I guess I gotta crank out another post

which would be pretty good if I was getting paid for this but I am not. It is strictly a labor of love and I do it because something inside me tells me to. I do not know what it is but I do so I do it.

A few years back I was bored at my sister's house on a visit over some kind of holiday season. I actually forgot the event but there I was.

Actually it was pretty good having time on my hands as I wanted to research a relative that was KIA at Iwo Jima in 1945. I was lucky in that I was able to find three guys that knew him.

The relative was one of those young men of the period that ran down to the Marine recruiters to help get even with the dirty Japs right after Pearl Harbor and is pretty much a classic study of a youngster that was put into a position of responsibility beyond his years because it was wartime.

He did well at Parris Island and got held over and trained to be a drill instructor upon graduation. He was promoted to corporal and eventually sergeant. He likely could have stayed there for the entire war. Instead he put in for overseas service and was sent to the 4th MarDiv and battled the Japanese ant Roi-Namur, Saipan and Iwo Jima where he was killed.

Roi-Namur was sort of a relative cake walk, casualties were light (by Pacific standards) and he got through that one OK, but he got hit on the beach at Saipan pretty hard but recovered in time to hit Iwo Jima where he was killed.

I did get to swap emails with a couple of guys that knew him and of the three there is one of the old guys that swears that it was my relative, Jack, that kept him alive. This man was a replacement that joined the unit after Saipan. He told me that Jack wanted to use hie GI bill and be a math teacher when the war was over.

I eventually drove for a day to meet one of the guys that served with Jack and it was pretty neat. The man survived Saipan intact and was instantly sent over to help take Tinian where the Enola Gay took off from to bomb Hiroshima.

I had tossed an M-1 in the back of my pickup and when we met at his house I mentioned it and his face lit up. He hadn't seen one since 1945 and wondered if he still knew how to field strip it.

I hauled it in and it took him about ten seconds to strip it down and put it back together. I also noticed that when he closed the action he instinctively knew to put the heel of his hand against the op rod handle to keep from getting M-1 thumb.

We spent a couple of hours talking about my relative and I learned he was another patriotic kid of the time. He enlisted after Pearl Harbor, showed aptitude and was promoted well before his years. There were a lot of them during WW2.

He was a well liked squad leader in the 4th MarDiv and did what was expected until a Japanese machine gunner killed him along with the platoon sergeant. 

Anyway I digress. Back to my sister's house. When I sort of burned out on chasing all over the internet for information on Jack my sister walked over to my computer, sat down and set up this very blog page which I immediately reset the background to pink for reasons I have since posted.

"Here. This ought to keep you busy a while," she said. "Besides, I need the car and the liquor store is too far to walk." 

If you go back to the first post or two you will remember that my niece was there babysitting a bunch of little kids. I fiendishly gave each of the little yard apes a cold Coca Cola and two sugar donuts and hitched a ride to the liquor store.

I returned, had a snort and sat down to watch the masterpiece of squalling, sugared up three and four year-olds I had created.

This blog has and has actually helped me to keep my sanity because I get to rant and rave here, be creative and pretty much do what I want. The time I spend behind the keyboard is my time and it's good to spend some time each day doing something that gives me a place to vent or be mildly creative.

Right now I am behind for the first time in about a years or more because I am in a place where there isn't any internet service. Still, I will post these little items as soon as I get back to the world of the internet.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html