Friday, October 30, 2015

The Battle Of Belleau Wood


On June 1st 1918 the US 2nd division formed a line across the road which lead
Paris, with the Marine Brigade in the center. The next day the Germans attacked,
the Germans attacked for three more days. Then on June 6 the 2nd division counter-
attacked. The Marines would cross a wheat field to get into the woods, on that first
day they lost one thousand Marines dead of wounded. It would take three weeks to
take the woods. Below is a reenactment of that first day.
On the 11 month on the 11 day at the 11 hour the first world war would end, this is
dedicated to those who died in that war.



                                     
                    Below is a video that shows the cemetery and the cost of that battle.




And of course Nov 10 is the Marine Corps Birthday. This year we're 240 years old

                                        

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

My YouTube Videos

About six years ago I put up eight video on YouTube and over the years the
total of views slowly climbed to 24,806 views for all eight videos combined.
The video are Marine Corps and other services related like the Glass Wall in
Jacksonville NC and the Wall in DC both walls honoring Vietnam Vets.So I
thought I would put up the YouTube site and If You have time you could watch
them, the longest is about 9 mins and the shortest is just over a min. The last
Video has the highest number of views over 13,734 and is tops in its category
and was the first video I made titled Eagle, Globe and Anchor.
https://www.youtube.com/my_videos?o=U         

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Building America

In the years just before 1825 all the ground work had been done, the engineering
plains, the survey maps were finish the funding was set and now it was time to
hire a thousand strong men to dig a ditch. OK, it was a canal, but until it had
water in it and boats on it, its a ditch. And this ditch would run for one hundred
and two miles and they would do it with picks and shovel, axes and saws, mules
and horses, muscle and sweat, and a lot of whiskey, so the story goes. In 1831
the Morris Canal was finished, it ran from the Delaware River to Newark N.J.
It went from being a ditch to a canal, and it would last for one hundred years.

In the same vain in 1863 two crews of men would lay track to link the country
together as they built the transcontinental railroad. In the west they had a hard time
finding good workers, so they hired Chinese who in time would be 80% of the work
force. When asked why the Chinese management said they work hard, they don't get
drunk and walk off the job, and if they can build the great wall of China, they can
build a railroad. In the east many of the men were Irish and German immigrants and
some Civil war Vets. And they did it with shovels, sludge hammers, pickaxes and
muscle and sweat. These were the blue collar boys, they built canals and railroads,
walked the high steel on skyscraper, built dams and bridges and road all over this
country. I don't know if they thought they were building America or not, but at some-
time in the future they could look upon there work with there grand-kids at there side
and say, grandpa helped build that.