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American Legion News
The Ray and Virginia Boyer Post 166: EAT EAT EAT… Saturday Pancake Breakfast. We will continue the pancake breakfast at the Legion Hall through the spring. The breakfast is a social occasion as well as a family meal. We ask that people make an offering to cover the cost of the pancake batter, sausages and drinks. We never want the concern for money to keep anyone away. Watch for the sign in front of the hall to see if the breakfast will be superceded by another event. We want to thank all the people who get up early on a Saturday morning to make the Pancake Breakfast each week. SPRING FISH FRY will be April 17 from 5:00 – 8:00. The tickets will be only $7 advanced sale and $8 for adults at the door. For children from 5-12 $5 and for children from 5-12, and children under 5 eat free. Meals will be delivered to those who cannot attend. AMERICAN LEGION BIRTHDAY DINNER Thanks to all those who attended the birthday dinner Sunday, March 15. SONS OF THE AMERICAN LEGION, For more information about SAL and membership contact the American Legion Hall. BOYS STATE We are getting vclose to the deadline for representatives to The Boy’s State. It is open to high school Juniors who will be a Senior in the 2009 – 2010 school year. Any one interested in attending Boys State nest year can contact the Legion at our mailing address: PO Box 116, Shellsburg, IA 52332 prior to April 30. SCHOLARSHIP RAFFLE TICKETS are still available. See any legionnaire for raffle tickets. Proceeds from these tickets is used for the scholarship fund. There will be 30 $15 winners selected each month state wide. You have over 5000 chances to win. REMINDER… the Legion Hall is here for your celebrations and gatherings. Rental of the Hall for 4 hours or less can be negotiated. Contact Martha Travis at 436-2217 for details. MONTHLY MEETINGS… All veterans are welcome to attend the Post 166 monthly meeting. You do not need to be a member of the American Legion. The meetings are held the first Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Ray and Virginia Boyer Legion Hall on Main Street, Shellsburg. We also welcome all Legionnaire regardless of post. Sick Call: If you know any veteran who is sick please let me know as soon as possible at 436 2538. It is not necessary they be a member of the American Legion. Quote for the month: “Try to make your landings equal to your take-offs” Heroes of the Month: With Spring and the newness of another start, I want to remember a special group of people. These are the nurses and donut girls that we had in Vietnam. Being far from home and often in a cloud of rains that soaked us to the bone (if not further) these women were our heroes of the day. I want to reflect on these women who made a difference for so many. I was a 20 year old kid who was a stupid and careless as many young kids. Climbing poles was exciting and often we would add to the excitement by “gaffing out”. This is where we would bring our knees in a little and then slide down the pole allowing our gaffs (metal spikes attached to our boots) to just slide the pole. To stop we would just move our knees out and the gaff would catch and stop us. Or that is what was supposed to happen. I was working on a pole and the transformer caught fire. I had to go up and cut the power and get down. So I went the fastest way down I knew. I gaffed out. This day it didn’t catch and I slide and fell about 30 feet. I was not badly hurt but I was taken to a hospital there for creosote burns on my legs and a sore ankle where it caught on the way down. There I met the “heroes” of Tan Sun Nhut. The women would bring donuts and magazines around and visit the GIs in the hospital. Unlike many of us who enlisted to avoid the draft or were drafted to come, they didn’t have to be there. They had volunteered to come to do what they could to support all the troops in Vietnam. They were like a ray of sunshine in a gray sky. Many of the nurses I talked to also had volunteered to come there. There was a real shortage of nurses and aid workers. Many of these girls were barely in their 20’s and were such strengths for the wounded I saw in the hospital. I didn’t stay long in Vietnam but over the years I often thought of these women who left home to come to Vietnam to support the military stationed there. These women were examples of what makes America great. How can we ever fear as long as we have people who put our country and others first? These were my heroes of my stay in Vietnam. March SPRING FISH FRY will be April 17 from 5:00 – 8:00. The tickets will be only $7 advanced sale and $8 for adults at the door. For children from 5-12 $5 and for children from 5-12, and children under 5 eat free. Meals will be delivered to those who cannot attend. AMERICAN LEGION BIRTHDAY DINNER will be Sunday, March 15 at 5:30pm SONS OF THE AMERICAN LEGION, At the February meeting we had a flag presentation to the SAL Chapter. The Son of the American Legion was created in 1932 as an organization within The American Legion. The S.A.L. is made up of boys and men of all ages whose parents or grandparents served in the United States military and became eligible for membership in The American Legion. Together, members of The American Legion, The American Legion Auxiliary, and the Sons of The American Legion make up what is known as The Legion Family. Among others things, the SAL sponsors and supports a coalition formed to secure flag protection legislation through an amendment to the Constitution. For more information about SAL and membership contact the American Legion Hall. BOYS STATE The Representative to Boy’s State should be a high school Junior who will be a Senior in the 2009 – 2010 school year. Any one interested in attending Boys State nest year can contact the Legion at our mailing address: PO Box 116, Shellsburg, IA 52332. SCHOLARSHIP RAFFLE TICKETS are still available. See any legionnaire for raffle tickets. Proceeds from these tickets is used for the scholarship fund. There will be 30 $15 winners selected each month state wide. You have over 5000 chances to win. REMINDER… the Legion Hall is here for your celebrations and gatherings. Rental of the Hall for 4 hours or less can be negotiated. Contact Martha Travis at 436-2217 for details. MONTHLY MEETINGS… All veterans are welcome to attend the Post 166 monthly meeting. You do not need to be a member of the American Legion. The meetings are held the first Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Ray and Virginia Boyer Legion Hall on Main Street, Shellsburg. We also welcome all Legionnaire regardless of post. Sick Call: If you know any veteran who is sick please let me know as soon as possible at 436 2538. It is not necessary they be a member of the American Legion. Quote for the month: “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” -Bob Dylan- Heroes of the Month: As some of you may know I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and used to ride my bike through Ft Myers & Arlington Cemetery since I have relatives buried there. One of the landmarks that I enjoyed was the Iwo Jima Memorial in this area. This month I would like to relay a story about the real “heroes” of Iwo Jima, and of all wars, as relayed by the son of one of the six on the statue. A group of high school seniors from Wisconsin were on a trip to Washington, D.C, and on the last night of their trip they went to the Statue of the flag raising at Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima sometimes called the US Marine Corps Memorial. They ran into a man who came to the memorial to say good night to his father. Here is what he is reported to have said that evening: “My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin . My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers' which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me. Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it. You see this next guy? (He pointed to the statue) That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph... a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima Boys. Not old men. The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the 'old man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country.' He knew he was talking to little boys.. Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.' The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one who walked off Iwo Jima . He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero.' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?' So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken). The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.' Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away. The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin , where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or even went to Canada . Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell 's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press. You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died in Iwo Jima , they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain. When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back. So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima , and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.”
I once asked my uncle, who had been at Iwo Jima as a Navy Corpsman, about something very strange. If you look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God. General Sherman tells us that "War is Hell". Let us never forget that many have walked into the gates of Hell and it was the hand of God that led them out. February
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