You think the War is over?

American History has proven a number of things since the beginning days of our Nation. One thing that seems to be connected to every single year that we've been a Country, surrounds the fact that we've been under assault since day one. It seems to me that somebody always wants to come over here, kill us all and take our stuff.

As a good place to start the proof section for that, we can use the American Revolution and the things that happened from 1776 to 1876. That's only a hundred years and it brings us to a time frame that's just a bit beyond the Civil War.

To assign some degree of relativity to those dates, let me say that my Grandmother was born in 1890. A generation after that, we were already engaged in the First World War.

My father was born in 1906. Even though he was too young to fight in that one, I had an Uncle who was a dough boy during that time. To my knowledge, he's the only one from my family that fought in the trenches. He married my father's sister, Helen Butler.

His name was Francis Shirley Hebert. We called him Uncle Shirley and he was a cool old man who loved to attend the family gatherings on Thanksgiving Day. When he died, I asked for his uniform but his wife, my aunt, threw it away. So much for my family's involvement in the First one.

Despite the fact that December 7, 1941 is typically referred to as the day we entered World War II, that isn't exactly true. That just happens to be the day that we generally refer to as the beginning of our part in it that involved shooting.

To be more accurate, I say that World War II began the day after World War I ended. Sound crazy? Well, it isn't.

That's the day that a German soldier named Guerdian started his designs to build the under carriage for the German tanks that would be used in the opening battles of World War II. Since the Treaty of Versailles forbid Germany to rebuild their Army, he claimed the undercarriage was designed for agricultural equipment. It was a lie and from that, there's no doubt that the planning for the Second World War began before the ink was dry on the Peace Treaty from the First World War..

Let's not forget to mention Herrman Goering. He and Hitler hooked up after Goering served as a fighter pilot in WWI and did so when Goering worked as a commercial pilot honing his skills for the next World War.

Since everyone should know about Blitzkrieg warfare, The Afrika Corp and the Battle of the Bulge, let's get on with the rest of the story without getting into the tank's role in all the battles. Instead of chalking up all the deaths from that, let's take a brief look at some of the results from air power.

Coventry, November 15, 1940. That was more than a year before Pearl Harbor. The Germans bombed Coventry on that date and that, more than anything, began the air war against civilians as an effective tool of war. I googled that and discovered that there are varying reports regarding civilian deaths from the air raid on Coventry.

In any event, some say there were 500 killed and others say 1,000. Let's see what happened after that and take a look at Churchill's mandate to send a response even though their strongest ally, The USA, was totally against anything outside of targeting military and industrial targets. Don't forget that piece of shit document called the Geneva Convention. For those who did not sign on to it, using it for toilet paper was their choice.

Here's a list of aerial bombardments after Coventry. It's pretty inclusive and covers many missions:

Dresden had some claims of losing 500,000 lives. After the war, a commission of 13 prominent German Scientists headed by Rolf Dieter Mueller, claimed that the half million casualty number was generated by the Nazi propaganda machine and in fact, the real number was closer to the 25,000 to 50,000 range. In any event, the Nazi war machine started all of that, not the Allies.

Hamburg is another matter. In July of 1943 Hamburg got it. There were estimates of 42,600 deaths and 37,000 wounded. Skipping many aerial assaults in the European Theatre and moving toward the Pacific, let's take a look at Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hiroshima, 150,000. Nagasaki, 75,000. Tokyo, 80,000 to 130,000. I'm pretty sure that Tokyo was in March of 1945. Moving along to Vietnam, Wikipedia claims that somewhere between 800,000 and 3.1 million were killed during that war. Who knows?

Some of you may say: "So what?". I say: "Here's what".

Computer research indicates that there have been 124,000 deaths that resulted from terrorists. I say that's grossly under estimated but who in the hell am I to refute their statistics?

The moral of the story is this: We need to pay attention to history and even though our enemies don't have the capacity to send 1,000 plane raid to bomb New York City, they did pull off an air raid on 9/11 that created more casualties than Pearl Harbor suffered on December 7, 1941.

Even though our enemies don't have the capacity to build an invasion fleet the size of the ones we used during D day, they've put millions upon millions of their people on our home land by using immigration as their tool for invasion.

Doubt that? Do your homework and you'll see that it's true. For now, I will leave you with that initial thought before I collect more statistics to demonstrate what's going on right now. Enjoy the read and please feel motivated to do a little searching on your own. More to come.

Tim







   

This one is whippin' my ass.

Of all the battles I've been through, this brain damage thing has been one of the toughest. This isn't nearly as painful as the physical trauma that came after they took a skull saw and opened my head to get to the tumor. Sometimes emotional pains however, are just as difficult even though it's a completely different kind of pain.

Many of you have seen the pictures that Tim Jr took right after the surgery and among those of you who did, you can vividly see what I mean. Everybody pretty much understands the pain from various surgeries and many of you can understand the emotional battles of life but this one doesn't allow me to bring out the big guns and fight like a warrior to defeat it.

Battles are a strange thing. I say that because there are so many different kinds of battles that it's very difficult to relate battles like this to those of you who have been in other kinds but not one that's just like this.

It doesn't matter if it's a fist fight in school, a nasty divorce or a Regimental sized battle with the North Vietnamese Army. Whenever it arrives, you have to do something or be prepared to live with doing nothing about it. I can't do that. It seems that sitting on my ass with closed mouth is proving to be more detrimental than being arrested for hitting the guy over the head with a Campbell Soup can.

Going to war and fighting in battle after battle gives one a different perspective about fighting. A mini gun shooting 4,000 rounds per minute brings on a different thought about how one might fight. If you add a 50 caliber like we had on the Nighthawk Gunship and a couple of M 60's with their 650 round per minute capacity, that brings on a completely different reaction to situations where you are attacked. Put that in your problem solving arsenal and you may be able to imagine what I mean.

I realize that having some loud mouth at the grocery store that pops off with something that would justify a boot in his face, is a far cry from the kinds of battles that combat Veterans faced in war. What I now realize surrounds the fact that I don't recall any situation in my life where someone assaulted me verbally or otherwise, who didn't have to answer for doing that. I've never simply walked away from something like that and I now realize that regardless of how I handled problems in my life, I'm very satisfied with the way I responded to any and all attacks made against me. I don't have a single regret for any action I ever took against my fellow man, especially those who proved to be my enemy.

This situation is so far removed from anything I've ever experienced that I don't have any kind of comparative analysis to make. He might as well have spit in my face and said that he was glad Johnny Newberry died from Agent Orange. From that, I guess it's fair to say that: "Sticks and Stones may break my bones" is correct but incomplete. If you finish that old saying with, "But words will never hurt me", I see it as something that's totally inaccurate.

I went to the hospital today for my regular visit but was sent to Neurology after that. It was quite pleasant in that they were somewhat intrigued by the manner in which I handled the incident. I'll have a thing or two to say about that but will do so later because I'm really tired after a total of 5 hours spent there today. Stand by for more later.

Tim

Lessons Learned from my first solo of a helicopter in 1969 till my last flight in a fixed wing..

I arrived in Vietnam on May 15, 1970. I wasn't scared and in fact, being a pilot in the military was a dream I had since Joe Messina, a World War II Veteran of the China, Burma, India Theatre, gave me my first airplane ride when I was 5 or 6 years old. That was sometime around 1953 or 54. Joe spent his time in the Second World War flying "The Hump" into China when we were supplying the Chinese with pilots and arms to fight the Japanese.

My Dad, Jules Leon Butler (J Leon), took me and my sister Linda to the airport, introduced us to Joe and off we went for our first ride. We were so little, both of us fit in the back seat of the Piper Cub that Joe bought as surplus after the war. I'm pretty sure that Joe established the first professionally operated flight school in North Louisiana but I'll ask Leland to be sure.

If you ever visit the main terminal at the downtown airport in Shreveport, you will see pictures of a group of men who are Shreveport's Hall of Fame pilots. Joe is there and so is Maurice Head. Maurice knew Joe and, as a coincidence, he gave me my fixed wing transition course after I returned from Vietnam and, at that time, I became what is known as a dual rated pilot. I could fly helicopters or fixed wing airplanes. It was a proud moment especially since I had managed to pull all that off by the ripe old age of 23.

There were lots of lessons learned from the day I soloed a Hiller OH 23 in August of 1969 and the day I returned from Vietnam and started flying Piper Cherokee 140s and Cessna 150s. Before I lost my medical in 1988, I ended up flying everything I could get my hands on. That ranged from all the helicopters that the Army had except for the Flying Crane and the Chinook CH 47.  When I decided to leave the Army instead of continuing with my desires to make a career as an Army Aviator, I had approval to report to Hunter Army Airfield where I was to take the transition course and add the Chinook to my ratings.

If you've read some of the older posts here and know who Wilbert the Dilbert was, you already know why I decided to leave the Army. Despite that, I didn't decide to stop flying. I flew the Cessna 150s, 172s and eventually owned a 206. Not long after that, I bought a Piper Seneca II twin but I never liked that one as much as the others. Too much yaw.

I had some experiences flying turbo props like the Turbine Aero Commander and the Beech King Air but my heart really belonged to the smaller stuff and the 172 was the most fun of all to fly. That was the airplane that Tim Jr took his first ride in and we've talked about it often.

I even had time flying the EAA's Boeing B 17 named "Aluminum Overcast". That was the nuts but it was easily the most impractical thing for me to fly because it was so expensive to rent the left seat in the cockpit.

In any event, as I think about all the experiences that came from the years I spent flying, I have to add the influences of all the men who led the way along that path. From my Uncles who fought the war, to guys like Joe Messina and Maurice Head, I always wondered what they would have thought about the things, outside of aviation, that go on today. I'm sure they would have been pleased to see how far I made it and they would totally understanding that my medical was the only thing that stopped me.

On the other hand, when I wonder about the thoughts they may have about today's society and how their sacrifices were somewhat tainted by today's situations, I have to add a thing about lessons learned.

They were still alive when Jane Fonda did her traitorous thing in North Vietnam and they knew about the killings at Kent State that happened in May of 1970. Neil Young produced "Four Dead in Ohio" and that song seems to surface more often now on some of the radio stations I listen to when driving.

Now, in today's news items, we hear about a zillion rounds of ammo bought by Homeland Security and further news about other things such as foreign troops training here and this amnesty deal for so many illegals. If you do that math and look at all the questions asked about "who are these bullets for" or "why are they buying all this stuff", you can't ignore the statements made when the POTUS said we needed an internal police force that was in addition to local law enforcement and projected to be as strong or stronger than the Armed Forces.

I guess the moral of this story is stimulated by the recent incident I had at the grocery store when the guy was laughing about Agent Orange. It cut me to the quick and apparently, even though nothing happened, I guess I'm still negatively effected by it. If there ever was a recipe of thoughts, I can't seem to separate those men who influenced me and the reasons that they fought so hard for our way of life.

I am somewhat pleased with all the advice I've gotten from friends at the Fighter Pilot's Association and most appreciative of the concerns that come from Guy, Waylon, Lisa, Roger and a number of people at the hospital. They didn't like the guy at the grocery store and his comments about Agent Orange anymore than I did.

In any event, if I haven't done anything through this post except point out the difference between lessons learned and how we must not become complacent by ignoring the things that men have fought and died for, I will consider this one as a success. Just stop a minute and take a closer look at the things we've seen with people like Jane Fonda and the idiot at the grocery store and try to realize that they are only two people out of 300 million. We may need to pay more attention to the other things that are going on around us. Thanks for the ear. Tim

Comments to TButler94@hotmail.com would be appreciated.







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