Good morning gang.

Happy Veterans Day. Thank you for your service to all my fellow veterans.

Today should be the last warm day for the week. We have some showers moving in later and the temps after today take a nose dive.


Word of the Day Tuesday, November 11, 2014

gossamer \ GOS-uh-mer \, noun;

1.a fine, filmy cobweb seen on grass or bushes or floating in the air in calm weather, especially in autumn.

2.a thread or a web of this substance.

3.an extremely delicate variety of gauze, used especially for veils.

4.any thin, light fabric.

5.something extremely light, flimsy, or delicate.

6.a thin, waterproof outer garment, especially for women.

adjective:

1.of or like gossamer; thin and light. Also, gossamery , gossamered.

Origin:

Gossamer is thought to be a variation on the Middle English term gosesomer , or "goose summer," the first name used for late, mild autumn, a time when goose was a favorite dish. It entered English in the late 1200s.


From the Trenches: Words of World War I

Today is

Veterans Day is an official United States holiday honoring all those who have served in armed service.

Thank You For Your Service!

Veterans Day is an official United States holiday that honors people who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, also known as veterans. It is a federal holiday that is observed on November 11. It coincides with other holidays such as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, which are celebrated in other parts of the world and also mark the anniversary of the end of World War I (major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect). The United States also originally observed Armistice Day; it then evolved into the current Veterans Day holiday in 1954.

Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day; Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed Armistice Day for November 11, 1919. In proclaiming the holiday, he said

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.”

The United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution seven years later on June 4, 1926, requesting that President Calvin Coolidge issue another proclamation to observe November 11 with appropriate ceremonies. A Congressional Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U.S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday: “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day’.”

In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks from Birmingham, Alabama, had the idea to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died in World War I. Weeks led a delegation to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who supported the idea of National Veterans Day. Weeks led the first national celebration in 1947 in Alabama and annually until his death in 1985. President Reagan honored Weeks at the White House with the Presidential Citizenship Medal in 1982 as the driving force for the national holiday. Elizabeth Dole, who prepared the briefing for President Reagan, determined Weeks as the “Father of Veterans Day.”

U.S. Representative Ed Rees from Emporia, Kansas, presented a bill establishing the holiday through Congress. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, also from Kansas, signed the bill into law on May 26, 1954.

Congress amended this act on June 1, 1954, replacing “Armistice” with “Veterans,” and it has been known as Veterans Day since.

The National Veterans Award, created in 1954, also started in Birmingham. Congressman Rees of Kansas was honored in Alabama as the first recipient of the award for his support offering legislation to make Veterans Day a federal holiday, which marked nine years of effort by Raymond Weeks. Weeks conceived the idea in 1945, petitioned Gen. Eisenhower in 1946, and led the first Veterans Day celebration in 1947 (keeping the official name Armistice Day until Veterans Day was legal in 1954).

Although originally scheduled for celebration on November 11 of every year, starting in 1971 in accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Veterans Day was moved to the fourth Monday of October. In 1978, it was moved back to its original celebration on November 11. While the legal holiday remains on November 11, if that date happens to be on a Saturday or Sunday, then organizations that formally observe the holiday will normally be closed on the adjacent Friday or Monday, respectively.

Observance
Because it is a federal holiday, some American workers and many students have Veterans Day off from work or school. When Veterans Day falls on a Saturday then either Saturday or the preceding Friday may be designated as the holiday, whereas if it falls on a Sunday it is typically observed on the following Monday. A Society for Human Resource Management poll in 2010 found that 21 percent of employers planned to observe the holiday in 2011.

Non-essential federal government offices are closed. No mail is delivered. All federal workers are paid for the holiday; those who are required to work on the holiday sometimes receive holiday pay for that day in addition to their wages.

In his Armistice Day address to Congress, Wilson was sensitive to the psychological toll of the lean War years: “Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness,” he remarked. As Veterans Day and the birthday of the United States Marine Corps (November 10, 1775) are only one day apart, that branch of the Armed Forces customarily observes both occasions as a 96-hour liberty period.

Spelling of Veterans Day
While the holiday is commonly printed as Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day in calendars and advertisements (spellings that are grammatically acceptable), the United States government has declared that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day


NATIONAL SUNDAE DAY

National Sundae Day is celebrated each year on November 11. Ice Cream lovers across the country will celebrate all day, enjoying one (or more) of the most famous ice cream dessert, the ice cream sundae.

An ice cream sundae typically consists of one or two scoops of ice cream topped with a syrup or sauce. The sundae is often times topped with whipped cream, maraschino cherry, sprinkles, pineapple, or etc.

July 25 – National Hot Fudge Sundae Day

July 7 – National Strawberry Sundae Day

Good Morning CGs!

Today starts the big chill. High of only around 45 today and then dropping from there for the rest of the week. Yes it's November, but I don't care. I don't like the cold or the snow. So there.

Took the kids to the mall last night and got some photos taken for Christmas cards. Wife and I took a few as well since we haven't had a family photo in the last 4 years. Came out nice. With all the coupons and whatnot grand total was about $40. Not bad at all. We will actually get the cards made at Costco since they have the best price, but we need the cd to do that which was included in our photos. So we are happy overall.

Happy Veterans Day to everyone. Hope everyone has a great day!

Matthew

Good morning guys.... All hail the Veterans!

Here's to my Father (may he RIP) WWII, U.S. Army Air Corps, European theater 1943-1945. B26 Martin Marauder, 35 missions over Italy, Sicily and Germany. This is a story he had written in 2000, about one of his missions. It's kind of long, sorry about that.



A WORLD WAR II MEMOIR BY ALBERT G. BACHMAN

The following story is about a single bombing mission during WW II while I was a member of the 95th Squadron--17th Bomb Group (Grandaddy of all bomb groups) of the 12th Air Force, and later the 1st Tactical Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF).

It was Aug. 15, 1944 and since over 56 years have passed since it happened, it is possible that a few pertinent details might be omitted or completely forgotten by yours truly, but I will try to recount the events as they happened and as I remember them. I can only remember the name of one crewmember, my pilot, Phil Eschbach.

I was a recent addition to the squadron, this being my third mission, and was a "strike" (bombing raid) against the Praduro, Italy road bridge involving a load of 500 pound bombs aboard a B-26 Martin Marauder medium bomber. We were stationed near Villecidro, Sardinia and had to fly across the Tyrahenian Sea and up through Italy to reach our target.

I was a 19 year old Staff Sargeant, a radio operator-gunner and was in charge of a special radio set called an IFF (Identification-Friend or Foe) transmitter which emitted a signal to other stations to let them know we were a friendly aircraft.. On the off chance of being caught behind enemy lines, it was my job to set off an internal charge before it fell into enemy hands. I was also entrusted with a mussette bag which contained packets for each crew member containing maps of the area and a small amount of Italian money (Lira) which I was supposed to dole out to the individual crew members, if, by chance, we had to bail out after being shot down. The only trouble was that I was never told to pass these out or when to do it so the complete bag and its contents remained at my radio room. (More about these two objects later.) I never was instructed, even later on, on how to handle these packets.

Our crew for that mission included the pilot, Phil, a co-pilot, a bombardier-togglier (an enlisted man, who dropped the bombs on command from the leading aircraft bombardier) an engineer, a photographer (extra man), a tail gunner, and myself. We usually did not fly with a photographer, but had one on this mission. I spent most of my time, especially when in danger of being attacked by enemy aircraft, manning two hand-held 50 caliber machine guns, one on each side window of the waist ports of the plane. The photographer took his position with his camera in the aft bomb bay. We never carried bombs in this compartment but two large containers, which held the ammo for my waist guns, were stored there and were fed through channels to the waist position.The togglier had to have the co-pilot move his seat back before he could enter his position in the nose where the bomb release switches were located. Since it was a tight squeeze getting into the nose, he would remove his chest parachute and store it behind the co-pilot's seat. The engineer spent his time in the top turret and the tail gunner was in the tail.

We flew from Sardinia to near the target without any incident, but when we began to make the bombing run we ran into a great deal of anti-aircraft fire (flak). We had just dropped our bomb load and the pilot had banked hard to the right with the remark "Let's get out of here" when a shell burst right below us. A piece of the shrapnel cut through the main gas line (about an inch or so in diameter) on the lower engine, it stopped almost immediately and we dropped 3000 to 4000 feet, like "right now". The bomb bay doors were still open and by the time the pilot had somewhat righted the plane, all of us in the back of the plane were sprayed with 100 octane aviation fuel from the break in the line and carried by the wind gushing from the bomb bay doors back through the plane. The pilot immediately went on the intercom to let us know what he was trying to do and asked me to get the photographer out of the aft bomb bay since he was without an intercom. At about the same time, I heard the bombardier tell the co-pilot to move his seat back since he was getting out of the nose. He had made a remark before the mission that he would never go down with a B-26. I looked up through the aisle toward the front just in time to see him crawl out of the nose, grab and hook on his parachute and without ever gaining his feet, he dove out through the open bomb bay doors. Before I could get around the bulkhead to the aft bomb bay to get the photographer, he had seen the bombardier bail out and evidently thought we were all leaving and bailed out also. Both were taken prisoners by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as POWs.

The bombardier was later court-martialed (in absentia) for disobeying the pilot and bailing out.

The pilot was having a rough time holding the B-26 in the air on the one engine (it flew like a rock) so he told the crew to lighten the ship of everything we could. I tried to lift my machine guns out of their swivel mounts but one got caught and the engineer and I had to lift on either end to cast them out. The other soon followed. Without thinking about it, flak suits and every other loose thing was thrown out, including the musette bag with the maps and money. I then went to the aft bomb bay where the IFF followed out the window without me blowing it up. Thank Goodness!! For 100 octane gas and fumes were everywhere and would have exploded with any spark. The IFF probably exploded on impact with the ground and some Italian probably got rich when he found the bag with the maps and money!!

Next on my schedule of lightening up the plane was the 50-caliber ammo, which was stored in the large metal boxes, attached to the fuselage of the plane itself and which were fed from the aft bombay to the waist section on tracks riveted to the side of the plane. Since I could not get the boxes loose, I ripped the track loose by pulling the rivets out of the side of the plane. Then I began pulling the shells out of the track. I would pull and pull and when I let up, the shells would go back in the other direction. After doing this three or four times, I looked around the bulkhead only to find the tail gunner pulling against me. We took the escape hatchet (used to cut your way out of the plane in emergencies) and chopped everything we could out of the plane--radio sets and other equipment. By this time I had had plenty of time to look out into nothing and wasn't at all happy about the prospect of bailing out. We were still losing altitude at a rapid rate but were flying down a valley, which had a fairly large river flowing through it. Finally the pilot told us that if we lost another 400 feet of altitude we were free to bail out, but that he was going to try to set it down on the river. The rest of the crew put their chutes on--luckily we had not thrown them out--and I unbuckled mine and buckled myself into the co-pilot's seat. Just then the pilot spotted a fairly level, but short, open field dead ahead. Once again chutes came off and we all buckled into our seats.

When we hit the ground, one tire had blown out, and we rumbled along the field throwing dust everywhere. The plane finally came to a stop a few feet short of a fairly deep ditch. But I didn't know about this until later, for a soon as had touched down, I had popped open the top escape hatch, pulled myself up and out and was running down and jumping off the wing by the time the plane had stopped. I was sure the plane would explode and burn up and we would be killed because we were soaked with the gas. When I hit the ground, I kept running until I was so tired I could not run anymore and slowed down to a slow walk. I was shaking like a leaf and thought to myself "Am I the only one like this?" I looked over to my left and my pilot had finally caught up with me and he was quivering as much, or more than I was.!!

We had crash landed about eight miles on the British side of the front lines and were invited up to have tea while we waited for transportation back to our base camp in Sardinia. The other planes had returned to the base and had reported that only two chutes had come out and so we were reported as probably killed in action.

That morning, before the mission, we had been given our weekly rations (beer, candy bars, cigarettes, tooth paste, etc) and I had dumped them on my cot. When I finally got back to my tent late that night, I found in my corner of the tent (there were four of us living there) only a bare army cot. My blanket, rations, clothes, etc were all gone. My buddies had divided up all of my belongings, having heard that I had been shot down. This was a common thing to do at that time, since the supply sargeant usually ended with downed airmen's' personal equipment if their buddies did not get there first. Nevertheless, I was so mad that I went down to the mess hall where my tent buddies were eating and invited each of them outside for a fight. They just laughed at me and later returned my stuff.

This was not a typical day of my sixty (60) combat missions from August 1944 to April 1945 but some of the other's turned out to be almost as hair-raising as this one. One was where we bombed an ammo dump containing Buzz Bomb Warheads which exploded and huge chunks of concrete from their storage bunkers were blown high enough (12,000 feet) to damage some of our aircraft and create a down draft strong enough to suck a couple of the damaged planes back into the inferno and destroy them.

Probably the most notable strike occurred against the town of Scheinfurt, Germany where B-17s and B-24s (heavy bombers) had previously and on many occasions, bombed it with little apparent over-all damage, but a with a good number of losses of their aircraft. B-26's, en masse hit the town on April 10, 1945 and completely destroyed all semblance of possible factories and with few losses. As a result our unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.

Oh, for the life of a 19-20 year old VETERAN of WW II

Good morning and Happy Veteran's Day! Wow, what a story, Tom!

I put the truck in 4WD for the first time today and it handled the commute with aplomb. Much more sure-footed in this stuff than my Maxima ever was.

Have a great day, Gurus!

Wow great story by your Dad Tom.....interestingly enough my Dad also served in the Army Airforce and flew B26's and B17's and was stationed in Italy. I will look up what squadron he was in but I think it may have been the 15th bomb group. I have all that somewhere and now you got me interested. Dad never talked much about the war but I wished he would have left a written story like your Dad did....that's priceless.

....and snow it begins.....snow last night and 16 degrees right now with it going all the way up to 25.....geez...

Office work today.....where its warm.....stay outa trouble Guru's....

I'm celebrating Veterans Day by working around the yard and patio. The flag is flying high with a modest breeze keeping it aloft. I just got back from a delivery. I brought a documented, largest known stag horn fern for installation at one of our clients homes. It's in his will that it be delivered to The Audubon House in Key West for public display upon his demise. It's absolutely huge and in excess of 40 years old. I know that this information has left you all breathless so I'll let you recover and I'll be back later for more banter.

CLOUDY, COLD, AND WINDY THIS MORNING. THE CHEROKEES GOT THEIR LONGHANDLES ON. NEED TO CHANGE OUT SUMMER OIL IN BOTH 'VETTES, WILL TRY TO GET THAT DONE TODAY.

HERE'S A STORY ABOUT AN UNDERWATER C4:

http://news.yahoo.com/police-car-dump ... vorce-flap-010917645.html

Oh, before I go, woke up to a comfortable 58* and I'm sure we should have a high of no more than 80*, tops. The skies are blue with a smattering of clouds and is anticipated to be like this for the near future.

Quote:

As the world burns .........


http://www.eater.com/2014/11/11/71933 ... -coffee-burns-fake-photos

I find the Denny's hot coffee story implausible.

Denny's never serves hot coffee.[jk]


[jk] disclaimer so that Denny's doesn't sue me for libelous slander.

Man that is crazy, Marcus. Just one more thing you and I have in common. It's almost crazy how much we do. Dad never talked about the war much either. Until the time when he and mom started going to his bomber group reunions in the late 90's, we hardly knew he was in the war. Then after attending the first reunion, he started to open up some and he started writing a few stories down. This one is the one he "spit-polished" the most.

Internet has been up and down all morning (mostly down). Tried to get on and post earlier, but it went back down before I could get posted, thank god I had saved the post.

That's a really cool story by your tad Tee..
Mine was in Korea.
Rainy and cold here right now, was warm and funky out this morning, temps headed very southward as the week goes. Can we have yesterday back? 70 and beautifully sunny.
Happy Veteran's day to you all and much appreciation

Quote:
What a dick... sounds like something my ex would do and he was the one who was cheating.

My Grampa was in the Navy and somehow served in Austria in WW I. My dad and his two brothers were Marines serving during The Korean era. My Dad ended up in post WW II Germany assisting in the post war occupation. He served in Stuttgart and Eslingen Germany and did a stint in North Africa. Most of them are no longer with us except for maybe my Uncle Joe. He'd be in his 80's. My ex FIL served in late WW II running supplies into Berlin on the cargo planes. He later served in Alaska at Elmendorf AFB on the U2 project. Most of his associates died from cancer handling air samples the U2 had collected. He was working the flight line. Got frost bitten ears that are hard as a rocks to this day. Really great guy and we're still friends with my ex in-laws to this day. They have stayed with us on occasion. (side note) When I divorced their daughter they were not the least bit upset with me. They actually understood and have remained close for decades.

My mom's brother was in the same unit as my dad. That's how he met my mom. Uncle Bill is 93 and lives in the Wichita area. His experience in the AAC left him with a life-long love of flying.....whereas, my dad NEVER got into an airplane (of any sort) again.

My FIL is a Korean War Vet. Infantry, never talks about the fighting, just about what happened when they went on leave to Japan. And NO not those kind of things.

My older brother, US Army, near the end of Viet Nam. Never had to go there, but served his time in the States.

Went through some of Dad's old stuff.....He was assigned to the 15th Air Force 740th Bomb Squadron 455 Bombardment Group based in San Giovanni Italy. The Bomb Group was deactivated in Sept of 45 and Dad left Italy on the Liberty Ship Longfellow on Sept 23, 1945 with 43 other officers and 584 enlisted men. They arrived in New York on or around the 10th of Oct. They sailed at about 11 knots per hour....between 280 and 300 miles in a 24 hr period....

Amazing stuff......

I just checked - the weather weenie is frozen stiff.

You got me going now....here is the 15th bombing Ploesti.. The B-24's were built at Willow Run Ford plant in Michigan.......

Quote:


I have noticed that if you keep the weenie inside it is always showing a good day......

Quote:

I had to read that twice...

Quote:

REMINDS ME OF THE YOUNG TROOPER WHO RODE ON THE TOP OF THE TURRET OF ONE OF MY TANKS WHEN IT WENT OVER A CLIFF AT FT HOOD. WE COULD NEVER AGAIN GET HIM ON A TANK. I DIDN'T FORCE THE ISSUE, WE JUST FOUND HIM OTHER THINGS TO DO.

ONLY TIME I EVER SAW FINGERNAIL MARKS ON HOMOGENOUS STEEL ARMOR PLATE---