Shaffer
01-22-03, 08:05 AM
They buried World War II Marine fighter ace Joe Foss out at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday. With snow falling gently on the huddled mourners, there was a long drum roll and the sharp report of rifle fire as a company of Marines paid tribute. Then, a single bugler sounded taps.
Joseph Jacob Foss was one of the great American warriors of his generation, a man of enormous courage who during a few months of intense combat in 1942 and 1943 at Guadalcanal in the South Pacific personally shot down 26 enemy aircraft and severely damaged another 14. No amount of training, he wrote in his 1992 autobiography, "A Proud American," can "fully prepare you for the almost inconceivable realities of the dogfight. The early engagements with the enemy can be so bewildering and terrifying that only luck or providence bring the flier through alive."
He recalled, too, how "the daily hell that was life on Guadalcanal -- the nerve shattering, life-or-death missions, combined with malaria and dysentery and poor food -- was simply too much for some men." They broke under the strain and had to be assigned less rigorous tasks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25167-2003Jan21?language=printer
Joseph Jacob Foss was one of the great American warriors of his generation, a man of enormous courage who during a few months of intense combat in 1942 and 1943 at Guadalcanal in the South Pacific personally shot down 26 enemy aircraft and severely damaged another 14. No amount of training, he wrote in his 1992 autobiography, "A Proud American," can "fully prepare you for the almost inconceivable realities of the dogfight. The early engagements with the enemy can be so bewildering and terrifying that only luck or providence bring the flier through alive."
He recalled, too, how "the daily hell that was life on Guadalcanal -- the nerve shattering, life-or-death missions, combined with malaria and dysentery and poor food -- was simply too much for some men." They broke under the strain and had to be assigned less rigorous tasks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25167-2003Jan21?language=printer