From Generation To Gereration

I'm in Graceland outside Memphis, Tennessee. Thirty-seven years ago I was at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. undergoing combat engineer training. That was after Elvis had released his hit "Love Me Tender", in 1956, and my buddies were singing it in the barracks.

Today my grandson Ian Hardy is in his 2nd week of combat engineer training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.

In 1944 I, with my mother and two younger brothers were scraping by in a cold basement apartment in Logan, Utah while my father was in the army. One of my uncles was preparing to be in the second wave, as radio operator aboard a half-track, in the invasion of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines on Oct 23. Another uncle was in a rifle company somewhere in France as part of Patton's 3rd Army.

On Feb 28, 1968 my cozen Ray Grant Jenkins was killed in Ba Xugen Province, South Vietnam while racing to his helicopter during a Vietcong rocket attack.

My great-great-great grandfather Thomas Rich fought in the American Revolutionary War.

And so it goes from generation to generation.

In the 1960's there was a movement in this country to change our national anthem to another song claiming that a song about war was inappropriate.

But, it is appropriate because:

There will always be those, in different forms and colors, who will try to take our freedom from us. Every generation will have "bombs bursting in air" and must fight to keep: "out flag is still there".

From my tub to yours–
Carpe Diem,
Carl