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By Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt
Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one bedroom house made of plaster & stone.
I had come down the chimney, with presents to give,
And to see just who in this home did live.
As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land.
With medals and badges, awards of all kind,
A sobering thought soon came to my mind.
For this house was different, unlike any I'd seen,
This was the home of a U.S. Marine.
I'd heard stories about them, I had to see more,
So I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.
And there he lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up on the floor in his one-bedroom home.
He seemed so gentle, his face so serene,
Not how I pictured a U.S. Marine.
Was this the hero, of whom I'd just read,
Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?
His head was clean-shaven, his weathered face tan,
I soon understood, this was more than a man.
For I realized the families that I saw that night,
Owed their lives to these men, who were willing to
fight.
Soon around the Nation, the children would play,
And grown-ups would celebrate on a bright Christmas day.
They all enjoyed freedom, each month and all year,
Because of Marines like this one lying here.
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I couldn't help wonder how many lay alone,
On a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home.
Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees and I started to cry.
He must have awoken, for I heard a rough voice,
"Santa, don't cry, this life is my choice.
I fight for freedom, I don't ask for more,
My life is my God, my country, my Corps."
With that he rolled over, drifted off into sleep,
I couldn't control it, I continued to weep.
I watched him for hours, so silent and still,
I noticed he shivered from the cold night's chill.
So I took off my jacket, the one made of red,
And covered this Marine from his toes to his head.
Then I put on his T-shirt of scarlet and gold,
With eagle, globe and anchor emblazoned so bold.
Although it barely fit me, I began to swell with pride,
And for one shining moment, I was Marine Corps deep
inside.
I didn't want to leave him so quiet in the night,
This guardian of honor so willing to fight.
But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and
pure,
Said "Carry on, Santa, it's Christmas Day, all's
secure."
One look at my watch and I knew he was right,
Merry Christmas, my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight.
James M. Schmidt wrote this poem back in 1986 while a
Lance Corporal stationed in Washington, D.C.,
serving as Battalion Counter Sniper at the Marine
Barracks 8th & I under Commandant P.X. Kelly and
Battalion Commander D.J. Myers [in
1986].
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by Ralph
Kenney Bennett
Tomorrow they will lay the remains of Glenn Rojohn to rest in
the Peace Lutheran Cemetery in the little town of Greenock, PA ,
just southeast of Pittsburgh . He was 81, and had been in the
air conditioning and plumbing business in nearby McKeesport .
If you had seen him on the street he would probably have looked
to you like so many other graying, bespectacled old World War II
veterans whose names appear so often now on obituary pages.
But like so
many of them, though, he seldom talked about it. He could have
told you one hell of a story. He won the Air Medal, the
Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart, all in one fell
swoop in the skies over Germany on December 31, 1944. Fell
swoop indeed.
Capt. Glenn Rojohn of the 8th Air Force's 100th Bomb Group was
flying his B-17G Flying Fortress bomber on a raid over Hamburg.
His formation had braved heavy flak to drop their bombs, then
turned 180 degrees to head out over the North Sea They had
finally turned northwest, heading back to England, when they
were jumped by German fighters at 22,000 feet. The
Messerschmitt Me-109s pressed their attack so closely that Capt.
Rojohn could see the faces of the German pilots. He and other
pilots fought to remain in formation so they could use each
other's guns to defend the group.
Rojohn saw a B-17 ahead of him burst into flames and slide
sickeningly toward the earth. He gunned his ship forward to
fill in the gap. He felt a huge impact. The big bomber
shuddered, felt suddenly very heavy and began losing altitude.
Rojohn grasped almost immediately that he had collided with
another plane. A B-17 below him, piloted by Lt. William G.
McNab, had slammed the top of its fuselage into the bottom of
Rojohn's. The top turret gun of McNab's plane was now locked in
the belly of Rojohn's plane and the ball turret in the belly of
Rojohn's had smashed through the top of McNab's. The two
bombers were almost perfectly aligned -- the tail of the lower
plane was slightly to the left of Rojohn's tail section. They
were stuck together, as a crewman later recalled, 'like mating
dragon flies.'
Three of the engines on the bottom plane were still running, as
were all four of Rojohn's. The fourth engine on the lower
bomber was on fire and the flames were spreading to the rest of
the aircraft. The two were losing altitude quickly. Rojohn
tried several times to gun his engines and break free of the
other plane. The two were inextricably locked together.
Fearing a fire, Rojohn cut his engines and rang the bailout
bell. For his crew to have any chance of parachuting, he had to
keep the plane under control somehow...
The ball turret, hanging below the belly of the B-17, was
considered by many to be a death trap -- the worst station on
the bomber. In this case, both ball turrets figured in a swift
and terrible drama of life and death. Staff Sgt. Edward L.
Woodall, Jr., in the ball turret of the lower bomber had felt
the impact of the collision above him and saw shards of metal
drop past him. Worse, he realized both electrical and hydraulic
power was gone.
Remembering escape drills, he grabbed the hand crank, released
the clutch and cranked the turret and its guns until they were
straight down, then turned and climbed out the back of the
turret up into the fuselage. Once inside the plane's belly
Woodall saw a chilling sight, the ball turret of the other
bomber protruding through the top of the fuselage. In that
turret, hopelessly trapped, was Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo.
Several crew members of Rojohn's plane tried frantically to
crank Russo's turret around so he could escape, but, jammed into
the fuselage of the lower plane, it refused to budge. Perhaps
unaware that his voice was going out over the intercom of his
plane, Sgt. Russo began reciting his Hail Marys.
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Up in the
cockpit, Capt. Rojohn and his co-pilot, 2nd Lt. William G. Leek,
Jr., had propped their feet against the instrument panel so they
could pull back on their controls with all their strength,
trying to prevent their plane from going into a spinning dive
that would prevent the crew from jumping out. Capt. Rojohn
motioned left and the two managed to wheel the huge,
collision-born hybrid of a plane back toward the German coast.
Leek felt like he was intruding on Sgt. Russo as his prayers
crackled over the radio, so he pulled off his flying helmet with
its earphones.
Rojohn, immediately grasping that the crew could not exit from
the bottom of his plane, ordered his top turret gunner and his
radio operator, Tech Sgts. Orville Elkin and Edward G. Neuhaus,
to make their way to the back of the fuselage and out the waist
door on the left behind the wing. Then he got his navigator,
2nd Lt. Robert Washington, and his bombardier, Sgt. James
Shirley, to follow them. As Rojohn and Leek somehow held the
plane steady, these four men, as well as waist gunner, Sgt. Roy
Little, and tail gunner, Staff Sgt. Francis Chase, were able to
bail out.
Now the plane locked below them was aflame. Fire poured over
Rojohn's left wing. He could feel the heat from the plane below
and hear the sound of 50 cal. machine gun ammunition 'cooking
off' in the flames. Capt. Rojohn ordered Lt. Leek to bail out.
Leek knew that without him helping keep the controls back, the
plane would drop in a flaming spiral and the centrifugal force
would prevent Rojohn from bailing. He refused the order.
Meanwhile, German soldiers and civilians on the ground that
afternoon looked up in wonder. Some of them thought they were
seeing a new Allied secret weapon -- a strange eight-engined
double bomber. But anti-aircraft gunners on the North Sea
coastal island of Wangerooge had seen the collision. A German
battery captain wrote in his logbook at 12:47 p.m.:
'Two fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes
flew hooked together and flew 20 miles south. The two planes
were unable to fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I
stopped the firing at these two planes.'
Suspended in his parachute in the cold December sky, Bob
Washington watched with deadly fascination as the mated bombers,
trailing black smoke, fell to earth about three miles away,
their downward trip ending in an ugly boiling blossom of fire.
In the cockpit
Rojohn and Leek held grimly to the controls trying to ride a
falling rock. Leek tersely recalled, 'The ground came up faster
and faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one last
effort and slammed into the ground.' The McNab plane on the
bottom exploded, vaulting the other B-17 upward and forward. It
slammed back to the ground, sliding along until its left wing
slammed through a wooden building and the smoldering mess came
to a stop. Rojohn and Leek were still seated in their cockpit.
The nose of the plane was relatively intact, but everything
from the B-17 massive wings back was destroyed. They looked at
each other incredulously. Neither was badly injured.
Movies have
nothing on reality. Still perhaps in shock, Leek crawled out
through a huge hole behind the cockpit, felt for the familiar
pack in his uniform pocket pulled out a cigarette. He placed it
in his mouth and was about to light it. Then he noticed a young
German soldier pointing a rifle at him. The soldier looked
scared and annoyed. He grabbed the cigarette out of Leak's
mouth and pointed down to the gasoline pouring out over the wing
from a ruptured fuel tank.
Two of the six men who parachuted from Rojohn's plane did not
survive the jump. But the other four and, amazingly, four men
from the other bomber, including ball turret gunner Woodall,
survived. All were taken prisoner. Several of them were
interrogated at length by the Germans until they were satisfied
that what had crashed was not a new American secret weapon .
Rojohn, typically, didn't talk much about his Distinguished
Flying Cross... Of Leek, he said, 'in all fairness to my
co-pilot, he's the reason I'm alive today.'
Like so many veterans, Rojohn got unsentimentally back to life
after the war, marrying and raising a son and daughter. For
many years, though, he tried to link back up with Leek, going
through government records to try to track him down. It took
him 40 years, but in 1986, he found the number of Leeks' mother,
in Washington State . Yes, her son Bill was visiting from
California. Would Rojohn like to speak with him? Some things
are better left unsaid. One can imagine that first conversation
between the two men who had shared that wild ride in the cockpit
of a B-17. A year later, the two were re-united at a reunion of
the 100th Bomb Group in Long Beach, Calif. Bill Leek died the
following year..
Glenn Rojohn was the last survivor of the remarkable piggyback
flight. He was like thousands upon thousands of men, soda jerks
and lumberjacks, teachers and dentists, students and lawyers and
service station attendants and store clerks and farm boys, who
in the prime of their lives went to war.
He died last Saturday after a long siege of sickness. But he
apparently faced that final battle with the same grim aplomb he
displayed on that remarkable day over Germany so long ago.
Let us be
thankful for such men.
( written
in 2003)
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From: Cheers --- Czar Peter
When a Veteran leaves the 'job' and goes on to another life of work,
many are jealous, some are pleased, and others, who may have already
retired, wonder if he knows what he is leaving behind, because we
already know.
1. We know, for example, that after all of the camaraderie that few
experience, it will remain as a longing for those past times.
2.
We know in the Military life there is a fellowship which lasts long
after the uniforms are hung up in the back of the closet.
3.
We know even if he throws his uniforms away, they will be on him with
every step and breath that remains in his life. We also know how the
very bearing of the man speaks of what he was and in his heart still is.
These are the burdens of the job. You will still look at people
suspiciously, still see what others do not see or choose to ignore and
always will look at the rest of the Military world with a respect for
what they do; only grown in a lifetime of knowing.
Never think for one moment you are escaping from that life. You are only
escaping the 'job' and merely being allowed to leave 'active' duty.
So what I wish for you is that whenever you ease into retirement, in
your heart you never forget for one moment that you are still a member
of the greatest fraternity the world has ever known.
NOW! Civilian Friends vs. Veteran Friends Comparisons
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Get upset if you're too busy to talk to them for a week.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry on the same
conversation you were having the last time you met.
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Have never seen you cry.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Have cried with you.
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CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Know a few things about you.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Could write a book with direct quotes from you.
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Will stand by you no matter what the crowd does.
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Are for a while.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Are for life.
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Have shared a few experiences...
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Have shared a lifetime of experiences no citizen could ever dream of...
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Will take your drink away when they think you've had enough.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say, 'You better drink
the rest of that before you spill it!' Then carry you home safely and
put you to bed...
CIVILIAN FRIENDS:
Will ignore this.
VETERAN FRIENDS:
Will forward this.
A veteran - whether active duty, retired, served one hitch, or reserve -
is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made
payable to
'The Government of the United States of America '
for an amount of
'up to and including my life'.
From one Veteran to another, it's an honor to be in your company.
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