My Hero

Here it is a lazy Saturday afternoon, my mind is wandering for a topic to blog about, I could rant about the economy and how our President (and I use that term lightly) is single handily destroying this countries economy and my what I thought was a great retirement nest egg. Just this past week he opened his mouth about how he was going to further hand cuff  the banks and big businesses with Government takeovers and as soon as he opened his mouth the DOW lost over 2% of it's earnings even before his speech was finished,and then loose again triple digit loses in the next two sessions, thank the good Lord for Weekends and the Market is closed.

As I was saying I could rant about this unfortunate administration but something more near and dear to my heart came to mind, my true hero DAD. Dad is 92 and very much a Hero. Born and raised in the little town of Frackville Pa. a small mining town in Carbon County, dad was one of 3 brothers Harry, John and Louis, dad was a football and Basketball player in High School and graduated form Frackville High after which he sort of got bogged down going to dead end jobs with no future, the war broke out in Europe and with this my hero decided to enlist so on September 12th 1939 my hero was sworn into the Army Air Corp. My Hero did not see a lot of action his first couple years for the United States was not fully involved in the war at that time so my Hero went from Tech School to Tech School learning the trade that would be his responsibility once he was involved in the fighting and that trade was Tail Gunner and Turret Gunner on a B-26 Marauder.I sat down many times to talk to my hero about the war and his part in it and guess what he said I am not the hero ,the ones that never returned were the True Hero's. Typical huh. My Hero Flew into the jaws of hell 64 times,each time being peppered by flack and anti aircraft fire then as they were leaving the encountered the German Lufafa, my Hero would sit on the edge of his seat as if he were flying a mission all over again, he tried to explain to me what it was like trying to shoot down one of those German planes, how if you flipped a dime into the air and watch it pass your eyes, that is about how much time you had to aim and fire. My Hero was flying on about his forty something mission when they encounter lots of body damage to the plane and their hydraulics were hit and if you know anything about  hydraulics when they go you can't lower landing gears, the airplanes flaps are inoperative in other words the planes life blood is spewing and you are in a world of hurt. My Hero recalls that day as if it were yesterday, the Marauder also affectionetly called The Bad Penny was limping on approach to a field in England when disaster struck, The Bad Penny hit some trees and broke apart as you can see in the pictures, five of the seven crew were killed one severly injured my Hero was in the tail and was thrown tail and all  away from the rest of the reckage,banged up and dazed my Hero survived to fly another day, and that he did he completed a total of 64 missions on board "Thumbs Up"