11am/Nov.11th/1918–Dec.7/1941–Paul Tibbets

Do any of you remember the importance of those dates or that man?  Or that Paul lived to be 92 yr’s old and died only a little over a year ago?  It is a shame if for any reason you education has left you ignorant of these dates or the WWII pilot I mentioned.  Not only did he drop the first Atomic Bomb and save millions of lives but he led the first daylight bombing mission over Germany in WWII.  In that one mission 60 bombers were lost and with them 600 men.  In one day.  In a few hours.  In some of my posts you will see a picture of a young Audie Murphy.  He wears the Medal of Honor not because he enjoyed killing people, but because he was frightfully willing to die to save his men.  He brought to the people on the homefronts attention that many heroes have to do things that stop them from sleeping and also being scared to close their eyes.  I was honored with two conversations with two heroes yesterday.  Make no mistake.  They were tickled at the thought of someone in Iraq throwing their shoes at a Commander in Chief who somehow had managed to buy his own way out of war. 

Paul Tibets wasn’t supposed to have been in a war after Nov.11/1918.  There was poetry there on that date in 1918.  At 11am that morning the cannons stopped firing in the great trench war.  Instant silence.  All was quiet on the westen front they said.  I’ve always wondered how poetic it felt to be the last man killed sometime around 10:59am that morning.  The poetry of generals and politicians is missed somewhere in the reality of a feces filled trench.  Beside the fact that the peace didn’t last.  I suppose that’s a good reason to forget the meaning of 1100 hours on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

And we are really an awfully nice people.  History is usualy written by the victors but we’ve let the people that attacked our nation while it was at peace on Dec. 7/1941 in a sneak attack change that incident into a “Military victory.” I’d wonder why but I know why.  But I’ll let you younger folks that make it through the next thirty years watch the Sept. 11th attack on America also get turned into a military victory for our enemies to figure it out.  But here’s a hint-money.   And the decision to let the sleepless stay that way.