Hey Gang, we just
returned from Branson where we celebrated with a whole barn full
of Veterans from the various wars and police actions that we have fought Today
I am considered weird because I would fight to protect our “land of the free and the home of the brave”.
When the tragedy of
9/11 hit our nation I wanted to call and volunteer to return to the
military. True, I was an old duck at the time but I still had the energy
to sweep floors, do dishes and be an encouragement to those who would be asked
to put their lives on the line.
I want to share a WW
II story that is a favorite of mine, though I don’t remember where I read it..
“Tour boats ferry
people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We
just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a
small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I purchased a small
book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by Admiral
Chester Nimitz.
Sunday, December
7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington
D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him.
When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the
Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command
of the Pacific Fleet.
He landed at Pearl
Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair,
dejection, and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won
the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the
destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken
battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked.
As the tour boat
returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well
Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?"
Admiral Nimitz's reply
shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said,
"The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could
ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it
was?"
Shocked and surprised,
the young helmsman asked, "What do you mean by saying the Japanese made
the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?"
Nimitz
explained:
Mistake number one:
The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of
every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same
ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men
instead of 3,800.
Mistake number two:
When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so
carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks
opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have
had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired.
As it is now, The
ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over
to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could
have towed them to America. I already have crews ashore anxious to man
those ships.
Mistake number
three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in the ground
storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have
strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.
That's why I say
the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make or
God was taking care of America. I've never forgotten what I read in that
little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it.
In jest, I might
suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in
Fredricksburg, Texas -- he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at
it--Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation
and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.
President Roosevelt
had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a
leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of
dejection, despair and defeat.”
There is a reason that
our national motto is: "IN GOD WE TRUST"
Soooo, Why
have we forgotten? PRAY FOR OUR COUNTRY and THOSE WHO SERVE in every capacity.
Blessings and pray daily for our Country,
Gramps
Blessings and pray daily for our Country,
Gramps
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