Honor to those who came forward

"Sunny" wrote:

Art, are you actually aware that everything you used, from your
aircraft/ammo/, the food you stuffed into your mouth and the toilet paper
you used, was supplied by merchant marine, heroes every one of them, who
lived every waking and sleeping hour, in the knowledge and fear that the
next loud noise could be the torpedo that smashed their world apart.
Judging from what I have read so far, from you, I don't think so which is
sad. But I suppose in your words they were "non combatants".?


About three years ago on Memorial Day I happened to be visiting a
retired O-5 Army friend in Capitan NM (burial place of Smokey Bear)
and just down the road from Lincoln NM (notorious home of Billy the
Kid)--we attended the services at Fort Stanton--a small frontier
period fort that served prior to WW II as a TB sanitarium and then
during the war was used to house German merchant marine POW's. It has
a small national cemetary attached--probably 1500 graves--all US and
Allied Merchant Marine that died during the war. It was a very moving
experience--rows of traditional white headstones, each decorated with
a small flag of their respective nation. A piper played Amazing Grace
and a small color guard presented the colors then wrestled with their
vintage and not very well maintained Garands to deliver a ragged but
sincere 21 gun salute. It was pure Western US with the wind coming
across the prairie and the mountains in the background.

I spotted a small group of separate headstones on the far corner of
the cemetary, totally isolated away from the American Merchant Marine
graves. Here were a dozen lonely, but marked and respected graves of
POWs who died during their captivity.

They were all combatants and all doing what they could best do for
their country, whichever side of the war they were on.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (ret)
***"When Thunder Rolled:
*** An F-105 Pilot Over N. Vietnam"
*** from Smithsonian Books
ISBN: 1588341038