Bravery in battle is defined as " You are the only one who knows you've crapped your pants".
The daily event you describe, the collection of personal effects, is one that drove home the endless paradox of going to war. Some of which I've never completely reconciled, likely never will. I'm not sure it's possible to explain to anyone what it takes to go back into battle day after day. Unless the other person has been there, then it's not necessary. ATTABOY, welcome home! Grant... On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 7:23 AM, WILTON via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > CASUALTY AFFAIRS > By Wilton Strickland > > Almost every afternoon and/or early evening during the Linebacker II > campaign, as we boarded buses and departed the crew quarters area to go to > pre-mission briefings for additional trips to Hanoi, we observed casualty > affairs crews gathering and packing personal effects of crewmen who had > failed to return the night before into large, clear plastic bags. This > made it especially hard to maintain a "can't-happen-to-me" attitude. None > of us ever mentioned it to each other, however, as we returned night after > night to the gauntlet of SAM's and AAA. > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those > individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner > has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor. > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
