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Red Tail Rendezvous

By lex, on September 6th, 2011

Courtesy of occasional reader Dust, an almost implausible series of coincidences reunite two warriors.

Hear their voices while they last.

Once 16 million strong, they are dying off at more than 1000 souls per day.

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September 6th, 2011 | Tags: , , | Category: Flying, History, Military

20 comments to Red Tail Rendezvous

  • Airmail
    September 6, 2011 at 7:33 pm

    My dad served in WW II as a Lt. in the Army Quatermaster Corp. He commanded a fleet of trucks, 6 x 6′s. 4 x 4′s, jeeps and tractors with 40 foot flatbed trailers and landed at Utah Beach in Normandy at D-day +30. All the vehicles had been water proofed so they could drive through the deep surf during the landing. It took them weeks of adding snorkels for the intakes, sealing, exhaust extensions, etc. to prep for a deep water approach. When they actually got to Normandy, they offloaded from the barges to the beach and barely got their tires wet. His company followed Gen. Patton through France and supplied fuel, ammunition and food in the famous Red Ball Express. He was 19 when he went to Basic Training and when he shot expert on the shooting range, the Camp Commander called him in and asked how it was that he could shoot as an expert without any training. My dad said, “because I was an expert before I got here.” The commandant apparently liked that answer and they sent him to OCS. The non commissioned and enlisted men in his truck company were all black. His senior NCO had a Master’s degree from Harvard, spoke french and kept the men in-line. At the war’s end, his company were assigned POW security duty before heading back to the States.

    My dad is 88, married to my mom who is 81. They just drove home yesterday in their Ford conversion van after being on the road for nearly five weeks. Their road trip took them from Detroit to Seattle and back, mostly on U.S. Route 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_2
    with several stops in between where they camp in State or National Parks. The van is a sleeper version with refridge, microwave, chemical toilet, outside shower, fresh water and a TV.

    When I was growing up, the family summer vacation was usually three weeks long, where we set up a tent or two visiting the National Parks, all six of us crammed into a Ford Country Squire station wagon and in later years a Ford Van. Both had rooftop storage (a big box my dad made with hinges, handles and lots of stickers to show where we had been) as we drove across country, without air conditioning setting up a camp site for two or three days then moving on after exploring, hiking and swimming. My mom cooked using a Coleman stove, we ate out of a Coleman cooler and sat around the campfire each evening. Light after dark was a Coleman Lantern. Fire wood was cut with an axe or hatchet.

    When we were all road weary from weeks of camping and needed a break, my parents would get a hotel room and we could all sleep in a real bed, swim in a pool and eat at a restaurant. it was a welcome break. Always frugal, forty years later, they still don’t get a hotel room unless it is absolutley necessary, as they prefer the stars and a campfire to anything else.

  • Buck
    September 6, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    What an amazing story.

  • redeye80
    September 6, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    It is a small world. Wonderful story.

  • Padre Harvey
    September 6, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    The thing that touched my heart while watching that video was the way in which the one gentleman held the arm of the other as they walked along.

    ‘Scuse me, I seem to have something in my eye…

  • Quartermaster
    September 7, 2011 at 4:39 am

    The WW2 generation is rapidly passing. All the WW2 vets in my family are now gone. The Korean War bunch is almost gone (my father gone for 20 years). The ‘nam war vets are in their 60s and are beginning to disappear.

  • Ron Snyder
    September 7, 2011 at 4:49 am

    I have no other WWII Vets left in my family, and even far too many SEA Vets are leaving this mortal vail. Without a personal connection, my grandniece would view (and to some extent still does) SEA era events as past history with minimal influence on today’s world.

  • virgil xenophon
    September 7, 2011 at 5:55 am

    Watching things like this makes me feel like I’m perpetually at Don Henley’s Sunset Grill these days..

    • Quartermaster
      September 7, 2011 at 6:29 pm

      Aren’t we all, figuratively, there? Our time in this mortal coil is like, as the Psalmist said, a vapor. I think 1972 was just a couple years ago.

  • Surfcaster
    September 7, 2011 at 5:56 am

    Situations such as this make it hard not to believe someone is pulling the strings of destiny from upstairs…

    One family WWII veteran remaining. He was a POW in Germany (for 18 months IIRC). They started going in the first week of December, 1941. Long before I would ever know them.

    “Cold War” vets count? My father was one, of sorts, in uniform & out. Passed on a few years back.

    • Quartermaster
      September 7, 2011 at 6:31 pm

      My father, dead in Dec ’90, was both Korea and Cold War. Not many posters here wouldn’t be cold war. Of course, ‘nam wasn’t all that cold, but that’s what those Vets came home to as well. Most of the NCOs in my company in 3/109th Armor were ‘nam vets.

  • Daryle
    September 7, 2011 at 6:29 am

    We buried my father at Calverton National Cemetery in October, 2007. The section he was buried in was almost empty. By the end of the year that section was full and since then they’ve filled at least two more sections. It’s astonishing to see how fast the enormous facility is getting filled. Every time we go there (It takes almost an hour to get there so we don’t go often enough) they have a section opened being prepped and the next time we go it’s almost full. It’s like watching a time lapsed film of two generations (WWII and Korea) passing before your eyes.

  • DirtCrashr
    September 7, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    Beautiful man, Dad’s 86 and went to Annapolis after taking a test to gain entry – not a senator’s son…

  • Kid
    September 7, 2011 at 6:11 pm

    That is a fantastic story. Thanks for putting it up.

  • John
    September 7, 2011 at 8:01 pm

    Great history lesson, as well as a tribute to two great Americans.

  • Jerry G Efros
    September 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    I flew 35 missions with the 8th Air Force,379th B. G. We were escorted many times by the Tuskeegeeairmen. A great group who always kept the Luftwaffe away.Unfortunately they could not stop the flak.
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