Veterans "oral" histories

[hvychev]

This is a very neat topic. Although my father was never in Viet Nam, my grandfather was in WW2 and was in Normandy on D Day. He was in the Navy and served as a beach head transporting troops back and forth from the boat to the shore. My mother told me that her father told her about that day and basicly recited the begining of the movie Saving Private Ryan but only it was his true account of that day. He had told her that when he droped off the troops they were dead by the time he brought the next load back. He could still remember them floating in the ocean dead and he remembered the water being pure red with blood.

On a brighter note he met my grandmother in Ireland while in WW2. they were married and my mother was born in Ireland making me first generation Irish!

Here is a cool real real vintage pic of my grandfather Emil Strnad in WW2 taken while in France.

[hvychev]

Here is another pic of him and the others that he served with. He is the 5th in the top row.

[hvychev]

Here is a very cool pic. This is right after the war where my grandmother and grandfather were celebrating. They are the couple in the middle. I love the 40's and think that I may have been there in a previous life! My grandfather looked just like Elvis with the curled lip and all even though you cant tell in this pic because they lost quality when I resized them.

[hvychev]

I just had to post one more Elvis pic. This is there wedding pic circa Feb 1946

[Belair62]

Wow Frank...you weren't kidding..he does look like Elvis !!!

[427TJ]

I flew 39 combat sorties during Gulf War '91 in the KC-135R refueling tanker. No, not as important in world history as World War I or II, but pretty exciting for a young guy who thought flying tankers would be boring. The evening of the first day of Desert Storm we were briefed that the loss rate was expected to be 10-15% on that first night of the war. 10-15% of coalition aircraft?, we asked. No, 10-15% of the tanker fleet. Oh shi_. More than a few guys in the briefing room went pale. Then, after the first two or three nights of the air war, we realized that the capability of the Iraqi air force was, to say the least, overrated. We soon stopped wearing parachutes and flight helmets in the cockpit and flew our missions as if we were over Nevada supporting the Red Flag air war training excerise. Anyway, I took the attached photo on the last day of the Gulf War. We had just refueled two F-15C Eagle fighters (air force) and offered them extra fuel if they'd show us some afterburner as they went back on patrol. This Eagle came up under the right wing of my tanker and roared out in front of our windscreen and I got this photo. The noise was unbelievable. Just after I got this photo we flew through his wake turbulence and we experienced a +2, -3 momentary G-force on our airplane, much worse than any turbulence you've ever felt on an airliner. Then the second F-15 did the exact same thing but we just missed his wake turbulence. The pilot of the F-15 in my photo was named Rory Draeger and he was based at Eglin AFB in Florida. He had two Iraqi MiG-29 kills during Desert Storm. He left the USAF in the 90s and was killed in a sports car crash on an Oregon highway.

[427TJ]

Here's a cool photo I took of four F-16 Fighting Falcons (also called "Viper") during Desert Storm. What makes this photo unique, at least until Desert Storm had gotten underway, was the fact that those are live bombs and missiles. Practice ordinance is usually painted blue but the real stuff is olive green as these are. These are cluster bombs and shortly after I took this photo people died. That's what went through my mind all during Desert Storm. No, I wasn't having any nightmares about it but it was sobering to look at those fighters with live ordinance underwing and realize that someone's going to die within the hour. These F-16s were normally based at Torrejon AB in Spain as denoted by the "TJ" tail codes.

It was easy to fight a war from 30,000 feet. The real men were down below slugging it out in the sand.

[BBIGG BLOCK 396]

Those are some very neat pictures,and I think our Grandfather could pass as Elvis!His experience during D Day must have been horrifying.I know that most movies are just movies but I think that saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers are two of the most genuine I have ever seen.I especially liked the real soldiers that were talking on and off during Band of Brothers and how they felt the movie depicited the actual events as they really occured.Another great movie is We were Soldiers with Mel Gibson,the real Colonel that Gibson portrayed was said that when on the set and all the NVC came charging from the base of the mountain cave that he reached for his pistol in his shoulder holster to defend himself then realized that it was just a movie shoot and not real and that he did not have a pistol on! I thought if they can make the scenes that make the actual people that were there feel that way it is a pretty accurate description of the events that occured.I am a War Movie Buff and have seen just about every movie made at least twice and some many more.Prefer to watch the quality movies like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan,and We were Soldiers,those 3 are the all time best War movies ever made because of the realistic scenes and true Stories behind them.

God Bless All Veterans




Bobby Dodson

[427TJ]

"Saving Private Ryan" was one of the best war movies ever made. No gung-ho bullshi_, but rather the awful horror of combat. My wife and I went to see it and when the movie ended the theater kept the lights at a dim setting and none of the patrons moved for about five minutes. All you could hear were snifs and coughs as people got themselves together, me included. Oh, and when the P-51 Mustangs came in and knocked out the German armor the whole theater cheered. Nice to see real WWII fighters used in a movie instead of models.

Yes, "We Were Soldiers" was another fine movie. Casting Sam Elliot as the grizzled old sergeant was a master stroke. Not as explicit as Private Ryan but every bit as good.

[BBIGG BLOCK 396]

427TJ

Those were some very cool pictures you posted! The job you did in the Gulf is and was just as important as the Fighter Pilots and bombers and the Soldiers on the ground.Without you and the other tanker pilots and crews the Fighters and Bombers could not have performed ther jobs.It is all TEAMWORK working toward a common GOAL which is to DEFEAT the ENEMY.Thumbs up to you and your crew and to all the others,your life was on the line just like the rest of the TEAM.

Bobby Dodson