This week’s Watcher’s Council results are dedicated to Michelle Malkin and the Constitutional fight for freedom for bloggers.
Michelle Malkin: Going dark to urge congressional action: Who will protect the freedom to blog?
The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.
Memorial Day was a week ago and this week saw the anniversaries of the two great battles of WWII that defeated evil, preserved our freedom and saved our Republic. It says a great deal that President Obama has never issued so much as a proclamation to commemorate the battle of Midway and has not issued one or made any mention of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy for two years. But then, given his attempts to take away VA benefits from our wounded warriors, disenfranchise the votes of active duty military and hollow out our military with draconian cuts, that’s to be expected.
Meanwhile, the men and women who saved us from Hitler and the Japanese fascists grow older and every day more of them answer the call for that final mustering out.
But as this week’s winner, The Right Planet, reminds us in his winning post, Memorial Day Tribute: My Granddad, they will live forever as long as we remember the great gift of freedom they gave us. Here’s a slice of an amazing story:
As a kid, there were times I spent the summer with my family and Grandparents. I have fond memories of those times with my Grandparents. Of course, I’m partial to my beloved late Granddad (Grandmother too), but almost everyone who knew him loved him. He had a quiet inner-strength that was mesmerizing; and he always looked people in the eye and made them feel like they were the only person in the room. He cared. He loved. He worked. He sacrificed. He knew all about sacrifice.
See, Grandad was a flight engineer on a B-17 bomber during World War II. He participated in the North African campaign and eventually flew missions out of Italy with the 15th Air Forces, 483rd Bomb Group (B-17), 817th Bomb Squadron. Unlike their comrades flying missions out of England, U.S. airmen flying out of Italy were required to fly 50 combat missions before being rotated out, as opposed to 25 missions. At one point during the air campaign over Nazi Europe, losses for the U.S. Army Air Corps and the R.A.F. were approaching sixty percent. Fortunately, drop tanks were developed for Allied fighter planes so they could escort bombers all the way to the target area and losses began to decrease dramatically. But it was always dangerous and lethal over the skies of Nazi Europe.
The 39th Mission
Not too long ago, my mother obtained a copy of the actual battle report of my Grandad’s last mission over Nazi Germany. I read it and was chilled to the bone by what I read.
On July 18, 1944, my Granddad was on his 39th mission with the 15th Air Forces, 483rd Bomb Group, 817th Bomb Squadron. The entire bombardment group (B.G.) was assigned the target area of Memmingen, Germany, without fighter escort or other group support.
Our Non-Council winner, A Train Near Magdeburg, submitted by The Right Planet mined a similar theme, a moving account by one George C. Gross, formerly a tank commander with the 743rd Tank Battalion, interviewed about his encounter with some Holocaust survivors from the camps left by the Nazis to die in a disabled, wrecked railroad car. Do take a minute to read it.
Here are this week’s full results. Rhymes With Right, The Mellow Jihadi and New Zeal were unable to vote this week, but none were affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:
Council Winners
- *First place with 5 2/3 votes! The Right Planet – Memorial Day Tribute: My Granddad
- Second place *t* with 2 votes – The Independent Sentinel – The President Is Leaking Top Secret Information to Improve His Re-election Chances
- Second place *t* with 2 votes – Joshuapundit – Obama: ‘Some Of My Best Friends Are Jews’
- Third place with 1 2/3 votes – The Noisy Room – Silencing the Clarions
- Fourth place with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – Ali Larijani threatens Israel, lost in translation again
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – Peril At Sea
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Razor – Playing the Victim Card: Students And the Student Loan Debt
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Political Commentator – Finally, something intelligent out of the mouth of John Rocker!
Non-Council Winners
- *First place with 3 votes! – George C. Gross – A Train Near Magdeburg submitted by The Right Planet
- Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Yid With Lid – The Socialist Rabbi Who Taught Obama About Israel submitted by The Independent Sentinel
- Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Campus Watch – UC Berkeley and the ‘Islamophobia’ Lobby submitted by The Watcher
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – KausFiles – Notes On Wisconsin submitted by The Glittering Eye
- Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Kings of War – The End of Western Military Interventionism? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Sultan Knish – The State at the End of the Universe submitted by The Noisy Room
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Contentious Centrist – The Mos Eisley Spaceport submitted by Simply Jews
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – PJ Tatler/Zombie – I Just Heard the N-Word 30,000 Times (content warning) submitted by Bookworm Room
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The New Criterion – Future tense, XI: The lessons of culture submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Enterprise Blog – The 7 scariest facts from the new CBO long-term budget forecast submitted by Gay Patriot
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Gates Of Vienna – Whose Country? submitted by The Razor
- Sixth place with 1/3 vote – Maggie’s Notebook – Don’t vote for the Jew submitted by The Political Commentator
See you next week! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!
As a child I heard my Dad cry out at times during the night. My Mother explained this to me by saying he was dreaming about the war. My Dad was with Patton’s 3rd Army when they came upon “The Camps”.
He would never talk about this with me. He always became too emotional to talk about what they saw.
At the time my Dad was experiencing these things in the war or shortly afterward my Grandfather befriended a young Jewish man in our town who was the lone survivor in his family of the Nazi Death Camps.
I knew that my Grandfather had become a Christiam in the 40’s and was active in the Gideons. I had also been told by my Grandmother that my Grandad spoke at the Synagogue several times in the late 40’s.
I never understood why a Gentile was ask to speak at the Synagogue unless it related to the fact that my Dad had observed a little of the horror of the camps.
In December, because of our family interest in genealogy, I ordered a DNA test for my Dad. The percentage of Jewish DNA in my Dad’s family was a total surprize to us, or was it? There seems to have been a theme running through all of this.
I only wish that everyone could come to some understanding of how fragile our society, our security, our freedoms are. Were the lessons leared or will we go ’round this mountain over and over again? I pray not.