My father (L) and his brother Jim, in front of their house at 5509 Holmes Street, Kansas City, Missouri, in 1925.
5509 Holmes Street today (R), same sidewalk in foreground. You can see the two-story house, upper left, is the same as the one above.
And that concerns me.
I wrote this post late Thursday night of the 11th, in anticipation of posting it this past weekend because, almost before that day had passed, I realized what I’d not done. Because of the stream of news and events, I’ve waited to post it until now, Sunday.
I’d not remembered that was the day my father passed away in 2009, seven years ago. My God, seven years ago. In a way it seems like yesterday; in another, it seems like a vast, chasmic distance in the past.
Today my father, had he lived, would be 95 years old. As it was, he lived to 88. He once told me that all he wanted to do was live longer than his father, who passed away in the front yard of his house in Dallas at the age of 83. His father served in World War I, having been born in 1895.
Above is a photograph of my father’s dad, Verto Alley, who was a bugler and served overseas in Germany and France. Verto was born in 1895, in Minnesota. Though I met him about three times, I remember little if anything about my grandfather because I was young, and because my grandparents on my father’s side lived so far away. I’m pretty sure I factored not at all into his life either.
As you can see, my grandfather Verto carried this photo of his wife Katy throughout his assignments in World War I.
On the other hand, Dad’s mother, Katherine, was born in 1899 in Missouri and liked me. Those same three times I may have encountered my grandmother, I only remember good things about her. I can remember being in the back seat of our 1958 Oldsmobile 88 with grandma. I’d just had a haircut. Dad always cut my hair with the Wahl electric clippers that I have to this day; he would do it with me perched on the yellow stool perched in the middle of the kitchen on the linoleum floor.
Grandma was in the back seat of the Olds with me. She leaned over, scrappled my short hair and called me her “towhead.” Then she kissed me on top of my head.
The above photographs are my father in primary flight school, where he learned that the US Army Air Corps considered him to be, after evaluation, bomber material. Dad wanted to be a fighter pilot — who didn’t? — but the USAAC said he was a “team player” kind of guy, not a lone wolf. To multi-engine planes he went and the B-17.
After surviving his missions, Dad came back and the married my mother on April 24th of 1942. In its infinite wisdom the US decided to make Dad a B-25 instructor. Go figure. Above is a photo of my mother and father a short time after their marriage in Reno, Nevada. Below is my father seated in a B-25 Mitchell.
Below, Captain Dad poses with his friend Joel Kuykendahl, while assigned as flight instructors at Roswell Army Air Field (AAF).
I reminisced about Dad recently with my wife and her sister, when she came to visit for the past three weeks as I recuperated from foot surgery.
To this day I miss Dad terribly.
Col Richard Lee Alley, USAF 1920 – 2009 WWII, Vietnam
Beware: this video is 1 hour and 53 minutes long. But worth it.
An excellent insight.
But a false one. There is no one aircraft that can be all things to all and for all missions. It is a Fool’s Game to think this, as John Boyd said so many years ago. He called it “gold plating.” John Boyd was a genius, and he was correct. I would refer all of my readers to Robert Coram’s book “Boyd” for an amazing insight into an eccentric aeronautical genius who existed and fought before his time.
There is no one airframe that can please or fulfill all of the services: the USAF, the US Navy, the US Marines. It hasn’t existed in the past and it doesn’t exist now.
With a nod to the future of unmanned and highly technological aircraft, these extreme airframes may become, in and of themselves, a form of Artificial Intelligence.
Medical staff warned: Keep your mouths shut about illegal immigrants or face arrest
by Todd Starnes
A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.
In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.
And isn’t that wonderful? Leftists via the Obama Administration — which crowed about so-called “transparency” — now continue to ensure the Obama Administration is the most opaque, isolated, disingenuous and foundationally untruthful and obfuscated in the history of the United States.
In other words, to health care workers: STFU about the reality of what is occurring in illegal alien refugee camps. The truth about the infectious diseases carried by many of these illegals must be kept under wraps. The truth cannot get out.
Or we’ll arrest you for revealing that uncomfortable truth.
My sources say Americans should be very concerned about the secrecy of the government camps.
That would likewise be applied to every aspect of the Obama Administration. The most opaque in the history of this nation — and moreso than Jimmy Carter.
But wait until you read this:
The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.
The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”
“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”
An illegal immigrant camp “guarded” by a private security force from the BFCS, whom DHS hired to “secure” the Lackland AFB camp? When there were USAF forces available but upon request, in the form of APs — the Air Police?
This is completely nonsensical.
Since when does the Obama Administration have anything to do with the BFCS — a religious group — and, since when does the Obama Administration place its faith in private security firms — firms that it has historically excoriated under Bush?
With that, since when does the BFCS possess an actual “security force”?
This completely stinks to high heaven and beyond.
She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.
“Everyone was paranoid,” she said. “The children had more rights than the workers.”
As it is with a fascist empire. As it is under the Obama Administration.
Brown shirts. See above.
She said children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.
“It was not a good atmosphere in terms of health,” she said. “I would be talking to children and lice would just be climbing down their hair.”
A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.
“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”
Both the counselor and the nurse said their superiors tried to cover up the extent of the illnesses.
“When they found out the kids had scabies, the charge nurse was adamant – ‘Don’t mention that. Don’t say scabies,’” the nurse recounted. “But everybody knew they had scabies. Some of the workers were very concerned about touching things and picking things up. They asked if they should be concerned, but they were told don’t worry about it.”
The nurse said the lice issue was epidemic – but everything was kept “hush-hush.”
“You could see the bugs crawling through their hair,” she said. “After we would rinse out their hair, the sink would be loaded with black bugs.”
The nurse told me she became especially alarmed because their files indicated the children had been transported to Lackland on domestic charter buses and airplanes.
“That’s what alerted me,” she said. “Oh, my God. They’re flying these kids around. Nobody knows that these children have scabies and lice. To tell you the truth, there’s no way to control it.”
The Greatest Generation is almost entirely gone. As Tom Brokaw wrote, “it is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.”[2] He argued that these men and women fought not for fame and recognition, but because it was the “right thing to do”. When they came back they rebuilt America into a superpower.
My father passed away in 2009, at the age of 88. He flew aircraft in WWII for the US Army Air Corps, the US Army Air Forces, was an instructor pilot in bombers, and retired a full Colonel. He served in the Pentagon and at Wright Patterson AF base, Roswell NM, Mather AFB in WWII, the 8th AF flying B-17Gs, and retired from McClellan AFB.
He was proud of having served in the Air Force, but would not willingly speak of what occurred in WWII. This was the humility and the quiet honor of those men who served and survived. And that is the cover my father wore as a USAF Colonel, at the top of the post, sitting on my desk adjacent the computer as I write this. Clouds and thunderbolts.
Dad and BZ
These men of The Greatest Generation fought under circumstances and with equipment that would now be considered barbaric, cruel, primitive and guaranteed of a certain death. Yet they persevered as their brothers were cut down in wide swaths. They were young, one might say idealistic, and each one knew in his heart that others would die — but not them. It was a false premise but it kept them going in the face of terrible odds.
Of the 80 original Doolittle Raiders, for example, only four remain. There will be, literally, a final toast for these men.
On this Memorial Day, 2013, please allow me to focus on those who won the Second World War and kept the entire planet safe for, at least temporarily, a succeeding generation. Because there are so damned few remaining.
This April, the final four Doolittle Raiders were scheduled to meet in Fort Arbor, Florida. Only three of them attended. But, 71 years later, their cognac will be opened.
Crowds line up to meet Doolittle’s Raiders for last time
(CBS News) FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. — It’s easy to spot Doolittle’s Raiders. They’re the guys in the white hats. Take a good look at Edward Saylor, David Thatcher and Richard Cole. This is the last time you’ll see them together.
“If you didn’t decide to wind it down, you might end up having to plan a reunion and so forth and end up with no people,” Cole says, when asked why they decided to stop participating in public reunions.
They’re all in their 90s now, but in the darkest days of World War II, they were daring young men who launched the first American attack on Tokyo, flying B-25 bombers that were never meant to take off from an aircraft carrier.
It’s been 71 years.
“We thought they’d forget about it by now,” Cole says.
Not a chance. The line for autographs at a museum in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., was over an hour long. Paul and Danna Fleming, of Maryland, took their children out of school to see them.
“Drove straight through, 16 hours straight to get here for today,” Danna says. “We drove all night,” adds Paul.
I say: as well you should. These men struck the very first blow against Japan immediately following the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7th of 1941, though America, at that time, possessed such a minimal chance of overcoming the might of the Japanese War Machine.
What you may not know: each Raider realized that, logistically, they would never be able to return to their carrier, the USS Hornet. They would have to hit Tokyo and hope for some kind of safe landing in China. On the day of the raid, however, they were told that, worse, the Japanese knew of the plan and — because of this — the raid would be launched from a point much farther from Tokyo. As a result, their B-25 Mitchells now carried insufficient fuel to guarantee anything resembling a safe landing anywhere. These men — volunteers — had no hesitation: they vowed to continue the raid with unanimity. This then became, in essence, an unspoken suicide attack.
The Doolittle Raiders have a tradition. Beginning in 1946, the surviving Raiders have held a reunion each April to commemorate the mission. The reunion is in a different city each year. However, in 1959, the city of Tucson, AZ presented the Raiders with a set of 80 silver goblets, each engraved with the name of an individual Doolittle Raider.
Every year a wooden display case bearing all 80 goblets is transported to the city of the Doolittle Reunion and, each time a Raider passes away, his goblet is turned upside down.
Contained within this case is one bottle, a marque of 1896 Hennessy Very Special Cognac. 1896 is the year that Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle was born.
The plan: when only two Raiders are left, they are to open the bottle and toast the comrades who preceded them in death.
At the beginning of this year, 2013, there were still five living Raiders. In February, Tom Griffin passed away at age 96. He did this: after bailing out of his plane over a mountainous Chinese forest following the Tokyo raid — which did little actual damage — he contracted malaria, recovered, and was sent to Europe to fly more combat missions. He was shot down, captured, and spent 22 months in a German POW camp.
Further, here’s the kind of man he was:
When his wife became ill and required a skilled nursing facility, Mr Griffin visited her every day, walking from his house to the home itself. He fed his wife and brought home her clothes each day, washing and ironing them. He would walk back and return them the next morning. He did this for three years until her death in 2005.
Only four Raiders remain living: Dick Cole (who could not make the Florida reunion), Doolittle’s co-pilot, Robert Hite, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher — all in their 90s.
They decided there are too few of them remaining to warrant any further public reunions and that, at a later date this year, they will get together privately and open that bottle of Hennessy. The four remaining upright goblets will be filled with an 1896 cognac.
In a final toast to those who dared, and to those who are gone.
God bless America.
The best and last hope of the entire planet.
BZ
P.S.
Many years ago, when I was much younger, I can remember my father saying he met Jimmy Stewart and drank with him at Mather AFB. He also said that he saw numerous B-25s in Sacramento at McClellan AFB practicing short field take-offs in the early 1940s.
I believe he saw the Doolittle Raiders.
He said he liked Jimmy Stewart and that he wasn’t arrogant. And that he drove him back to the barracks.
Col Richard Lee Alley, USAF 1920 – 2009 WWII, Vietnam
Above is a photograph of my father’s dad, Verto Alley, who was a bugler and served overseas in Germany and France. Verto was born in 1895, in Minnesota. Though I met him about three times, I remember little if anything about my grandfather because I was young, and because my grandparents on my father’s side lived so far away. I’m pretty sure I factored not at all into his life either.
Grandma was in the back seat of the Olds with me. She leaned over, scrappled my short hair and called me her “towhead.” Then she kissed me on top of my head.
The above photographs are my father in primary flight school, where he learned that the US Army Air Corps considered him to be, after evaluation, bomber material. Dad wanted to be a fighter pilot — who didn’t? — but the USAAC said he was a “team player” kind of guy, not a lone wolf. To multi-engine planes he went and the B-17.
After surviving his missions, Dad came back and the married my mother on April 24th of 1942. In its infinite wisdom the US decided to make Dad a B-25 instructor. Go figure. Above is a photo of my mother and father a short time after their marriage in Reno, Nevada. Below is my father seated in a B-25 Mitchell.
Below, Captain Dad poses with his friend Joel Kuykendahl, while assigned as flight instructors at Roswell Army Air Field (AAF).
I reminisced about Dad recently with my wife and her sister, when she came to visit for the past three weeks as I recuperated from foot surgery.
