re: Pictures from days gone by....

Infantry section from the 371st Infantry Division fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad, 1942. The 371st would be annihilated fighting as part of the doomed 6th Army.

French people laying flowers on the corpses of American soldiers after the Battle of Bloody Gulch around the Manoir de Donville, southwest of Carentan in Normandy, France, on June 13, 1944.

American KIA being evacuated from the front. Korea, 1950

U.S. Marines pray over a fallen comrade after he died from wounds suffered in fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, April 8, 2004.

I posted all these as a reminder of what we remember and honor tomorrow. Never forget the great sacrifices made on our behalf so that we can enjoy the bounty of our land.

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View of the beach of Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, after the US invasion in November 1943.

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My dad had a friend who joined the Marines as a private and left as a major. His first stop was Guadalcanal. His last stop was Iwo Jima. He landed on Tarawa too. He told me he thought Tarawa was the worst because the atoll was so skinny, most of the naval bombardment flew over the Japanese positions and did little good.

He said that towards the end of the first day, he became concerned that the Japs would sneak past them in the night and get in a disabled US tank and turn the machine guns on them. He didn't think he could ask his men to do it, so he told them to lay down a covering fire and he ran back to the tank, climbed in, fired the machine guns at the Japs until he ran out of ammo, then climbed out of the tanks and dropped a grenade in to make sure it was disabled.

When I knew him, he was a very active retired pharmacist who had a small farm -- and a great fishing pond. He still wore his Marine-issued .45 on his hip everywhere he went. He's gone now, but he was a great American.

Ukrainian girl, c. 1950s