Picture of the day

FannyBayR1 said:
A great shot of one of our 442 Sqn Cormorants carrying out a night rescue of an injured hiker on Mnt Rexton near the Chilliwack/US border this past Aug.


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And now we know where reports of UFO sightings come from.
 
purple said:
Blowing up a KO'd/immobile enemy tank was a standard practice to preclude them recovering and repairing it. The picture of the Sherman "crock" park shows what my late uncle and another neighbour did during the war in Europe. The neighbour was involved in recovering KO'd tanks to a secure area for repair. My uncle was a tank fitter who was assigned to a Corps level workshop where they would salvage various AFVs and return them to service, often swapping a good turret from an unusable hull to a good hull with a wrecked turret and the like. Recovery was often pretty dicey because of enemy in the vicinity and the repair operation could be pretty trying as they frequently had to clean human remains from a tank and re-paint the interiors.

My uncle was involved in the hasty conversion of SP guns to APCs for use in operation Totalize in Normandy. It was a round the clock operation with vehicles being overhauled, guns removed and armor plate and sheet steel welded over the gun apertures.
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Jesus, the things we ask people to do.

Every year on Remembrance Day, I spend some time thinking about the men and women who lived through the war but who had to see and do things we should never have to see or do. The thought of "step one" of a job being "find and document the human remains" gives me significant pause. I can't imagine spending 14+ hours a day wiping up bits of person form the inside of the tank where they burned to death/lost a limb/lost a head/bled out...

Thank a Veteran. As a nation, we've asked them to do stuff I don't think I could do. That saved me from having to do it. Maybe it saved my boy from having to do it. But they paid bills so I didn't have to. For that, I am enormously thankful.
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Jesus, the things we ask people to do.

Every year on Remembrance Day, I spend some time thinking about the men and women who lived through the war but who had to see and do things we should never have to see or do. The thought of "step one" of a job being "find and document the human remains" gives me significant pause. I can't imagine spending 14+ hours a day wiping up bits of person form the inside of the tank where they burned to death/lost a limb/lost a head/bled out...

Thank a Veteran. As a nation, we've asked them to do stuff I don't think I could do. That saved me from having to do it. Maybe it saved my boy from having to do it. But they paid bills so I didn't have to. For that, I am enormously thankful.
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Amen.
 
One of my Great Uncles was a small man, not suitable for combat. They placed him in a hospital working as an orderly. I guess he came back a mental wreck after witnessing all the carnage of ruined men.

Auggie D.
 
bush1 said:
I still have the Medicine Man patch as I was an AE Tech on the Voodoo in the late 60's. The pilots had "One O Wonder" and the weapons officer / navigator had "Scope Wizard" on their patch. The backseater was commonly called a GIB which was slang for guy in back. The stick in the back seat controlled the radar and missile aiming and not the aircraft.
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I watched a Comox based Voodoo blow up over Texada Island in the 80's. Both crew punched out and the flaming wreck hit the end of the Island.
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
Jesus, the things we ask people to do.

Every year on Remembrance Day, I spend some time thinking about the men and women who lived through the war but who had to see and do things we should never have to see or do. The thought of "step one" of a job being "find and document the human remains" gives me significant pause. I can't imagine spending 14+ hours a day wiping up bits of person form the inside of the tank where they burned to death/lost a limb/lost a head/bled out...

Thank a Veteran. As a nation, we've asked them to do stuff I don't think I could do. That saved me from having to do it. Maybe it saved my boy from having to do it. But they paid bills so I didn't have to. For that, I am enormously thankful.
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I was unfortunate enough to spend time in the LAV/Coyote/M113 boneyard in KAF in 2008/2009. I'll never forget the remains of a K kill vehicle. They could never fully be cleaned of the smell.
 
Auggie Doggie said:
One of my Great Uncles was a small man, not suitable for combat. They placed him in a hospital working as an orderly. I guess he came back a mental wreck after witnessing all the carnage of ruined men.

Auggie D.
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I passed up a decent/comfy job in hospital maintenance because I hate visiting hospitals. I have a lot of respect for folks that work in those facilities and can't even imagine what goes on inside their heads. I know of more than one nurse that worked herself into a breakdown because she couldn't turn down all the OT only for the fact that people "needed" her. It happens in other service jobs as well regularly but we just don't see or hear about it.
 
Auggie Doggie said:
One of my Great Uncles was a small man, not suitable for combat. They placed him in a hospital working as an orderly. I guess he came back a mental wreck after witnessing all the carnage of ruined men.

Auggie D.
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I've mentioned it before, but my grandfather was a welder before the war. He signed up as soon as the war broke out, and ended up in the RCAF... He spent the war in North Ontario getting shuffled between the various training bases up there, fixing planes and working on crash crews - cutting the kids (or what was left of them) out of the planes when they failed their solo flight tests. Training was so rudimentary, that for a time, more airmen were dying in training than overseas.

5 years service through the war, and another couple after. To think that he never left Canada, but still witness more death than any one person should be expected to.
 
At that time my dad, who was a civilian highly-skilled welder, was operating with a team responsible for the repair of those tanks, mostly Canadian as it happened, that could be returned to combat fitness. He was operating a system with the code-name 'starlight', which used an ordinary oxy-acetylene gas-torch set with an additional device. This was a clockwork tape/wire feeder that pushed the material into the flame, where it was atomised and gradually built up the hole left by the passing German shot. The process was improved after the war and used to build up worn-down crankshafts/camshafts/[pistons and so on.

Still in use, I'm told.

tac
 
R. Lee Ermey has made a sizable pile of dollars (12M of them apparently) working his shtick. While I respect his service, and can't begrudge a fellow from making some money with what he has, I can't help but get tired of seeing his puss on ads for Medeco locks, TruSpec fatigues, Glock, WD40, Geico, Victory motorcycles, plus his own TV show, the back cover of the current edition of Surplus Firearms, that book he wrote...

Dude's flirting with overexposure. And the shouty, uber-tough USMC DI thing gets very old, very fast.

Great looking kid when he was young, though. Coulda been a model.
 
Dark Alley Dan said:
R. Lee Ermey has made a sizable pile of dollars (12M of them apparently) working his shtick. While I respect his service, and can't begrudge a fellow from making some money with what he has, I can't help but get tired of seeing his puss on ads for Medeco locks, TruSpec fatigues, Glock, WD40, Geico, Victory motorcycles, plus his own TV show, the back cover of the current edition of Surplus Firearms, that book he wrote... Dude's flirting with overexposure. And the shouty, uber-tough USMC DI thing gets very old, very fast. Great looking kid when he was young, though. Coulda been a model.
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Sounds like begrudger to me. :p I wouldn't spend much time worrying about how he chooses to spend his golden years. He seems to be enjoying himself, and he's probably earned it.
 
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Yeah, he was amazing in FMJ. Kubrick really made the right choice. Ermey was Goddamned terrifying in that role. You want verite? Here's your feckin' verite.

Folks really seem to lap it up, it's true. But in a world where DJT can be President, we should be unsurprised when a manufactured persona consisting of bluster, ego, and threats is popular. :)
 
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