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ChrisT

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  1. "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."

  2. One of the last three remaining crewmen of the Enola Gay was just asked by Brian Williams if he felt any remorse said he felt none. 70,000 killed on the spot. cry.gif

  3. Speaking of the economy, more jobs are also headed to Canada. Toyota decided to locate a new plant in Ontario (instead of Alabama) because folks up there are better educated and already come with health benefits.

  4. It seems that the US had to abandon Vietnam 30 years ago because they couldn't keep up with those pesky Viet Cong. Will it take another 10 (15? 20?)years for the fall of Baghdad? We can't even secure the three miles from the US fortress to the airport. rolleyes.gif I don't think we're making any progress at all.

  5. This thread reminds me of the Woody Allen film "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask". There's a segment where Woody's involved with a woman who only gets turned on in public. Pretty funny - vintage Woody Allen.

  6. Might as well accept the fact that Bush will appoint a conservative judge just as Clinton appointed two liberal judges - that's the "legacy" of the sitting president. Kudos to Renquist for hanging in there...hopefully for the next three years. thumbs_up.gif

     

    I like SDO's comments in which she pretty much said Roberts was perfect except "He's not a woman."

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