Love of Country

Love of Country -->Written by Nancy SalvatoMonday, April 03, 2006
Twice in the last couple of months I’ve had the privilege of listening to two World War II veterans speak of their experiences in the war. The first, Michael Kuryla, Jr. spoke about his struggle to survive after the U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk on the ship’s return from delivering a secret cargo, intended to save lives and shorten the war. He and the other men abandoning ship spent five days in the water before their eventual rescue. Their experience was immortalized in the movie “Jaws” when captain Quint recalled,

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.1

At the end of his presentation, Mr. Kuryla’s wife, perhaps best known as “Grambo” during her enlistment in the armed forces, reminded the 8th grade students at Darien, Illinois’ Cass Junior High School, freedom is not free and that they should consider thanking a soldier for serving our country.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/nqzfq ChronWatch

My bold and red highlight on the last paragraph of the excerpt.

Many are the people who put down self sacrifice for flag and nation and those people have a hollow place inside them that nothing can fill. They are filled with hatred and jealousy that those of us who have that hollow place filled with love of flag and nation know something they can never know.

As as aside men never think of flag or nation when the battle plan has went to pieces and the fog of war has closed in. Men think of not letting their buddies down in time of need and the man you had a fistfight with on your last leave you willingly fight to save his life and will give up your life in an attempt to save his.

Hoo Rah!