Memorial Day : Honoring the Fallen, and Those Who Risk their Lives
It's people who were probably a lot like Navy mechanic Anthony Gonzales that we honor this weekend. The difference is that Gonzales is not present just in the memories of family and friends, and his life is not marked today with an American flag placed on a grave.
While you read the story of this man who like many others risk their lives to protect our freedom, remember those who did not live to see home again, whose lives and service we honor on Memorial Day. There's a special download for you below as well. Use it with pride.
It's likely that Gonzales thought that whatever contribution our service men and women make is a valuable one. But for his part he just didn't want to tell his grandchildren that his time of service during the war on terror was spent working on engines in Hawaii.
So he left a pretty good duty station and, as blogger 'Florida Cracker' reports: "headed toward the sound of the guns"
Gonzales was an aircraft mechanic on a
Marine base in Hawaii on Sept 11, 2001. When all the Marines left for
war, Gonzales was left behind with a bunch of engines, he recalled.
“I realized I didn’t join the Navy to do this. [I thought] ‘I’ve got to get over there.’”
He switched rates, became a dog handler and eventually arrived in Atsugi [Japan]. When the kennel master asked for volunteers to augment Army dog handlers in the Middle East, he was the first to raise his hand.
“I thought, ‘If I can go out there and find one IED (improvised explosive device) that’s maybe 20 lives to save.’”
He did that, and more. So right after you pick up the download below, get your Kleenex box ready and read about it at: Florida Cracker: What Did You Do In The Great Gulf War II, Grandpa?
Download 2006.05.03_somegaveall_packet.pdf by clicking the link. The file can be saved, then opened and printed with Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at Adobe's website
Check out:The Real Hero Memorial Day Quotes This Memorial Day Memorial Day, Basil's blog, the CIA, Pirate's Cove, Courting Destiny, Some Have Forgotten Wrongwing and to Mensa Barbie who reminds us of another soldier in another war - unfortunately
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