Memorial Day Weekend

At a time when our president and other politicians tend to apologize for our country's prior actions, here's a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country.

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when
DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US
Military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded,
"Does that include those who are buried here?"

DeGaulle
Did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop.


When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the
Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of 'empire building' by George Bush.

He answered by saying,
"Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

You could have heard a pin drop.


There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers
Were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?"

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly:
"Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?"

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many Languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, "Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than peaking French?"

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, "Maybe it's because the
Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."

You could have heard a pin drop.

And this story fits right in with the above ...

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane.

At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport inhis carry on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked
Sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.


"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible... Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France!"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at OmahaBeach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

Memorial Day and The Bracelet

Memorial Day and The Bracelet
By Maryl Ball Sellman
Oslo American School 1960-1963

Recently, America took time to honor our heroes in the form of Memorial Day, a holiday especially poignant to military families. Memorial Day took on a new meaning for me with just a simple bracelet.

Maj. Robert Dyczkowski was a man I never met, yet I knew him well. I kept him alive in my heart with his name and date of disappearance in Vietnam etched in a POW/MIA bracelet I wore on my left wrist for 25 years until circumstances led to its removal.

In 1970, I was a senior in college. I noticed a group of women calling themselves “Mothers and Others for Peace” assembling in the quad on campus. They were passing out bracelets, asking students to put them on until the soldier whose name was on the bracelet had returned. I ambled on over, stuck my hand in the box, plucked out one that read “Maj. Robert Dyczkowski 23 April 1966,” put it on my wrist as a commitment, and on that day, began a ritual of silently saying a prayer for his safe return.

Years passed---25 to be exact. I got married, we had children, we moved to different homes, worked, lived our lives like everyone else, and yet I always knew that there was another person with us at all times. The bracelet went through lots of wear and tear, and had to be taken often to a jeweler to be bolstered when it would become bent to the point of breaking from being caught on a stroller or in the handles of an extraordinarily heavy plastic grocery bag. In the 25th year of my life with Maj. Dyczkowski, I happened to be at my doctor’s office. He saw my scratched, dented and repaired bracelet, then looked at me and sadly commented, “I don’t think he will be coming home.” It was something I hadn’t even considered, because it was a part of my skin at this point and to be honest, I was a bit unsettled by his words.

The next day, I decided it was finally time for me to research this man and find out what I could about his life and service to America. I drove to our small library, walked up to the reference desk and asked if I could order information on a soldier missing in action from the Library of Congress, since this was in the days when I didn’t know much about the internet and it was my only option.

“Library of Congress, eh?” quipped the clerk. “Good luck with that, honey. Here’s the form. It‘s supposed to be here in two weeks, but I wouldn‘t count on it.”

I waited the obligatory two weeks, then returned with my hopes high. I saw a different clerk at the desk and inquired about my microfilm order from the Library of Congress.

“Library of Congress, eh?” smiled the new clerk. “Not here yet. Good luck. Might be a couple of months.”

I returned three weeks later and there it was, a roll of black microfilm as large as a Goodyear tire. My heart thudded in my chest as I walked to the machine which would reveal this man’s story. I sat in the chair, threaded the film, and quickly realized that this particular roll of film was not just about my soldier. It contained the personal and military information of hundreds of soldiers declared prisoners of war or missing in action, and I knew I would be sitting there far longer than anticipated as I couldn’t just roll the film through to my final destination. My eyes were transfixed on each serviceman’s life and the information relating to them.
The reel was filled with biographical, personal and military information (with numerical addresses as well as some personal and military data blacked out), the circumstances of their disappearance, letters of testimony from other soldiers who were with them at the time of their capture or disappearance, as well as letters from mothers, wives, children, relatives. These were letters of anguish and despair, frustration, pleas, and heart-wrenching agony over what had happened their son, their husband, their father. They desperately wanted answers. They needed closure. I quietly sat there in the library with tears streaming down my face for the those soldiers and for their families who would never know what had happened to their loved ones. I tried to control myself, for it was difficult to read anything while my eyes were filled with tears and my heart with grief.

Finally, near the end (of course) of the reel, there was the lengthy file on Maj. Robert Dyczkowski, complete with a picture of a young, handsome, proud and smiling Air Force Major in uniform, and I really did lose it at that point. I managed to get up and walked to the desk, bought a roll of quarters, and began making copies of everything disclosed about him. I learned he was married with two young daughters, had been flying with two other jets on a mission in Vietnam when his plane was hit and he just disappeared, giving everyone hope he had been captured, not killed. Sadly, many decades later, his military tags were on display in a museum in Hanoi where American diplomats were allowed to enter and collect data. The military had declared him dead and promoted him to the rank of Colonel.

It’s amazing how coincidences occur in our lives. Inside his dossier, Maj. Dyczkowski, along with his wife and little girls, had lived in my home town! Their numerical address was blocked out, but the street was only a few blocks from the library. I was stunned. Years later when I finally mastered the technology of the internet, I looked up the last name of his wife, hoping she hadn’t remarried, and there she was, now living in another state. I wrote her a letter explaining how I had kept the memory of her husband on my wrist and asked if she would like for me to send her the bracelet. She replied immediately and thanked me for wearing that bracelet, and told me that I could take it off and put it in a place where I would continue to think about him and the sacrifice that he made for our country as well as all the other men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice for the United States of America.

Memorial Day took on another new meaning for me at that moment, all because of a bracelet.

ശിപ്വ്രെച്കെദ് ഇന്‍ സൌത്ത് കാരോളിന