Man, another 4 down. Ya think it won't matter as much much if ya didn't know these guys personally, but it gets me every time.
Thoughts and prayers to the families.
I found this song, hope it's appropriate.
Amazing grace - for the soldiers
Senior Member
Man, another 4 down. Ya think it won't matter as much much if ya didn't know these guys personally, but it gets me every time.
Thoughts and prayers to the families.
I found this song, hope it's appropriate.
Amazing grace - for the soldiers
Senior Member
Great video, thoughts and prayers. RIPOriginally Posted by dogfish
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Amazing video and pic compilation.
Senior Member
I went to Vermont recently and while driving down HWY 100 I came across this tribute to all of the soliders who have been killed in Iraq. One flag for each soul.
It really makes you stop and think. They were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters. Uncles, Aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. They were our protector. They gave us the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, fighting for our freedom, fighting for what they believe in. Their families gave us their most precious gift.
This memorial was soul searching and heart wrenching.
1000 post club!
You read the numbers killed in the news, but nothing is as moving as seeing it right there in front of you in graphic representation.
Nice job, Katie, thanks for posting.
1000 post club!
This was in the Ledger the other day. I found it moving.
Pushing past pain to honor a lost soldier
Fallen officer's wounded pal goes the extra mile in Holmdel memorial run
Monday, November 10, 2008 BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff
When Marion Zilinski heard her son's buddy planned to jog in a memorial run yesterday, she cautioned the Iraq War veteran against the idea.
But Capt. Dan Downs, still recovering from a severe gunshot wound, wouldn't be dissuaded. Two years ago, friends pushed him through the course in a wheelchair. Last year, he walked the two miles. So, as a personal challenge and a tribute to his friend, Downs wanted to run this year.
For Downs, a 28-year-old Army captain from Virginia, the third annual Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski II Memorial Run yesterday was not only a physical triumph, but also an emotional one.
"The mother in me wants him not to, because I don't want him to get hurt," Zilinski said two days before the run that pays tribute to her 23-year-old son, who was killed in Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005. "But then again, the mother in me knows he needs to do this for himself to honor his friend. That makes the mother in me so proud of him."
Downs said there was no question he'd run this year, two years after being shot in the lower left leg. The Zilinskis had become like his second family. He and Dennis, though two years apart at West Point, swam on the same team and Downs, then living in New Mexico, spent Thanksgivings at the Zilinski home.
"The point is, it's a run to honor Dennis. Dennis was an athlete. I'm an athlete. Athletes don't stop. They like pushing themselves, pushing their bodies," said Downs, now an Army ROTC instructor at the University of Virginia.
The run, held at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, is a primary source of income for the Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski II Foundation established by the family to help wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, the foundation has doled out about half of the $200,000 it has raised to individuals and to programs helping soldiers adapt to their new lives.
Marion Zilinski remembered being impressed by Underwater Warriors, a program that teaches amputees to scuba dive. When she reached out to the coordinator, she discovered the program was successful in its mission but struggling financially.
"Maybe someday I can help," Zilinski told the coordinator last year, without letting on she planned to make a sizable donation.
For two years in a row, the foundation's contributions have kept the program afloat while staffers seek federal funding, Zilinski said.
Earlier this year, the Zilinskis learned of a soldier from Howell who lost both legs to an improvised explosive device in Iraq. The foundation paid the cost of renovating his bathroom to accommodate his disability.
"It's touched a nerve," said Karen Connors, chairwoman of the run. "People really see there's so much good that can come out of something so tragic."
The foundation also distributes two scholarships annually for Christian Brothers Academy in the Lincroft section of Middletown, the alma mater of Dennis and his younger brother, Matthew, who has followed in his footsteps.
Matthew Zilinski was a senior at Norwich University, a military college in Vermont, when Dennis was killed. Yet he continued with his plans for military service. A member of the Army National Guard, Matthew Zilinski, now 24, is a 1st lieutenant with the 508th Military Police Co. in Teaneck.
The memorial run, expected to draw anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 participants, is the Zilinski family's way of paying tribute to the sacrifices of soldiers.
"My parents lost a son. I lost my brother. I lost my best friend," Matthew said. "On the run, you can see how much pleasure and how much life we're putting out in my brother's name. We're supporting all these other people. We're giving them a new life, a new beginning. We're giving them something to make their life that much easier. It's in the name and honor of my brother."
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Kentuckian killed in Vietnam 40 years ago is finally put to rest in Arlington
Kentuckian killed in Vietnam 40 years ago is finally put to rest in Arlington
Fri Dec 19, 2008 7:34 am
WASHINGTON — It has been 40 years since Maj. John Lee McElroy's C-130 transport plane was shot down from the Kham Duo airstrip in the Quang Tin Province of Vietnam.
In that time, the Kentuckian's son, Russell, who was barely in his teens when his father died, has seen far more years than his father ever did. The major's daughters Linda and Mary, young girls when their father went to war, are married and have careers.
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External Link Arlington National Cemetery
He has nine grandchildren that he'll never meet. And his wife, Regina, died several years ago without ever getting the chance to lay to rest her husband, who was from Eminence in Henry County.
But sometimes the ones we've lost come back ... even if in the most unexpected ways.
On a cold, gray Thursday, the McElroy family gathered at Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C., to honor the Vietnam veteran whose body had been missing for nearly half a century but whose remains were recently recovered. It was a solemn affair and family members braced themselves against the winter chill as soldiers in dress uniforms honored a fallen comrade.
Behind them rows and rows of headstones dotted the winter landscape, stretching back as far as the eye could see.
"The last time I saw him he was flying out from Fayette County Airport in Lexington. He hugged me and said, Russell you need to take care of your mother and sisters," said Russell McElroy, who lives in Bowling Green.
The Air Force officer's last days were spent a world away in a place where the trees had exotic names and the air was hot and smelled of creosote.
American soldiers had spent several days defending their position, on a narrow grassy plain surrounded by rugged jungle, from a near-constant deluge of gunfire and grenade attacks. Officers decided to extract troops after the North Vietnamese Army launched an attack on the main compound. Napalm, cluster bomb units and 750-pound bombs were hurled into the final wire barriers, according to military records.
During the evacuation, panic ensued.
"As more infantry tried to clamber into the outbound planes, the outraged Special Forces staff convinced the Air Force to start loading civilians onboard a C-130, then watched as the civilians pushed children and weaker adults aside," records show.
The crew of that U.S. Air Force C-130 aircraft included McElroy, the navigator; Maj. Bernard Bucher, pilot; Staff Sgt. Frank Hepler, flight engineer; 1st Lt. Steven Moreland, co-pilot; George Long, loadmaster; Capt. Warren Orr, passenger; and an undetermined number of Vietnamese civilians.
The North Vietnamese Army forces fired on the plane and it exploded in midair and crashed roughly a mile from camp. The plane burned quickly and was destroyed—save for a portion of the tail.
All crew and passengers were thought to be dead.
That was on a Sunday, Mother's Day. McElroy's wife and family members waited a day to tell his three young children that their father had died.
"For a long time, me and my sisters believed and hoped that this was just an accident and that my dad was alive. It took us a while to overcome that," Russell McElroy said.
Years later, a grief-stricken son pointed his new motorcycle eastward along the Blue Ridge Parkway and sped through icy evening rains toward Washington D.C. and a memorial wall where his father's name, along with thousands of others, is etched in the black granite.
"The next day was beautiful and it helped get my heart right to see my dad and all those other veterans," he said.
Gov. Steve Beshear ordered flags at all state office buildings lowered to half-staff on Thursday. As family members return to Kentucky, where their ancestors have lived for generations, where they last waved goodbye to their loved one, the McElroys take comfort in knowing that at last their father has come home.
Another account:
Servicemen MIA From Vietnam War are Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the group remains of six U.S. servicemen, missing from the Vietnam War, are soon to be buried with full military honors.
They are Maj. Bernard L. Bucher, of Eureka, Ill.; Maj. John L. McElroy, of Eminence, Ky.; 1st Lt. Stephen C. Moreland, of Los Angeles; and Staff Sgt. Frank M. Hepler, of Glenside, Pa., all U.S. Air Force. These men will be buried as a group on Dec. 18 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Two other servicemen, who were individually identified in October 2007, are also represented in this group. They are Capt. Warren R. Orr Jr., U.S. Army, of Kewanee, Ill., and Airman 1st Class George W. Long, U.S. Air Force, of Medicine Lodge, Kan.
Representatives from the Air Force and the Army mortuary offices met with the next-of-kin of these men to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of the Army.
On May 12, 1968, these men were on board a C-130 Hercules evacuating Vietnamese citizens from the Kham Duc Special Forces Camp near Da Nang, South Vietnam. While taking off, the crew reported taking heavy enemy ground fire. A forward air controller flying in the area reported seeing the plane explode in mid-air soon after leaving the runway.
In 1986 and 1991, U.S. officials received remains and identification tags from sources claiming they belonged to men from this incident. Scientific analysis revealed they were not American remains, but it was believed the Vietnamese sources knew where the crash site was located.
In 1993, a joint/U.S.-Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) team, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), traveled to Kham Duc and interviewed four local citizens concerning the incident. They led the team to the crash site and turned over remains and identification tags they had recovered in 1983 while looking for scrap metal. During this visit, the team recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage at the site. In 1994, another joint team excavated the crash site and recovered remains, pieces of life-support equipment, crew-related gear and personal effects.
JPAC scientists used forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence in the identification of the remains.
Although it's sad news, it's good to finally bring closure to these families. The guys from the Vietnam war do not always get the recognition they deserve.
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IRAQ: Slain Marines awarded Navy Cross
IRAQ: Slain Marines awarded Navy Cross
Two young Marines will be posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for stopping a terrorist attack on a Marine and Iraqi police outpost in Ramadi and saving dozens of lives, the Marine Corps announced today.
Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, 19, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., and Cpl. Jonathan Yale, 21, of Burkeville, Va., were standing guard on April 22 when a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives barreled toward the outpost's main gate.
Haerter and Yale, following Marine training, fired at the truck. As the truck rolled to a stop, it exploded, killing the pair, demolishing a nearby mosque and house, and leaving a crater 20 feet in diameter and 5 feet deep.
Security film showed that the two Marines never flinched as they continued to fire at the truck, according to an investigation by the Marine Corps. "Both Marines were killed still firing their weapons," said Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the top Marine in Iraq.
Three Marines, eight Iraqi officers and 24 civilians -- all more than 100 yards from the blast -- were injured. An additional 50 Marines and dozens of Iraqi police officers, in a barracks farther from the gate, were unhurt.
"I have a son back home, and I know if that truck would've made it to where it was going -- I wouldn't be here today," Lance Cpl. Lawrence Tillery said after the attack. "Because of Lance Cpl. Haerter and Cpl. Yale, I will be able to see my son again. They gave me that opportunity."
Haerter was with the 1st Battalion, 9th Regiment; Yale with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment. Both were attached to Regimental Combat Team One from Camp Pendleton. Yale’s family said he was within weeks of coming home.
The Navy Cross is the nation's second highest award for bravery by Marines or sailors in combat. While there have been other Navy Cross awards during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the bravery of Haerter and Yale was unusual because it was captured on film and seen by numerous witnesses.
"For their dedication, they lost their lives," Kelly said at the Marine base in Al Asad. "Only two families had their hearts broken on April 22 rather than as many as 50. These families will never know how truly close they came to a knock on the door that night."
-- Tony Perry in Al Asad, Iraq
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