15 George Carlin Quotes That Are As True Now as They Were Then-- Part 1: 'On Consumerism'

Well, I did an oops on this blog entry and the next three.  They should have been in Cooter's History Thing.  But, I am not going to retype them so you'll see them here.  Should bring a chuckle or two.  You couldn't put one over on George.

1.  ON THE NATURE OF LIFE:  "Some people see things that are and ask, 'Why?'  Some people dream of things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'  Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."

2.  ON STAYING AT YOUR JOB:  Most people work just hard enough not to get fires and get paid just enough money not to quit.

3.  ON CONSUMERISM:  "A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff."

4.  ON CATERPILLARS AND BUTTERFLIES:  The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets the publicity."

Give Me My Stuff. Must Have My Stuff.  --RoadDog

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part7: 'Ciest la vie'

Pilots from spotter planes would fly inland, view German targets and radio in the coordinates from grids on maps to direct the ship's cannon fire and call in corrected coordinates when the shells missed the targets.

While the ships fired at and destroyed seawalls and other German targets, with a 51 percent accuracy rate-- including knocking out 90 German tanks overall-- "the USS Nevada was hit not at all" despite being a stationary target, according to Dick Ramsey.

The Nevada left Utah Beach and turned to firing upon Omaha Beach, where landing Allied troops "were getting slaughtered" by German machine gun fire.

After the Allied invasion on D-Day which led to Germany's fall, the Nevada shifter to the Pacific Theater and was at the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

"For 16 days we fired on Mount Suribachi (on Iwo Jima island), he said.

Ramsey served aboard the Nevada for 34 months during the war.

At the end of the war, Ramsey turned down an offer to re-enlist in the Navy, deciding to return to his old job at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where he worked on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin and later became a lithographer for a newspaper.

"Why me?" he mused on his survival.  "Ah well, as they say in France, 'C'est la vie.' "

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part 6: 'It Looked ike a Giant Kaleidoscope'

"It looked like a giant kaleidoscope.  The sky was all lit up," Richard Ramsey said.  "There were many, many men shot down who never got out of their planes."

Aboard the Nevada, Ramesy was on the third-deck powder magazine, passing out rounds of ammunition requested for use in the ship's guns, including armor-piercing rounds to hit German tanks and "star shells" that exploded in the air to illuminate targets at night.

Ramsey was one of more than 2,000 sailors on his ship who would remain at their battle stations for 80 straight hours, while the Nevada's four gun turrets fired hundreds of salvos of 1,000-pound projectiles that could hit and destroy a German tank up to 17 miles away, he said.

Not only was it exhausting, but the air circulation into the ship also had to be shut off, by closing air ducts every hour as a precaution to "maintain watertight integrity" and prevent water from flowing inside, Ramsey said.

"It made it very hot," he said.

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part 5: Like Field Artillery

For D-Day, Admiral Morton Deyo chose the Nevada to serve as the "fighting battleship" where the officer would command Operation Neptune and also be directly involved by firing its guns at German shoreline defenses as Allied troops landed at Utah Beach.

During the shoreline battle, the Nevada's guns took out 71 German tanks with the help of inland spotter planes.

Dick Ramsey said that in the early morning of D-Day, airplanes from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions of the U.S. Army Air Corps dropped paratroopers behind enemy lines on France's Normandy region with the Nevada training its naval guns towards German targets.

"We became field artillery for the 101st and 82nd," Ramsey said.  "We arrived at 1 a.m. in the morning.  We could see all the paratrooper planes coming and going."

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part 4: A State License Plate for the Battleship

In April of this year, the USS Nevada was honored with the debut of a commemorative Nevada state license plate called "The Battle Born State's Battleship," designed by Las Vegas resident John Galloway, who is the head of the USS Nevada Remembrance Project.

Galloway, asked about the importance of the license plate, cited what Sehe once said-- that visiting the State of Nevada was more important than Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the D-Day landing in France.

"That (state) is where the soul of the ship is," says Galloway.  "That's where the heart is."

"It's a way to teach," he added.  "The fact that the ship and the state are intertwined, I can make a teaching moment for our brave ancestors."

Galloway also designed, and covered expenses for, a plaque honoring the USS Nevada at the state's memorial to the battleship in Carson City.  It was mounted there in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the ship's commissioning.  He also had another plaque prepared to celebrate the Nevada's service for the 100th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 2041.

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part 3: 'The Honor of Firing the First Shot'

Dick Ramsey has received the French Foreign Legion of Honor and said he still has the letter sent by General Dwight D. Eisenhower telling the troops how significant the Allied landings were.

"Eisenhower had requested some battleships with big guns," said Ramsey.  

"So they sent them the three oldest battleships in the Navy-- the Arkansas, the Texas and the Nevada."

Outside Utah Beach, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Morton Deyo ordered the Nevada to open fire.  "The Nevada had the honor of firing the first shot."  And doubly impactful in that the Nevada was the only one also at Pearl Harbor,

And, another honor for the USS Nevada in the next post.

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain-- Part 2: 'It Feels So Lonely'

"It feels lonely," said Dick Ramsey, who at age 100 is talkative and spry.  "We're down to two people.  We had many reunions."

On Wednesday, one day before the 80th anniversary, Ramsey arrived at Normandy-- his third trip there to commemorate D-Day-- for the first of two days of ceremonies.

He visited museums and the Pegasus Bridge.  "There are a lot of beautiful places here," said Ramsey.  "Even with all of the crowds, I was able to see people who I had met the previous year.  And I continue to meet lovely people.  The younger generation takes good care of us."

The Pegasus Bridge, a famous strategic crossing over the Caen Canal captured by British airborne troops, "paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe" and "was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II," wrote the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose in his 1988 book "Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944."

--GreGen

Only Two USS Nevada Crew Members Remain

From the June, 6, 2024, Las Vegas Review-Journal "It feels very lonely": 80 years after D-Day, only 2 USS Nevada crew members remain" by Jeff Burbank.

Dick Ramsey was on the USS Nevada off the coast of Normandy during the Allied invasion on D0Day on June 6, 1944, just two and a half years after his ship was nearly sunk at Pearl Harbor during that Day of Infamy.

The ship had undergone painstaking work after the attack to repair damage sustained from bombs and torpedoes and now, the ship was in payback mode using its ten 14-inch guns to pound German positions on Utah Beach as well as tanks and enemy artillery miles inland.

Built just before World War I, it was the only ship to be at both major points in the U.S. participation in WW II.  

Now, 80 years after D-Day, Ramsey, a former coxswain in the U.S. Navy is one of only two surviving crew members from the ship.

The other one, Charles Sehe, 101, is the only one to have been on the ship at both events.  He is in hospice care in Minnesota.

--GreGen

Death of 102-Year-Old Pearl Harbor Survivor Herb Elfring

From the June 8, 2024, Michigan Live "He served his country and community.  Jackson Pearl Harbor survivor dies at 102" by Chloe Miller.

Elfring was born in South Dakota in 1922, but the Dust Bowl forced his family to sell their farm and move to Montana in 1933.  He was one of nine siblings, and after graduating high school, he moved to San Diego to live with his brother and sister-in-law.

At 18 years old in 1940, Elfring joined the California National Guard while attending San Diego State University, "just to make an extra dollar," he said.

On September 16, 1940, he was sent to Hawaii, a little over a year before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

He was at Camp Malakole, about three miles from Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941.  Bullets barely missed him a couple times.

"I was reading the bulletin board at the barracks when the first plane shot down at us," Elfring remembered.

Afterwards, he was deployed to multiple other locations in the war before being officially discharged on November 18, 1945, as a captain.

--GreGen

WW II Vet Dies En Route to D-Day Commemoration-- Part 2:

Robert Persichitti served as a radioman second class on the USS Eldorado, responsible for communications during the operations at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  he was on the deck of his ship on February 23, 1945, when he witnessed the famous raising of the U.S. flag by U.S. Marines on Mount Suribachi.

After the war, he taught carpentry in Rochester and frequently visited local schools to share his wartime experiences.

In 2019, at the age of 96, Persichitti returned to Mount Suribachi.  "When I got to the island, I just broke down."

Persichitti recalled seeing severe injuries suffered by Marines as they were brought on board his ship as well as numerous burials at sea.

--GreGen

WW II Vet, 102, Dies on Way to D-Day Event: Robert Persichitti

From the June 6, 2024, Newsweek by Jesus Mesa.

An American Navy veteran who was there when U.S. troops raised the flag on Iwo Jima in 1945 has died en route to France to make today's 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Robert "Al" Persichitti from Rochester, New York was 102 years old and passed away in a German hospital on May 31 after being airlifted from a ship sailing to Europe according to Honor Flight.

He was traveling with the National World War II Museum Group to participate.

Before he left, he said: "I was really excited to go to Normandy," despite having a history of heart problems.

--GreGen

80th Anniversary of D-Day-- Part 5: Bombing the Germans

"We did our job and we came home and that's it.  We never talked about it I think.  For 70 years I didn't talk about it," said Ralph Goldsticker, a U.S. Army Air Force captain who served in the 452nd Bomb Group.

Of the D-Day landings, he recalled seeing from his aircraft "a big chunk of the beach with thousands of vessels," and spoke of bombing raids against German strongholds and routes that German forces might otherwise have used to rush in reinforcements to push the invasion back into the sea.

"I dropped my first bomb at 06:58 a.m. n a heavy gun placement," he said.  "We went back home and landed at 9:30.  We reloaded."

--GreGen

80th Anniversary of D-Day-- Part 4: 'War Is Hell'

Dozens of World War II veterans are converging on France to revisit old memories, make new ones, and hammer home a message that survivors of D-Day and the ensuing Battle of Normandy, and of other World War II theaters, have repeated time and time again-- that war is hell.

"Seven thousand of my marine buddies were killed.  Twenty thousand shot up, wounded, put on ships, buried at sea," said Don Graves, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served on Iwo Jima.

The youngest veteran in the group is 96 and the most senior 107, according to their carrier from Dallas, American Airlines.

--GreGen

80th Anniversary of D-Day-- Part 3: Parachutists

Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day.  I am writing about it in this blog and my Cooter's History Thing Blog.

Along with the men parachuting into German-occupied France early morning of June 6, 1944, were men making hair-raising descents in gliders.  (Now, I think that would be more scary than parachuting.)  The goal of both groups was to secure roads, bridges and other strategic points inland of the invasion beaches and destroy gun emplacements that raked the sands and ships with deadly fire.

The re-enactor parachutists took off Sunday from Duxford, England, for the 90-minute flight to Carentan.  This Normandy town was the heart of D-Day drop zones in 1944.

Sunday's jumpers were from an international civilian team of parachutists, many of them former soldiers.  The only woman, 61-year-old Dawna Bennett, felt history's force as she exited the plane.

"It's the same doorway and it's the same countryside from 80 years ago, and it's like, 'Oh my God, I'm so thankful I'm not doing this at midnight," she said.

--GreGen

80th Anniversary of D-Day Commences-- Part 2: Largest-Ever Air, Land and Sea Armada

Part of the reason for the fireworks shows, parachute jumps and solemn commemorations and ceremonies  that world leaders will attend this week is to pass the baton of remembrance to the current generations now seeing war in the Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British Royals are among the VIPs that France is expecting for D-Day events.

**************************

The Parachute Drop

Looping around each other, the C-47s dropped strings of jumpers, 70 in all, dressed in WW II-era uniforms.  A huge crowd, estimated in the thousands, whooped and hollered as the round chutes opened while listening to tunes from Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf.

Two of the planes, christened "That's All Brother" and "Placid Lassie"were D-Day veterans themselves.  They had been among the thousands of C-47s and other aircraft that on June 6, 1944,  formed what was the largest-ever sea air and land armada.

--GreGen

80th Anniversary of D-Day Commences

From June 2, 2024, PBS News Hour "Week of ceremonies for D-Day's 80th anniversary kicks off with parachute jump over Normandy" by John Leicaster, AP.

Carentan-Les-Marais, France.

Parachutists jumping from World War II-era planes hurled themselves Sunday into now peaceful Normandy skies where war once raged, heralding a week of ceremonies for the fast-disappearing generation of Allied troops who fought from D-Day beaches 80 years ago to Adolf Hitler's fall, helping free Europe from his tyranny.

Eighty years ago, young soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied nations waded ashore on five beaches on June 6, 1944.

The ever-dwindling number of veterans in their late nineties and older who are coming back to remember fallen friends and their  history-changing exploits are the last.

Of course, even before the troops came ashore on the beaches, Allied paratroopers were landing in occupied France.

--GreGen

The Wreck of the USS-Harder (SS-257)-- Part 2: Locating the Wreck

The submarines found targets.  In a battle with the Japanese escort ship CD-22 on the morning of August 24, 1944, the Harder fired three torpedoes at the ship.  All three missed.  Then the CD-22 started tracking the Harder and launched four depth charge attacks before sinking the Harder on the fifth try (according to Japanese records).

The location of the Harder's wreck was confirmed by the Lost 52 Project, an effort led by Tim Taylor, CEO of Tiburon Subsea, to find the 52 U.S. subs lost at sea in World War II.

The group had previously located at least six of those subs.

The U.S. Navy's History and Heritage Command (NHHC) reports:  "We are grateful that the Lost 52 has given us the opportunity to once again honor the crew of the 'Hit 'em Harder' submarine.  (That was the vessel's motto.)

The wreck is "the final resting place of Sailors that gave their life in the defense of the nation and should be respected by all parties as a war grave."

--GreGen