Hey anthony -


(PS I don't know . . . what's below gets into some rather gory battle stories. If you edited it I would understand . . . I'm not askin' you to 'cause its what I want to say. Somehow it makes me feel better talking in this way. Maybe it's just because I'm totally isolated and I don't have a person to talk to. And I don't feel so lonely. . . . when I write it out. But in case it could set someone off. I also tend to curse . . . my father was a sailor, I was a sailor, my brother was a sailor, so .. .. . If its bothersome I can cut it out although I didn't read 'nothin against it in the rules. I sure feel more eloquent when I curse lol)

Thanks for the reply . . . you always have something knowledgeable and interesting to say it seems. Everyone is so nice here.

I remember a story a friend at church told me. Goes like this.

His dad, 18 yrs old at the time during 1945, was a loader on a 40mm anti-aircraft mount (think it was the British Bofors twin mount) on a US Destroyer at Okinawa or the Philippines (WWII battle in the pacific), but you know that. During the middle of a long Kamikazi attack . . . say an hour into it . . . they just kept coming and coming and coming . . . one of the sailors down in the boiler room started yelling up through a hatch from the boiler room asking them what was going on. Obviously, the guns were not firing at the time. The suicide planes came in waves, eh. But you know that.


So this poor guy down in the boiler room was just scared silly 'cause he couldn't see what was going on. You can imagine hearing all the guns going off, explosions, parts of planes scattering around the deck, but all he could see was a tiny portal of blue sky through the hatch from the boiler room.

Well, finally, and tragically, this fella just broke down into a crying hysterical mess and was taken to the sickbay and later off the ship. Total combat fatigue case.

I read a fact in a history book I'm reading . . . I'm a war history buff. 38 ships sunk on the allied side during the invasion of the Philippines if memory proves correct. Almost 6,000 sailors killed. Usual ratio in ground actions is 2 or 3 wounded for every one killed. So maybe 15,000 sailors wounded.

I remember what a dear friend of mine told me during one of my worst periods when I was homeless and had 20 bucks and an old truck to live in.

He said, Doug, it doesn't have a ****ing thing to do with how much actual danger you are in for ya 'ta get the PTSD. The deal is just how much ****ing danger you think you are in.


He went on to say, the guys in the army say, s*** I'd never want to be on a ship on the water. No place to hide. Can't dig a bloody foxhole on the ocean ya know. Man those sailors got it tough.


Sailors say the opposite. ****ing bloody hell, I'd never want to be in the army. Dirty stinking mess all the time, freezing your arse off or boiling in yer tin hat, eating them k-rations for weeks at a time, flies, snakes, snipers, gotta use a bloody ditch in the jungle for the crapper and ya got the s**** all the time. Man those GI's have it tough.


This friend, quite a tragic figure, he used a lot of drugs and booze to cover ya know . . .
He said the worst memory he had was this time when there were a lot of civilian casualties, civilian dead laying along a road. I don't know . . . 50 or more dead men, women, children all blown up. And the army didn't want to have to report the civilian casualties. So the bloody bastards ordered him and his squad to throw the bodies into the ditch, throw gas on them and burn them up. So that's what they did . . .


The worst part was that when a human body burns up it moves around 'cause the heat shortens the length of the muscles and tendons . . . looks just like they were alive in those flames.


The thing he remembers and has the most guilt about is that it just wasn't fair. It wasn't fare that the families of all these people that got burned up would never know what happened to their family members . . . their father, mother, sister, child, grandfather . . . it just wasn't fair. And he did it. It was his fault. That was the guilt he bore. Just 'cause some bloody ****ing officer didn't want to report civilian casualties.