Stolen Valour

April 12, 2009 By CJ
Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of going to the weekly protest one of the corners in Huntsville, AL. Unlike the big city protests, these are generally attended by fewer than 20 people on both sides combined. It wasn’t until Israel retaliated for Hamas rockets and mortars that the normal corner exploded with dozens of Hamas and Palestine and anti-Israeli supporters. It has since trickled back to the normal 6-10 war protesters.

This weekend, I decided that instead of just standing there waving, I was going to speak to a gentlemen that stood out to me a few weeks ago during the whole anti-Israeli silliness. An older gentlemen wearing a “Veterans For Peace” silly hat and carrying a sign with the same language on it stuck out to me. I decided that I’d interview him and find out about his history.

With Chris in tow, I approached the man and explained that I was a military blogger, told him my name and website, and asked if I could interview him. His name is Ed Hart and he gave me permission to record the conversation. I’m going to cut out snippets of the conversation for the purposes of this post, but I will make a complete, unedited copy available so no one thinks I’m taking things out of context.

Mr. Hart explained to me that he was in the Marine Corps during WWII. He fought in some of the more widely known campaigns in the Pacific as well as some lesser known ones. They include Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Rabaul, Green Islands and others. He claimed to have been a rear seater in the a dive bomber at the time. While he didn’t specifically mention it, but I would assume that meant he was in the Douglas SBD Dauntless since I think it was the only two seater diver bomber at the time. Most Marine Corps Aviation units in the Pacific theater had Corsairs during the campaigns he was in. The Helldiver didn’t ever really replace the Dauntlesses because they were produced so late in the war. But, I digress.

I wanted to get to the crux of why a WWII veteran was amongst a bunch of feminine hippies with “End The War” signs. I wanted to know which war they wanted to end.

Listen Here.

I asked him about going into Iraq and he couldn’t think of any reason for going into Afghanistan. A discussion ensued about whether we waged war against Afghanistan or the Taliban.

Listen Here.

Then things got really good. We started talking about authorizations for war and that he fought in the last war that was “legitimate” and “declared”. I tried tripping him up with his history because I was beginning to doubt he was really a veteran. You’ll see that this pissed him off a little.

Listen Here.

The fact is that more than 6,000 Marines fought in Africa and Europe. Some of those Marines even took part in the storming of Normandy. They augmented British forces in keeping Iceland from falling to the Germans. Marines planned the Canadian and British raids of Dieppe, a French port city. Marines went ashore in Arzeu, Algeria, and Oran – where they occupied a strategic Spanish fortress at the tip of the harbor. They secured an airport in Morocco. On Jan. 7, 1942, Brigadier General Lewis G. Merritt, a Marine Corps pilot serving as an observer with the Royal Air Force in Egypt, was aboard a Wellington bomber shot down by ground fire behind German lines in the Halfya Pass. Therefore, I look forward to going back to the good “veteran” and pointing out that Marines served a much more vital role than just sitting around in embassies.

The interview ended abruptly there and as I began to walk off he tried to plead his case with me, so I turned the recorder back on. Ed continued explaining to me that he isn’t there to convince me of anything or change my mind. Like most anti-war buffoons, he just wanted “hold his sign” and I was getting in the way (even though I specifically asked permission to interview him, which was granted). Then, a fellow combat veteran said the following:

Listen to this.

“I don’t give a damn about what you think…I really don’t!” This “Marine” combat veteran didn’t give a damn about what another veteran’s experiences were. Obviously, his feminine minder hadn’t prepped him that this wasn’t how “real” vets spoke with each other. During the interview, you can barely make her out in the background kind of prompting him to say certain things.

But, I’m a realist. I put words like “Marine” and “veteran” in quotes, but I don’t doubt that he is a WWII veteran. It’s interesting that all the WWII I’ve personally spoken to are bit more specific than “dive bomber” when speaking about what they did during that time. However, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He was about the right age to have been a veteran and deserves respect. After I shut off the recorder and returned back to my car, I turned back around to shake his hand again. I thanked him for leaving me with a free country to which I am now dedicating my life to defending and thanked him for his service. I told him that though he doesn’t respect my service as a combat veteran, I still respected his. At that point, I walked off before he could try to backtrack.

Here’s the video from that:

Here is the video in its entirety: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUCg6Vc5Bk

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