On December 1, 1967, Charlie Company heads to Vietnam after advanced training at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Charlie Company was led by the well – known and well respected Captain Ernest L. Medina, also known as “Mad Dog” from his high expectations and his quick temper when these expectations were not met. William Calley was the Lieutenant of Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon. He was described as a weak leader who struggled with basic leadership and was often ridiculed and belittled by Medina, who called Calley “Sweetheart.” (My Lai: A Brief History with Documents, page 13). When Charlie Company arrived in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam, on December 3, 1967, they establish an 11th Brigade fire base at landing zone Carrington in the southern Quang Ngai Province.
Author "Perhaps all that need be said about Beah's skill as a storyteller is that while we know how he made it out - the book in our hands is proof of that - we are glued to every page by the very real possibility that this story is not going to end happily... Read his memoir and you will be haunted&It's a high price to pay, but it's worth it." - Newsweek Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980. When he was eleven, Ishmael's life, along with the lives of millions of other Sierra Leoneans, was derailed by the outbreak of a brutal civil war. After his parents and two brothers were killed, Ishmael was recruited to fight as a child soldier. He was thirteen.
In 1962, the Marine Corps family, the Meechums - parents Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur "Bull" Meechum and Lillian Meechum, and their four children Ben Meechum, Mary Anne Meechum, Karen Meechum and Matthew Meechum - are moving like they do most years, this time to Beaufort, South Carolina. Bull - nicknamed "the Great Santini" - is known as a great pilot, but has gotten into much trouble in the past for his sophomoric behavior. He runs his family much as a military commander, where they are all to obey his orders without question. Everything he does within the family context he reasons is to build character, but in reality everything ends up being about him. The oldest Ben, approaching manhood, is the one of his offspring who has the greatest issue with his father.
He lives to see his son john Quincy become president, although he is plagued with illness. Adams and Jefferson become very close in their later years, and correspond often. They even die within mere hours of each other on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence. Although this book was very interesting, it was not a page turner. John Adams story is fascinating but dull, so I would not recommend this book to the average reader.
Todd Moy. I learned that 66 of these African American airmen were killed in action and 33 were kept as (POW) prisoners of war. It was made clear throughout the book that the Tuskegee airmen made it possible for African Americans of today to fly in combat. It was obvious that the airmen faced racial discriminations both at home and overseas. While researching I learned 104 African American airmen were arrested for protesting while denied rights to used military facilities.
He has several surgeries on his back but eventually had to take a disability retirement. My grandparents moved to North Carolina to escape big city life to finish raising their family. Papaw thrived on excitement, and being "in" on the lastest rescue missions in the community really made his day. He joined the Center Pigeon Fire Department and became a first responder. Because of his back injuries he mostly did traffic control.
Certainly he was in better shape than Harold Nye, who, though full of flu and fever, kept reporting for duty. Among them, the four tired men had ‘checked out’ some seven hundred tips and rumors.” (149) After Dick and Perry are executed the agents experience a rather anticlimactic release. “Dewey had imagined that with the deaths of Smith and Hickock, he would experience a sense of climax, release, of a design justly completed. Instead, he discovered himself recalling an incident of almost a year ago...” (341) They expected the execution to be satisfying, but all it left was an empty feeling that left them sympathetic and sentimental. With this revelation Capote makes a point that is very hard to accept; working hard may lead to success, but is it really worth the troubles that one goes through before and after the task is finished?
Kennedy’s inaugural address vividly underscored the changing of the guard, while promising to uphold America’s commitments. It was one of the shortest inaugural addresses of this century and the most effective and memorable since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in 1933. This address will always be remembered by those in attendance and the many millions more who watched it on television or heard it on the radio. In his first months in office, he painted a sober, grim picture of the world as he found it. America’s defenses were weaker and its position in certain international situations in greater jeopardy than he expected.
“It is the story of arguably the greatest World Series ever played and deals with many watershed moments in and out of the game.” (www.timwendel.org/blog) King, Kennedy, and the Power of Words was a short story about Robert Kennedy giving an amazing speech after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Most of Kennedy’s campaign were hesitate of Kennedy going through with his speech. Kennedy spoke from the heart, he had notes given by his secretary, but his words were “spoken with conviction and from the heart.” I personally have read and watched Robert Kennedy’s speech that night and you can feel the pain in his voice, Kennedy was being completely sincere in his words. The cause and effect in this short essay is mind-blowing and very ironic. Not only did Kennedy hold that crowd together that night and saved them from being destructive, but later in time he himself was also assassinated.
The Grand Illusion The Grand Illusion, a 1937 black and white film by Jean Renoir, is an expository masterpiece about a group of French officers taken prisoner by the Germans during WWI. As one of the first truly great war films, The Grand Illusion has influenced many other films over the years. Jean Renoir, son of the well-known artist Auguste Renoir, fought in WWI as an aviator, which informed and influenced the film. Although The Grand Illusion is a war film, almost no fighting takes place on screen. Rather than focus on the horrors of WWI, Renoir chose to focus on the social dynamics of WWI.