| May 24, 2007 @ 6:22 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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Let's recall the price of liberty, in between the barbecues and ball games of this Memorial Day weekend, let's pause and reflect a moment on all those who have given the ultimate price in defense of our liberty-- and when you see all the Sailors & Marines in town for Fleet Week, stop and thank them for continuing to go in harm's way.
 
http://www.fleetweek.navy.mil/.htm
CWO2 (SW,CB) USNR Ret. Still Serving, still Remembering our Fallen[B]
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| May 25, 2007 @ 10:35 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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just boosting this back up to the top 5
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| May 25, 2007 @ 10:42 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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MarysPlace
Posts: 2,930
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Fleet Week, yep my son and me were just now down by the piers. And yep, we greeted and thanked the soldiers and sailors.
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| May 26, 2007 @ 6:00 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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eastham
Posts: 7,911
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Oh, don't call a Marine a soldier. They're Marines and they can get very testy when you call them soldiers...that's for the Army.
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| May 26, 2007 @ 8:06 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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MarysPlace
Posts: 2,930
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Oh, don't call a Marine a soldier.
Eastham stupid as usual.
I said soldiers, I meant soldiers.
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| May 27, 2007 @ 12:47 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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ty!
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| May 28, 2007 @ 10:28 AM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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Got your flags out?
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| May 28, 2007 @ 10:45 AM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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MarysPlace
Posts: 2,930
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The flag is always up... Inside since I can't do it outside.
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| May 28, 2007 @ 10:54 AM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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lolol--must itch a bit keeping it inside........
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| May 28, 2007 @ 1:07 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07148/789537-192.stm
wow. 
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| May 28, 2007 @ 1:13 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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emperorguy
Posts: 393
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America's Honor
The stories behind Memorial Day.
BY PETER COLLIER
Monday, May 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.
Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict--a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent's grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham's Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.
Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers--honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless--in our midst.
In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There's something wrong with that.
What they did in battle was extraordinary. Jose Lopez, a diminutive Mexican-American from the barrio of San Antonio, was in the Ardennes forest when the Germans began the counteroffensive that became the Battle of the Bulge. As 10 enemy soldiers approached his position, he grabbed a machine gun and opened fire, killing them all. He killed two dozen more who rushed him. Knocked down by the concussion of German shells, he picked himself up, packed his weapon on his back and ran toward a group of Americans about to be surrounded. He began firing and didn't stop until all his ammunition and all that he could scrounge from other guns was gone. By then he had killed over 100 of the enemy and bought his comrades time to establish a defensive line.
Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they'd lost but also the enemy they'd killed.
Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.
Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, "Dear God, please let me get just one more man." By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.
Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn't let their buddies down.
Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach, and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.
He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas's finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he'd promised his mother, a ninth-grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.
The men in World War II always knew, although news coverage was sometimes scant, that they were in some sense performing for the people at home. The audience dwindled during Korea. By the Vietnam War, the journalists were omnipresent, but the men were performing primarily for each other. One story that expresses this isolation and comradeship involves a SEAL team ambushed on a beach after an aborted mission near North Vi
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| May 28, 2007 @ 1:43 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day |
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steveemac
Posts: 2,335
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Another football player that gave his life in service to his nation-a New York Giant-and New jersey native:
AL BLOZIS: JERSEY CITY GIANT
By Victor Mastro, Frank Alkyer, and others
The Coffin Corner Volume VIII, 1986
You can't help but notice in Jersey City. There's the Al Blozis Hospital, the Al Blozis Little League, Blozis Hall, a senior citizen's apartment house, and several other memorials. If you didn't know, you might think Blozis was a wealthy philanthropist. Instead, he was a rugged football player.
And a legitimate American hero.
Al died over sixty years ago while serving his country. His grave in St. Avold Cemetary in France is marked by a plain white cross. The simple inscription reads "Alfred C. Blozis 2 lt 110 inf 28 div New Jersey Jan 31 1945." Similar crosses stand over the graves of thousands of Allied soldiers who died in World War II, and America recalls their sacrifice each Memorial Day. In Jersey City, they still remember Al Blozis daily.
638 National Football League players served in World War II; 355 were commissioned as officers, 66 were decorated, and 21 lost their lives.
"Blozis died during the battle of Black Mountain, near Colmar (France)," said Joseph Scott, who served in the same regiment as Blozis. Scott said he knew Blozis was in his regiment, but they never saw each other.
"It (the fighting) was pretty fierce for a couple of days, considering it was cleanup duty. The war was practically over by that time."
On January 31, six weeks after he'd played in the 1944 NFL championship game, Lt. Blozis sent out a detail of nine men in the deep snows of the Vozges Mountains sector of France. Seven returned shortly through the heavy snow. When the other two had not reported in several hours, Blozis set out to look for them. His men saw him fade into the snow storm. Then there was one short blast of German machine-gun fire. Lt. Blozis was dead.
Four months later the regiment was sent home.
Al Blozis, of Lithuanian descent, was born on January 5, 1919, in Garfield, New Jersey. He grew very big very early.
Charles S. Witkowski, former mayor of Jersey City and Blozis' football coach at Dickinson High School, said he knew the giant youngster was going to be a great football player from the first time he saw Blozis.
Witkowski met Blozis in June of 1935. He had issued a call for players in Dickinson High School gym.
"In the gym, all the windows face the east and when I was talking to this group of boys, all I could see were their silhouettes lined up against the windows," Witkowski said. "I was talking to the group when this huge figure stood out. Al was 6 feet 6 inches tall, 250 pounds.
"Well, I kept my eye on this figure and called him over after the meeting. I said, `I'm going to make a tackle out of you.' "
"Then Al said, `Do you think so?'
"And I said, `Yeah, and I'm going to make a great tackle out of you.'"
Blozis did not let Witkowski down. He was an All-State tackle at Dickinson in 1937. High schoolers as big as Blozis are often awkward and uncoordinated. Not Al. He was a complete athlete. Along with his prowess on the football field, he earned letters in basketball, swimming, and shattered virtually every high school record in the shotput.
Georgetown University was at the height of its football success when Blozis entered. Under former New York Giant Jack Hagerty (assisted by two other former Giants, George Murtagh and Mush Dubofsky), the Hoyas achieved national prominance. During Blozis' freshman year, the team went undefeated and untied. In 1939, when Al first earned a letter, the undefeated streak continued, marred only by a 13-13 tie with Syracuse.
The first Georgetown loss in three years didn't come until near the end of the 1940 season when undefeated Boston College nipped them 19-18 in a famous game. A second loss came in the Orange Bowl against another undefeated team, Mississippi State. Prominent Hoya stalwarts through this period included guard Augie Lio, tackle Joe Frank, and halfback Jim Castiglia.
New York Giant football coach Steve Owen had been a great tackle in his day. He prided himself on building impregnable lines. Big Al -- the gentle giant of huge size and calm temper -- was just what he needed.
The Giants made Blozis their third draft choice in 1942. The New Yorkers, eastern division champs in 1941, had been hit hard by military call-ups. The team started strong, sagged through the middle of the season, and had to win its final two games to finish at .500.
Blozis was an impressive rookie, pairing with veteran Frank Cope to keep New York strong at the tackle position. Had there been an all-rookie team selected, he no doubt would have been named to it.
In 1943, the Giants finished second in the division and Big Al was named to virtually every All-NFL team, including the Associated Press, United Press, New York News, and Pro Football Illustrated.
This was still before the two-platoon system, and players went both ways. Al was justly famous for his defensive prowess, but his offensive contributions brought him even more applause in '43. Rookie runner Bill Paschal bulled his way to a league-leading 572 yards and ten touchdowns, mostly running behind Blozis' earth-shaking blocks.
1944 was a big year for the Giants. World War II call-ups had stripped the NFL of many of its stars, but the Giants still had Blozis, Cope, guard Len Younce, and Hall of Famer Mel Hein in the line.
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| May 28, 2007 @ 1:44 PM |
Fleet Week & Memorial Day
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steveemac
Posts: 2,335
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1944 was a big year for the Giants. World War II call-ups had stripped the NFL of many of its stars, but the Giants still had Blozis, Cope, guard Len Younce, and Hall of Famer Mel Hein in the line. Ken Strong gave them strong place-kicking, and Arnie Herber came out of retirement to give New York a passing attack. Veteran Ward Cuff and Paschal were fine runners. Bill again led the league, this time with 737 yards and nine touchdowns.
New York went 8-1-1, posting five shutouts, with both the loss and the tie suffered at the hands of the emerging Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles finished second to New York when they played a second tie with Washington and lost late in the year to the Bears.
Unfortunately, Paschal was limping on a badly injured ankle for the championship game with the Packers, considerably reducing the Giants' attack. Although New York had topped Green Bay 24-0 only four weeks earlier, that had been with Paschal at full-throttle. The title game developed into a defensive struggle. Green Bay took a 14-0 lead at the half, and a New York second-half rally -- sparked by Herber passes -- could garner only one touchdown.
Blozis entered the service right after the championship game. He didn't have to go. His size put him outside the limits of the draft, but he was determined to do his part. Six weeks later, he was killed.
The Giants retired Blozis' number 32, and he has been named to several all-1940's teams despite his short career of only three years. In 1986 he was elected to the National Football Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame.
One of the most fitting tributes is that the Dickinson High School gymnasium -- where it all began with his huge figure silhouetted against the window -- has been renamed the Alfred C. Blozis Gym.
* * *
BLOZIS, Alfred C. (The Human Howitzer)
Tackle
B: 1/5/1919, Garfield, NJ; D1/31/1945, near Colmar, France
Hgt: 6-6 Wgt: 250
High School: Dickinson H.S., Jersey City, NJ
College: Georgetown (1939, 1941). Honors: College All-Star Game - 1942
Nat. FB Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame (1986)
Drafted 3d round, New York Giants - 1942 Pro Career: 3 years: 1942-44 NY Giants
1943 All-NFL (1st) A.P., U.P., N.Y. News, PF Illus.
Misc. Notes: Outstanding college shotputter
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