in '38) when it might have
saved, quite literally, a world of grief. However, the mistake once
made has to be lived with, and men like my father, ineligible to vote
or to influence effectively the course of event, inherited the hand
fate dealt them.

Anything that could reduce my father to silent tears on 11 November
was out of the normal course of human events; I think it was war, and
i rightly imagine much of it happened before D-Day. I suggest you read
carefully Charles Causeley's "Armistice Day":

I stood with three comrades in Parliament Square
November her freights of grey fire unloading
No sound from the city upon the pale air
Above us the sea-bell eleven exploding.

Down by the bands the burning memorial
Beats all the brass in a royal array.
But at our end we are not so sartorial:
Out of (as usual) the rig of the day.

Starry is wearing a split pusser's flannel
Rubbed, as he is, by the regular tide;
Oxo the ducks that he ditched in the Channel
In June, 1940 (when he was inside).

Kitty recalls his abandon-ship station,
Running below at the Old Man's salute
And (with a deck watch) going down for the duration
Wearing his oppo's pneumonia-suit.

Comrades, for you the black captain of carracks
Writes in Whitehall his appalling decisions
But as was often the case in the Barracks
Several ratings are not at Divisions.

Into my eyes the stiff sea-horses stare,
Over my head sweeps the sun like a swan.
As I stand alone in Parliament Square
A cold bugle calls, and the city moves on.

Art, come to Ottawa some time and I will give you a tour of how the
World Wars still create a turbulence beneath the surface of everything
that happens in the Canadian galaxy. Call me, I'm in the book.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)