Good deeds in the heartland
Pat Haley’s Uncle Patsy Waldren (at upper left) in Arizona.
There was a time when America was different. An era when men trudged over the Rocky Mountains, through the intense, scorching heat of the Nebraska flatlands and around the Salt Lakes of Utah to build a railroad.
Stephen Ambrose told the story of the men who built the Transcontinental Railroad in his book, “Nothing Like It in the World.” And indeed, there wasn’t anything like linking the east and west coasts of the United States together with thousands of miles of steel and 10-foot wooden ties.
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To: ALL HANDS
1. We of the Western Naval Task Force are going to land the American Army in France.
2. From battleships to landing craft ours is, in the main, an American Force. Beside us will be a mainly British force, landing the British and Canadian troops. Overhead will fly the Allied Expeditionary Air Force. We all have the same mission to smash our way onto the beaches, and through the coastal defenses, into the heart of the enemy’s fortress.
3. In two ways the coming battle differs from any that we have undertaken before: it demands more seamanship, and more fighting. We must operate in the waters of the English Channel and the French coast, in strong currents and twenty-foot tide. We must destroy an enemy defensive system which has been four years in the making, and our mission is one against which the enemy will throw his whole remaining strength. These are not beaches held by apathetic Italians or defended by hasty fortifications. These are prepare[d] positions, held
Twenty-two years before I was born, my grandfather was struck by German rounds as he descended from the heavens over Saint-Côme-du-Mont, France. In a series of flashes in the night,