2018 Memorial Day Apology thread

**wooley12** · 05-25-2018, 02:10 PM

Memorial Day is the day that Americans put aside work to honor those who died in our wars.
A lot of people don't know that.

On Memorial Day 1945, Gen Truscott gave tribute in a ceremony at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery at Nettuno, Italy. Standing in front of 20,000 graves the General turned away from the spectators and addressed his dead soldiers. He said that everyone tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart that is not altogether true. He apologized for any mistake he had made that had cost lives. He said that he wouldn't speak about the glorious dead because he didn't see much glory in getting killed if you were in your late teens or early twenties.

So I'll start by apologizing to Sgt. 1st Class Mihail Golin, KIA 1/1/2018. Sgt Golin enlisted in the US military in 2005, three months after immigrating from Riga, Latvia.

**mud** · 05-25-2018, 02:18 PM

I was with you until the last paragraph.
What's your point?
As Americans we should apologize to new recruits for being part of the war machine?

**Bobby Stainless** · 05-25-2018, 02:28 PM

Meds Wooley. It's time.

**SumJongGuy** · 05-25-2018, 02:40 PM

**wooley12** · 05-25-2018, 02:44 PM

Originally Posted by mud

I was with you until the last paragraph.
What's your point?
As Americans we should apologize to new recruits for being part of the war machine?

Only the dead ones.

**DJSapp** · 05-25-2018, 02:44 PM

Wooley: was Sgt. Golin under your command at some point? Fought alongside the Sgt?

**wooley12** · 05-25-2018, 02:47 PM

If you can walk away good for you. "He knew what he signed up for" sounds presidential. didn't intend for this to be political but so far that is all that has been posted. Here is one of the men being addressed by the general.

Click image for larger version.

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**Diamond Joe** · 05-25-2018, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by flowing alpy

i’m gonna go ski shitty snow. I think part of the drive is on a veterans memorial highway, i’ll faux pause for a moment.

Thats thoughtful

**mcski** · 05-25-2018, 03:04 PM

I'm with ya Wooley.
I certainly don't think someone is a hero just because they serve or even got killed but I assume there are at least a couple folks hear that had people under them killed. What's the story behind yours?

**wooley12** · 05-25-2018, 03:17 PM

Do I have to be personally responsible to feel something? Well that's a load off. Why then the day today? Who do you want to thank for dying and what do you thing they would say? I'm a war historian focused on that time and place. I've always been struck by sincerity of how that general who loved his men honored them.

**mcski** · 05-25-2018, 03:33 PM

Your post implied you lost someone you know/under your command. It was unclear. Carry on w your apology tour

**wooley12** · 05-25-2018, 04:21 PM

No one apologized to the man. I felt someone should. I did. Join me. Or mock me. Choices.

**mud** · 05-25-2018, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by wooley12

No one apologized to the man. I felt someone should. I did. Join me. Or mock me. Choices.

Ok, I didn't understand your relationship with him.

The only memorials I mock and call out are the confederate ones. Living in the south I have to deal with these hayseeds often and I always like to call out their revisionist history bs to their face. [/rant]

**old goat** · 05-25-2018, 08:12 PM

Old men start wars for young men and now young women to die in, in our names. That's not to say there's never a just war, but damn few. So I agree, apologies--not by Americans, by all citizens of the world--are in order.

**Unkajunebug** · 05-26-2018, 05:17 PM

agreed....
https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxne...l-day.amp.html

**SumJongGuy** · 05-26-2018, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by mud

Ok, I didn't understand your relationship with him.

The only memorials I mock and call out are the confederate ones. Living in the south I have to deal with these hayseeds often and I always like to call out their revisionist history bs to their face. [/rant]

This went down about 2 miles from my house. We took the kids to the anti racist rally down there the night before.

**wooley12** · 05-26-2018, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by flowing alpy

i’m gonna go ski shitty snow. I think part of the drive is on a veterans memorial highway, i’ll faux pause for a moment.

It's not Veterans Day. A lot of people don't know that. I'll start a thread for vets when you're removing storage wax.

**skinny_kid** · 05-26-2018, 08:53 PM

Wooley,

Just wanted to say that I appreciate this thread. It’s touching seeing someone remember SFC Golin, someone I knew, on a random ski forum. Hope you have a meaningful and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.

**wooley12** · 05-26-2018, 09:57 PM

And you will have helped make it so. I have to believe that your friend had a chat with my dad's friend, Ranger Kidder, and here we all are connected. The bond is strong.

**Tri-Ungulate** · 05-27-2018, 01:19 AM

I hear ya wooley. Never in the actual service myself (closest I got was a brief very ill-fated stint with ROTC), but have served plenty of vets myself in my career, honored to have done so and Memorializing the ones who are no longer with us this weekend is worthy, if only to raise a Mem Day BBQ beer to 'em. Good on ya, mang.

**old goat** · 05-27-2018, 11:40 AM

We've fought a few wars that were clearly about defending freedom--ours, like the Revolution, the Civil War (although the historians will tell you that those wars were as much about economics as freedom), other people's like WWII--or security, like Afghanistan although it's not clear to me that that one has left us any safer, but most of the wars we have fought were to defend American power and access to resources. So as we honor the dead, let's not glorify the reasons they fought. That's why the Vietnam Memorial is so powerful--because it's honest.

**old goat** · 05-28-2018, 01:33 AM

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”

– William Tecumseh Sherman

**Core Shot** · 05-28-2018, 04:26 AM

Originally Posted by mud

Ok, I didn't understand your relationship with him.

The only memorials I mock and call out are the confederate ones. Living in the south I have to deal with these hayseeds often and I always like to call out their revisionist history bs to their face. [/rant]

Actually, you are living in one of the most revised revisionist periods.
Yes, the whole modern redneckrebel shit is racist.

Thankfully, due to the availability of many historical perspectives on the interwebs I have learned about the great racist Lincoln. And discovered that for many mid 19thcentury Americans the war was in large part about economics, states rights and federalism.

Not enough southerners owned slaves or depended on slavery to make it worth fighting and dying.

**Core Shot** · 05-28-2018, 04:30 AM

Honor the dead today by reading “war is a racket” by smedley butler.

It’s a short book. Full of truths. Written by the highest ranking man in the marine corps, and a national hero before he had enough of the bankers wars.