Lest we forget - Armistice/Remembrance/Veteran's Day 2017

[winchester73]

The "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.



For mitch, the Phantom Phixer, who kept the F4s flying. We remember, always:

"If you are able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

Mike was shot down a few months later, on 24 March 1970.  He was attempting to extract 8 members of MACV-SOG LRRP RT Pennsylvania, 14 miles inside Cambodia in Ratanokiri Province, after they declared a Prairie Fire.  "You take them in - you get them out!" was the creed they lived by.  His last transmission before his Huey burst into flames was "I've got all eight, I'm coming out."

Listed as KIA 7 February 1978 (Presumptive Finding of Death).  Remains repatriated on 12 April 1995.  Identified on 20 June 2001.  Came home to Arlington National Cemetery in a group burial on 16 August 2001.

Panel 12W Line 040  (The original cross was changed to a diamond)



In grateful recognition of Captain Gary Michael Rose, who was finally awarded the Medal of Honor on 23 October 2017 for his service as a Special Forces medic in Operation Tailwind.  Another top secret, covert Hatchet Force mission in Laos ... it recovered a treasure trove of collateral intelligence, the extraction required strikes from 72 aircraft dropping a half-million pounds of bombs, rockets and napalm.

https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/rose/

[Corrine]

For mitch, the Phantom Phixer, who kept the F4s flying.

[GR@PH;<'S]

GR@PH;<'S

[Ghost]

Quote

    For mitch, the Phantom Phixer, who kept the F4s flying.

Miss him greatly! Still get teary eyed thinking of him. Although he is still around, impossible getting in touch with him.
Ghost