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| Former Navy pilot and now peacenik Bob Dale from Brunswick, Maine |
By Bob Dale
Times Record (Brunswick, Maine)
April Fool’s day this year, a snowy,
icy one, found me soothed by the warmth of our wood stove, so it took something
extreme to get me to leave its comfort. That something was the realization that
the President’s recent budget request to Congress was for $54,000,000,000 MORE
for the US military at a time when we outspend the next five major countries
combined for our defense! Today, when over half of our tax dollars, yours and
mine, go toward military expenditures, I’m learning that some social programs
such as Meals On Wheels are in jeopardy. This has to be too much overkill.
There’s something wrong here, and it’s personal. I’ve had friends who were
dependent on Meals On Wheels. Even my own handicapped grandson’s assistance has
been cut!
As members of Veteran’s for Peace and PeaceWorks my wife and I have marched and stood vigils for years. Each Friday she also distributes boxes of food for families who can’t afford decent meals and her daughter volunteers weekly at a homeless shelter. We donate to organizations trying to address some of the weaknesses in our social systems. Still there’s this feeling of impotence --- that “finger in the dike” feeling. What else can a couple of old fogies do?
These thoughts eased me up grudgingly from the couch to join about 35 others once again protesting the christening yet another killing machine, the USS Thomas Hudner, at BIW. I didn’t know LTJG Hudner personally but I knew of him. He was about three years behind my graduating class when we won our gold wings at Pensacola. As naval aviators flying the same carrier-based fighter aircraft, the Corsair, we were brothers in a rather small fraternity. Hudner was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for making a forced landing to rescue a fellow pilot, alive but trapped in his burning plane. Ensign Jesse Leroy Brown, the US Navy’s first black aviator, had been shot down behind enemy lines near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea during the infamous retreat by US Forces from Chinese troops who had crossed the Yalu River to reinforce the North Koreans in the winter of ‘50-’51. Hudner was unsuccessful and was airlifted out by helicopter. This tale, “The Flight of Jesse Leroy Brown”, is on my bookshelf.
Two and a half years after this incident, a truce on the Korean Peninsula having just been signed, I was flying an AJ-1 Savage from various aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. The Savage, a three-engine (single jet) heavy attack aircraft was being introduced as the U.S.Navy’s first capability to deliver an atomic bomb from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Years earlier, in December ‘45, I had seen and even smelled the ashes of Tokyo, the result of U.S.firebombing, and later, the rubble of Manila. From training films I had been thoroughly briefed on the devastation an atomic bomb could wreak and I learned how to deliver it.
President Eisenhower had hinted at the possibility of an atomic attack to bring China and North and South Korea to the negotiating table with the U.S. By the end of July ‘53 an armistice was signed and all parties agreed to observe a line separating North and South Korea. (It is still being respected but is in extreme jeopardy at this moment.)
In that same year I was a Savage aircraft commander assigned a target in China, should the Chinese or North Koreans breach the demilitarized zone across the peninsula at the 38th parallel. My assigned target was the airfield on the outskirts of Canton (now Guongzhou), the third most populous city in China, numbering in the millions even then. My offset-aim point was an island in the Pearl River, which flows through the city. My crew and I practiced simulated deliveries and drops as did other aircrews on other Chinese targets. Had it been ordered we would have delivered. I was 29 years old.
Years later, after I grew up, I began to question what I had been involved in. Even later, as a civilian, realizing the horror that could have happened, I made a pilgrimage to that very airport in Guongzhou to find peace. Then I came home and sought out Veterans for Peace and PeaceWorks.
Time will tell if this simple, nonthreatening gesture will have a positive effect. We certainly hope to see BIW employees remain gainfully employed. They have the skills to create a more peaceful world, one in which we all can thrive.
Our purpose, or at least my purpose, is to call attention to the extreme cost to each of us to maintain this Military-Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned us about 65 years ago. Shouldn’t we divert some of our war-fighting tax dollars to solving some of the social problems sapping our strength before we become weakened from within? We could even increase employment while at the same time lifting up some of those in need, by diverting some of our energy to peaceful purposes such as creating commuter rail right to BIW, thus easing highway congestion with its consequent pollution. Imagine, for example an electric (solar?) commuter line from Portland to Rockland, stopping right at BIW and there connecting to a spur to L/A. No more piling into buses! No more traffic! BIW employees could construct the trains. We could become less dependent on oil or coal while cleaning up our act.
Let’s hope we make the right choices when we send the government our dollars.
P.S. Bath can be proud of its police force. We protesters were treated with respect, except when my walking sticks were seized. I hope these ideas will help some of your officers understand why we had to interrupt their day.
Bob Dale is a member of PeaceWorks and Veterans For Peace. He lives in Brunswick and is 92 years old.
As members of Veteran’s for Peace and PeaceWorks my wife and I have marched and stood vigils for years. Each Friday she also distributes boxes of food for families who can’t afford decent meals and her daughter volunteers weekly at a homeless shelter. We donate to organizations trying to address some of the weaknesses in our social systems. Still there’s this feeling of impotence --- that “finger in the dike” feeling. What else can a couple of old fogies do?
These thoughts eased me up grudgingly from the couch to join about 35 others once again protesting the christening yet another killing machine, the USS Thomas Hudner, at BIW. I didn’t know LTJG Hudner personally but I knew of him. He was about three years behind my graduating class when we won our gold wings at Pensacola. As naval aviators flying the same carrier-based fighter aircraft, the Corsair, we were brothers in a rather small fraternity. Hudner was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for making a forced landing to rescue a fellow pilot, alive but trapped in his burning plane. Ensign Jesse Leroy Brown, the US Navy’s first black aviator, had been shot down behind enemy lines near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea during the infamous retreat by US Forces from Chinese troops who had crossed the Yalu River to reinforce the North Koreans in the winter of ‘50-’51. Hudner was unsuccessful and was airlifted out by helicopter. This tale, “The Flight of Jesse Leroy Brown”, is on my bookshelf.
Two and a half years after this incident, a truce on the Korean Peninsula having just been signed, I was flying an AJ-1 Savage from various aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. The Savage, a three-engine (single jet) heavy attack aircraft was being introduced as the U.S.Navy’s first capability to deliver an atomic bomb from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Years earlier, in December ‘45, I had seen and even smelled the ashes of Tokyo, the result of U.S.firebombing, and later, the rubble of Manila. From training films I had been thoroughly briefed on the devastation an atomic bomb could wreak and I learned how to deliver it.
President Eisenhower had hinted at the possibility of an atomic attack to bring China and North and South Korea to the negotiating table with the U.S. By the end of July ‘53 an armistice was signed and all parties agreed to observe a line separating North and South Korea. (It is still being respected but is in extreme jeopardy at this moment.)
In that same year I was a Savage aircraft commander assigned a target in China, should the Chinese or North Koreans breach the demilitarized zone across the peninsula at the 38th parallel. My assigned target was the airfield on the outskirts of Canton (now Guongzhou), the third most populous city in China, numbering in the millions even then. My offset-aim point was an island in the Pearl River, which flows through the city. My crew and I practiced simulated deliveries and drops as did other aircrews on other Chinese targets. Had it been ordered we would have delivered. I was 29 years old.
Years later, after I grew up, I began to question what I had been involved in. Even later, as a civilian, realizing the horror that could have happened, I made a pilgrimage to that very airport in Guongzhou to find peace. Then I came home and sought out Veterans for Peace and PeaceWorks.
This April 1st, as I stood across the street from BIW with other peaceful
demonstrators I realized I had to do more while I was still able. Was I up to
it? This was one of my better days. With eight others I crossed the street with
my walking sticks to stand silently on the white line defining BIW property in
protest of the latest addition to the strongest navy the world has ever known.
Time will tell if this simple, nonthreatening gesture will have a positive effect. We certainly hope to see BIW employees remain gainfully employed. They have the skills to create a more peaceful world, one in which we all can thrive.
Our purpose, or at least my purpose, is to call attention to the extreme cost to each of us to maintain this Military-Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned us about 65 years ago. Shouldn’t we divert some of our war-fighting tax dollars to solving some of the social problems sapping our strength before we become weakened from within? We could even increase employment while at the same time lifting up some of those in need, by diverting some of our energy to peaceful purposes such as creating commuter rail right to BIW, thus easing highway congestion with its consequent pollution. Imagine, for example an electric (solar?) commuter line from Portland to Rockland, stopping right at BIW and there connecting to a spur to L/A. No more piling into buses! No more traffic! BIW employees could construct the trains. We could become less dependent on oil or coal while cleaning up our act.
Let’s hope we make the right choices when we send the government our dollars.
P.S. Bath can be proud of its police force. We protesters were treated with respect, except when my walking sticks were seized. I hope these ideas will help some of your officers understand why we had to interrupt their day.
Bob Dale is a member of PeaceWorks and Veterans For Peace. He lives in Brunswick and is 92 years old.
1 comment:
I believe the best and most honest thing the Air Force taught me was that there's no such thing as fighting for a cause, noble intentions, political anything, freedom, Truth Justice and the American Way... No sir. We were told very early that our mission was and always would be to Follow Orders. If we are ordered to kill, we kill. If ordered to stand down we stand down.No time to even say Yes Sir. Of course it isn't what the recruiters say. They say what they're ordered to say. The pure mechanical and maniacal essence of 'service' the not-inhuman but un-human core inflicted on each of our souls. Good thing it wears off the farther in distance and time from daily indoctrination. That's not the problem, well, maybe some of it, but the notion we can be controlled like human drones.
And the proof of it's effectiveness is the heinous wars fought and the quotes of the combatants fresh and in the field bears plentiful evidence.
As for Christening the weaponry, yeah, that's blasphemy on a grand scale. There was a controversy when I was young about a war ship called The U.S.S. Corpus Christi. The Pentagon of course denied it was named for the Latin Rite communion, Hoc est Corpus Christi. They lied of course, the town in Texas was named that in an earlier phase of religious fervor. And the Navy claimed they hadn't even thought about it. I can believe it. Their sheer lack of remorse afterward being solid proof they're taught what to think. Not just to say, but it's a big part of thinking it. You say the same thing repeatedly and you believe it and think you came up with the concept and the Air Force etc merely agreed with YOUR concept.
Keep up the not-fight for God. However you pronounce His many names. I tell you what, if we or somebody else started calling such ceremonies Bat Mitzvah instead of Christening some people might suddenly realizing that they've been unaffected that it's a deeply religious theme.
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