As a WW II veteran of five campaigns in France, Belgium and Germany, I have seen much death on the battlefields in Europe — thousands of dead G.I.’s and Germans, as well. It has been determined that our company, the 607th Graves Registration Company, initiated seventeen temporary cemeteries, two of the sites became permanent later after the war. It is estimated that we buried 75,000 soldiers, American and German.

I was just one man of a hundred and twenty five officers and enlisted men of the 607th Graves Registration Company. As a PFC, Private First Class, I and my buddies had the gut wrenching, solemn task of gathering the dead, starting on the Normandy Beach Head at age eighteen, weighing one hundred fifteen pounds… and very immature.

Our company was divided into four platoons, some landing on Omaha Beach on D Day and others on Utah Beach. We gathered the dead every day for eleven months from D-Day until the end of the war in Germany, May 8,1945.

The last cemetery, from which we operated in Eisenach, Germany, was disinterred by us the day after Memorial Day,1945. The war had ended for ALL of us on May 8,1945. For the dead, the true HEROES, it was anti-climatic. I will never forget them! For all too many, the graves bearing Crosses and Stars of David are just THAT. But to me each marker represents a real person, a soldier who gave his life at a young age. A face goes with each Cross or Star of David. A young face.

We had Germans digging the graves to be disinterred, as we re-identified the remains of American soldiers that were transported back to France, Belgium or Holland where they were again buried in temporary cemeteries, as no American soldier would be left in Germany.

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You have seen John Nolte’s countdown of the Top 25 Christmas Movies, but this list is something else – a list of movies worth watching that take place in or around Christmas but aren’t about Christmas itself.  They don’t necessarily embrace the spirit of the season – as to some of them, that’s putting it mildly – but each one is guaranteed to provide you at least a couple of hours blissfully sheltered from the mindless socialist rants of the health care demolition crew, from the lame excuses and transparent equivocations of the climate change scammers, and from Howard Zinn-scripted commie nonsense spouted by ignorant Hollywood nitwits.

Here they go, in no particular order:

10. Die Hard (1988): You’ve seen Die Hard probably a hundred times.  See it again, preferably uncut and not sanitized for TV.  Bruce Willis is a cop trapped alone while the incredible Alan Rickman and his band of fashion plate terrorists grab Nakatomi Plaza during the annual Christmas party.  The plot is simple, but the execution is simply awesome.  This movie is the archetype, the template  for a hundred subsequent movies that were pitched as “Die Hard in a (fill in the blank).”  For more fun, try my Die Hard-themed drinking game – take a pull on a Dos Equis every time something happens that creates or reaffirms a classic action film cliché.  Wisenheimer renegade cop who play by his own rules – gulp!  Lots of MP-5s and other (then) hi-tech armaments that fire a ton of rounds but rarely hit anything – gulp!  Villain who rises from the dead to be killed one last time – gulp!  You may want a designate a driver – cue Argyle, the streetwise sidekick in the limo (gulp)!   (more…)

Lest we forget, we are at war. 

Men and women at this very moment are fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they took an oath to protect and defend. 

There have been some recent films about war and what it means for the “average Joe” to be at war. A few of these are receiving deserving accolades for their realism. No, not the realism of blood and guts spilled, which is what war is, of course, but the realism of human behavior in adverse conditions, or as Hemingway put it, grace under pressure. This is the human condition that we all face, in one form or another, each and every day of our lives. Of course, most of us can face our pressures, make our decisions, get through our daily angst without wondering if a shell is going to go off five feet away, having the vehicle we’re riding in targeted for destruction or being exposed to combinations of chemicals not even named yet. No, we don’t have that extra worry. But some out there do.  (more…)