A late D-Day salute to two cousins, genuine war veterans and heroes

I missed D-Day by a few days, but I just got some photos by email of my cousin Roger Moore from South Dakota, 88 years young and a veteran of Utah Beach on D-Day June 6, 1944.

That's me on the far right (appropriately as I'm politically somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun) and cousin Roger at center and my lovely daughter Layla and her son Nicholas next in line. Roger visited from South Dakota with his wife Delores and daughter Debbie and her husband Wayne.

We're chatting on the front porch of my sister's home in Olanta, SC, during our recent family get-together for Roger and family's visit here.

And I also met there cousin John Timothy Ratliff for the first time, that's him and his lovely wife Patricia in the next photo. Cousin Tim and Pat live in Florida and Asheville and he is a Green Beret veteran of my war, Vietnam. But he fought the real war in the jungles of Southeast Asia while I enjoyed three hots and a cot and liberty ports of call every 35 days.

The war in the jungle vs. aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer, USS Mullinnix, DD-944, are two totally different experiences. My hat is off to cousin Roger and cousin Tim, two genuine war veterans and heroes.

Nothing like a low-level jet flyby to get you up and humming

I was napping away, along with most of the rest of the ship, one hot muggy afternoon in the Tonkin Gulf in the summer of 1969 aboard the USS Mullinnix, DD-944, the last all-gun destroyer in the U.S. Navy. Fire missions off the coast of Vietnam were slow that day and I was on duty at my station outside the gun director with my sound-powered headphones on.

If my talents were required, a call would wake me up so I was catching a few z's in the sunshine. For some reason, I opened my eyes for a second and saw movement. A low-flying Thud, an F-105 Thunderchief Air Force fighter-bomber, was just clearing land over the coast of Vietnam and heading straight for us. He was real low, seemingly skimming the wavetops, and instead of reaching for some altitude he stayed low until almost on top of us and then rocketed over top the ship, barely clearing the mast and scaring the crap out of a shipload of sleeping sailors.

I'm sure the pilot was feeling jubilant about making it back in one piece after a bombing run and as soon as he cleared land felt like celebrating a bit. The gun boss, a slightly nutty lieutenant, went completely nuts and started hollering "Battle Stations! Battle Stations! Shoot him down!" but that was one time when us grunt sailors felt safe to laugh at him and ignore him.

Now take 3.5 minutes of your time and enjoy the Top 10 Low Pass Jet Flybys, all real and way better than the Hollywood make-believe version allegedly done by Tom Cruise in his Navy Tomcat: #10 F-16 (Royal Netherlands Airforce) -- #6 Blue Angels F-18 (Cleveland) -- #5 Harrier low pass -- #4 Alpha Jet (Belgian Airforce) -- #3 Mirage F1CT & L?onnaire - Chad -- #1 Blue Angels F-18 (SF Fleet Week 2007) -- as well as other high speed fly-bys of Vigilante, Tomcat, F-18, Jaguar and Rafale jets.


You're welcome.

Finally the truth is published about who won the Vietnam War

Finally, history gets corrected. I'm a Vietnam War veteran, serving on board the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) in 1969 when my crew set a record for the most gunfire support of any Naval gunship in the war.

I was a Firecontrol Technician-Gunnery 2nd Class Petty Officer (FTG-2) and a significant portion of the 25,000+ 5"-54 and 3"-50 naval artillery rounds my ship fired literally had my finger on the electrical "trigger."

One thing I've always known for sure, along with other Vietnam War vets, is we didn't lose that war, we kicked some serious Communist behind for 11 long years and then we went home.

A new book takes a look at what really happened and kicks behind on all the liberal leftwingnut lies that still persist today about how the U.S. military supposedly lost that war.

The Vietnam War was a tragic and dismal failure—at least that is what the mainstream media and history books would have you believe. Yet, Phillip Jennings sets the record straight in The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to the Vietnam War. In this latest “P.I.G.”, Jennings shatters culturally-accepted myths and busts politically incorrect lies that liberal pundits and leftist professors have been telling you for years. Bet you didn’t know that:

• The U.S. did not lose the Vietnam War—we won it
• The U.S. achieved our goal—we stopped the spread of Communism
• The U.S. did not suffer significant battlefield losses
• The cultural chaos of the 1960s and 1970s negatively influenced the Vietnam War—not vice versa

The Vietnam War was the most important—and successful—campaign to defeat Communism. Without the sacrifices made and the courage displayed by our military, the world might be a different place. The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to the Vietnam War proves the above and more as Jennings reveals the truth about the battles, players, and policies of one of the most controversial wars in U.S. history. Paperback, 256 pages

I don't need to read the book to know the facts, but maybe you weren't there and want the truth.