My dad joined military college at 16. He got them to put him through medical school 10 years later. I know signing up can make your life way better.
Like I said, I was just triggered by the volume of veteran grandpa stories. I was a jerk.
Thanks for saying that. You are forgiven, my son…
You know, every day that I’m here (only 364 in the past year…) I see people being jerks. And I think “What a jerk. And he doesn’t even know it.” But you do. I just never thought I’d hear someone admit it.
What digs said.
Most of mine were, too. My maternal grandfather was in WWI, and one uncle was in Vietnam, but that’s it.
I’m not terribly impressed by my dad’s military service. But to be fair, neither is he. He and his buddy Terry joined the Army on a whim, in the late 50’s, when the Defense Department reacted to some crisis by trying to add more warm bodies to the ranks. They only served about six months when TPTB decided they didn’t need so many buck privates after all, and that the defense of the Nation did not require the services of a couple of skinny rednecks from Rocky Mount, N.C. They both got out on medical discharges. My uncles, both of whom had served in the Navy, called my dad and Terry “the ninety-day generals”.
My older uncle was in the Navy during Korea, but he never had to face enemy action. Well, not foreign enemies, anyway. He was stationed at Naval Air Station Weeksville, near Elizabeth City, N.C., where he maintained the blimps the Navy used for anti-submarine patrols off the East Coast. The base was not popular with the locals, as the airships would come in low over the nearby livestock farms, scaring the pigs into breaking out and fleeing. Remonstrances by local farmers fell on deaf ears, so one day a farmer, exasperated by yet another pig stampede, took a shotgun to an arriving blimp, and perforated the middle of the three gas compartments. The airship was able to land, and my uncle had the job of climbing into the envelope to pick out the buckshot and repair the holes.
Amazingly, until he told me that story two or three decades ago, my uncle had never seen the humor in stampeding porkers and buckshot-riddled blimps.
This post was the antithesis of every DrDeth interaction. 
Ditto for “Double Down” Magiver.
Tell us about the c-beams, and oh! how they glistened.
actually, it was like 200 years tho after the first 50 or so it wasn’t really enforced but dickens actually had a hand in bringing it back or at least overturning the law anyways
wait until he finds out what they did on Xmas back then … the hedonistic riots with public drunken gay sex and the molestation of anything on 2 legs in orgies and burglary arson and the like
it was a street riot that burned like 5 or 6 blocks and 5 or 6 people were killed in brawls that shocked Cromwell who banned it if I’m remembering the history channel special on Xmas right …it made things like mardi gras and carnival look tame …
Given what Dickens himself describes, I take some of that with a grain of salt. Religious people often seem to want to play up the debauchery.
I have an (the?) annotated A Christmas Carol, which describes a lot of Christmas traditions. The parlor games where the loser might have to kiss the winner seem far too tame to be in the same tradition as orgies.
well by the time dickens came about it had tamed down immeasurably from the Elizabethan and before ages
Why? Nobody was taking any personal credit; certainly not celebrating military “exploits”. People were just spontaneously sharing a bit of family history. What has that to do with you?
Presumably without embellishing, unlike the target of this thread.
It just still feels like bragging and glorying in the military. People generally don’t memorize and recount which line at which Ford plant their grandpa worked at. Unless you’re a big union supporter, perhaps.
I know people don’t always mean it that way. Sometimes I forget.
Fair enough.
I’m not a fan of the way certain political factions have managed to turn soldiers into demigods by default, particularly while minimizing and denigrating most other forms of civil service. But volunteer military service, in a vacuum, isn’t a bad thing. I’m proud of my family members who are soldiers and I’m proud of my family members who are teachers.
Now, my grandpa fought the Axis, which was doing its level best to commit several flavors of genocide. He was a genuine goddamned hero and I regret that he died before I was old enough to hear more about his service. Here’s my funny story: one day he showed me a katana that he’d brought back from the Pacific theater. A genuine* samurai sword, just like the second-best ninja turtle** used! I was so delighted by it that he asked my mother whether I could have it. She of course said hell no and he didn’t press the issue. A couple months later, a big cardboard tube showed up in the mail with my name on it. He’d polished the blade and cleaned up the scabbard, and my mother - who’d let me open the package and was now in an unwinnable position - acquiesced and let me keep it.
Anyway. Props for making an apology in a pit thread. You don’t see that too often.
*not a genuine samurai sword, but a factory-made NCO’s blade. It’s in quite good shape, but he painted the metal scabbard army green to cover up the decay of several decades in a humid garage.
**Donatello, of course, is first best.
Ohhh, you must have got stuck in the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster. Whatever a Hrung is.
Dear Pastor,
I noticed that, in your sermon, you said “I’m in favor of a traditional Christmas” Well, I’ve been in touch with many of your flock who all agree with you, and I’ve shared some Historical Documents with them. I’ve got to say, I’ve never seen such enthusiasm for the annual Christmas pageant!
We have many skits planned and do hope you and the missus can attend.
And do bring little Bud and Muffy. It should be very educational.
Yours in Christ,
Brother Digby
My Ganddad was born in 1905, so too young for WWI and too old for WWII. His father-in-law, a fine Quaker man, drove an ambulance in France.
My father managed to get student deferments until my brother was born, so no 'Nam for him, unlike my Uncle. Uncle Maus was not doing too well in school, and knew his number was up, so he volunteered before he was drafted. He was an Intelligence Specialist who rode a desk in Saigon for a year before being transferred to Leavenworth. He asked to go back to Saigon because, stateside, he was doing the exact same job without the deployment and hazardous duty pay. His superiors decided he needed to go into the field. D’oh! He came home okay.
I think you also missed the point here. We were relating the mundane service that our relatives did in war, for the most part. My dad fixed submarines in the war which was pretty cool but it’s not like he was Sergeant Fury leading his Howling Commandos. These stories were in contrast to the crazy bullshit that DD has been trying to get everyone to believe, which is “bragging and glorying in the military”, and in a way that is clearly not even true (so it’s even worse, he’s guilty of indirect stolen glory). These are real stories to contrast with what he’s been doing. We’re not trying to glorify things here; on the contrary, those of us who’ve been in military families know the downside of not seeing our family for long periods of time or even losing them in war.