Hi ronkala, interesting..I had never heard of this organization. Having grandson's it is overwhelming to think of such young fellows going off to battle.

LoveItaly,
The CPO I mentioned in an earlier post was the late Jackson K Parker, a chief machinist mate. Orphaned at two, he lied about his age and enlisted at 16 in January, 1942. He made CPO as a teenager, a couple of months before turning twenty.
He retired as a Rear Admiral with forty six years of naval service.

Hi Ronkala, that story gives me chills..a hero indeed. Although my late husband was in the Navy, Lt.Commander, I had never heard of Jackson K. Parker. Was he by any chance a relative of yours? Best regards.

Loveitaly,
No, not a relative, he was part of the crew when we were operating in Korean waters during that war. Someone gave me the newspaper article about his retirement and his obit at one of our reunions.

Not to keep this thread going but our local Veterans Organization had a flat bed truck that was to be used for our WWII Veterans to be in during our local city's Fiesta Day Parade. About four day's before the parade this was stolen. It had been parked behind the Veterans Building.

Our Solano County Sherrif's Dept. managed to find a replacement..so that the WWII Veterans that could not walk in the parade would still be able to participate.

The stolen vehicle has never been found. God bless our Sherrif's Dept. and may the jerks that stole the vehicle have nothing but bad luck.

Absolutely LoveItaly! Today is the 62nd Anniversary of D-Day!

And on the anniversary of D-Day remember the history and numbers of the reality of that sacrifice. Not just how it appears in rah-rah hindsight. It was a 12,000 fatality number in just a few hours, plus many, many more thousands in the next days. And tens of thousands were disabled for life. And the outlook was just more and more of the like coming for unlimited future battles over the rest of the continent.

Pretty dire. And yet the media and home base, except for a very few, were supportive and POSITIVE in outlook. Negativity wasn't considered an option of useful and necessary dissent, but was considered objectionable within itself. STRONGLY objectionable.

I want to thank the Veterans of that war- but also and even more, those of the most strongly forgotten group of Veterans, those of Korea and VietNam.

And especially to a wonderful red haired man who was my best friend and died in a tunnel in VietNam. I know he is with me now in another kind of tunnel.

The posting I've attached seems to have gotten lost in the wilds of "Fodoria" - and it deserves better than that. It's about veterans.
((S))((*))

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34759555