Saturday, December 19, 2020
THIS WAS OUR WORLD NOT THAT LONG AGO
I had reason to read again about our first and seond raids on Germany.
It's hard to imagine in this country where each lost soldier is accounted a hero that this was just a day's loss in a war we did our very best to stay out of in spite of our rulers intentions. We didn't jump into a war in Europe again for good reason. Nothing changes but the names of the ruling class. It took the Japanese to force us into war again. We'd had enough by then.
77 bombers shot down in one raid, where they went to blow up the wives, girlfriends, fathers and children of the armed forces.
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3 comments:
the only metric SHAEF looked at was the concentration of bombs on target and did it affect Luftwaffe ability. the objective was to kill the Luftwaffe. the balance sheet of combat losses looks bad but that just drove the learning curve into a steep climb. the raids caused the germans to spread their eggs out into small nests. of greater affect was the attacks on petro and transport. pushing the luftwaffe back to germany was key to opening up normandy and northern france for eventual operations. still, if your one of the 755 downed airmen, the metrics look a lot different. war is hell.
The father of a friend flew on that raid. He retired from the Air Force as a Colonel and is still living today.
My father retired and then about 30 years later he retired again but he fell into association with people he called Monday Morning Quarterbacks. I think I would like to join such a group. I think they're much rarer now. These old men would get together on Mondays, oddly enough and they would reminisce and spell words right and they were veterans and there was just a dozen of them. They met at the church down the street and had Jimmy Dean sausages one of them brought and fried up and all the men would go home and rave to their wives about the wonderful sausages they had but be unable to tell them what they were. (personal note: can anybody tell what's in sausages?)
I've twice been suggested to join such a company but it wasn't until today when I stepped out of the market and saw the Masons plate holder that I took the first opportunity to rap on the car window where a man sat with his wife. COVID and all, I stood well back in my mask and finally asked the question. Who are you guys? How does one become a member. I explained how I saw the HQ and that GW was a member but had no idea at all how men were invited. We' had been to the grand HQ in Arlington because it is kind of monolithic but I never knew anything about them. If it's a secret society it's doing a really good job.
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