 razordws wrote: |
| AHEM... you know there are laws against soliciting get togethers with minors over the internet Poppie! ![Wink [;)]](/emoticons/icon_smile_wink.gif) I am looking forward to some photos though Poppie. Once I get going on my Lancaster I'll need all the help I can get. |
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Dave, You silly old f**t. This is more along the line of an "Old Geezer asking for help crossing the street"
By-the-way guy, I'm really thrilled to have Chester101 as part of our group. I just finished reading the book 'Boy Soldiers' - it was about the soldiers in both wars who were minors when they enlisted, most were 16. The youngest was 14, and he won his case with Congress to get his medals as he served at Midway as an air gunner at 14! The US has the same law as Canada does, - it goes something like this:"any person who misrepresents his or herself upon enlisting shall be deemed not to have served". This US guy was wounded, served until he was 17, achieved the rank of Petty Officer and the Navy denied him his disability pension, medical treatment, Valour Award, Purple Heart, and a whole lot of other stuff say:"Sorry, but, you never served!" President Bush went to bat for him and got him his full recognition as the youngest US sailor to have served. There were hundreds of others who served, but they got their discharge at wars end before the armed forces discovered they had lied about their ages.
Chester101 looks like he was the same age as my Dad was when he enlisted in 1939 - actually, my Dad was 13 when he enlisted in the Artillery in 1939 then his sister squeeled on him and he was sent home from England. He turned around and joined the Royal Regiment of Canada as soon as he got home claiming he had been in the reserve. He was asked to 'swear that he was over 18. The recruiting Sergeant didn't believe him so he took a piece of paper and wrote "18" on it and told my Dad to stand on it. Then he told my Dad, "Now swear that your over 18!" My dad did and presto - he was in the Canadian Army. 3 years later he was a Commando on the Dieppe raid and is that a story! Remember, he was still 16. I'm going to ramble now about our 'young people'.
When his landing craft hit the beach and the ramp dropped, he was hit by a sniper beneath the right arm severing the ulnar nerve. They strapped his R arm to his chest and made him #2man on a light machine gun. He crawled around the beach under fire stripping .303 ammo from the dead and wounded and feeding the machine gun until a mortar landed beside them and he got hit in the gut with shrapnel. They bound up his stomach and put him in a trench in the shale. He says he couldn't stand just laying there and watching his buddies dying all around him so he picked up a Sten Gun, which he could fire from one hand - the left - and stepped onto the open beach and managed to get some rounds bouncing around inside the pillbox that had them pinned down. Then a German managed to get a hand grenade beside him and he took a chunk of shrapnel in the elbow of his Right Arm. This all happened in about 45 minutes. Then he spent the rest of the morning taking water to the wounded and helping to dress the wounds of guys that he said were more 'seriously wounded'. Remember, he's a 16 year old kid! When they surrendered, get this: they landed with 563 Officers and Men at 6:45 am and by 10:15 there were 63 men left alive! They surrendered. When they were being marched along the top of the cliff overlooking Dieppe a Spit thought they were a German patrol and straffed them. My Dad saw him coming in and that his best friend was right in the line of fire so he threw himself on top of him to knock him out of the way. The Cannon shell from the Spit hit my Dad in the jaw, the neck, the collar bone, shattered the shoulder joint, went through him and killed the guy behind him. They packed the wounds in his shoulder with newspaper field dressings and he spent the next 2 days outside a convent at Dieppe caring for the 'seriously' wounded. When the German Dr. finally got to see my Dad, he went to amputate my Dad's arm. My Dad kicked him in the groin. The Dr. said: "Englander Kaput" and waved them away. My Dad was put on a train going to Reoun France. He was in a car reserved for horses. He was in a wooden 'bed' built along the side of the train car. During the ride the bumbing and jarring caused his wounds in his shoulder to start bleeding again. He could hear the guy beneath him choking on the blood that was dripping from my Dad's arm. In the morning, the guy was dead - he had drowned in my Dad's blood. He was taken to a POW camp in Germany, Obermausfeldt, and they patched him up. He was POW for 2 years then was part of the prisoner exchange. He was awarded the Military Medal for Bravery. I asked him many years ago what made him keep fighting, he looked at me reall funny like and said: " Well, they were my friends you know." If someone had of 'squeeled' on him and told them how old he was when he enlisted he would have been 'deemed not to have served'. Wild story eh. Once they got him home, discharged him, etc, they found out his real age but by then it was too late to do anything about it. You could say there's a bad case of hero worship going on here, but I'm pretty proud of it. When I enlisted it was in his Regiment.
Yeah, I don't make any distinction between 'young' and 'older' guys working and having fun together. As far as I'm concerned, I'll join in with Chester101 no matter how old he is and meet him to take pictures of planes for you guys and treat him as a fellow work mate. Just give me a call Chester, and call me a friend, I expect the same from you as I do from someone with another 15 years on you.