American youth and their nation's history; a dialog between bloggers; Update: Betraying Our History

This was an exchange of comments between fellow blogger/ mentor Ron Barbour and the Tunnel Dweller regarding recent TW posts on D-Day . I found Ron's account to be of great interest and wanted you all to see what he wrote about his father. (Link repaired)

Ronbo:

Thanks for posting the excellent article on D-Day!
My dad was in the Navy and there on D-Day as a driver of a landing taking the soldiers into "Bloody Omaha" - a German 88 managed to put a shell into the middle of his boat just after the G.I.s had cleared off. He was blown up in the air and landed in water just feet off the beach and under machine gun fire.
He said by this time he was very P.O.'d at the Germans (who turned out to be Poles, as they found out later) and started shooting back at them with an M-1 from a dead soldier. The ship wrecked sailors joined up with the infantry and attacked the German machine gunners, since it was clear that if they didn't kill them, the Krauts would get them.
Anyhow, long story short, he and his fellow sailors spent several weeks on the beach, (although no combat after the beach was secured) as the wounded had priority on shipping back to England, and the beachmaster needed all the help he could get...for example, putting the wounded on landing crafts and pulling the dead out of the water.
Did you see, "Saving Private Ryan?" The first part of the movie very accurately followed what dad told me years before about his part of D-Day. The thing dad said he would never forget about Omaha was the sound the machine gun bullets striking the landing crafts made, which was portrayed in the movie as well.
They were tough old birds in those days! I think dad should have received a medal for D-Day, but on D-Day at that little piece of hell they were all heroes. My dad passed away in 1989 from a heart attack that took him out in an instant, but I'm sure he wouldn't like the Navy these days - They did away with the traditional "sailor suit!" Can you believe it? The bell bottoms and Dixie cup hat! Dad loved that uniform and that's why he joined the Navy just after Pearl Harbor!!!

Tunnel Dweller:

I read another account of captured Poles defending Omaha Beach who told our guys they were deliberately trying to miss. That didn't seem to be the case here, but German foreign units usually had a German NCO leading them. He might have put a gun to the Poles' heads.
Of course, If you'd captured me there, I'd probably have told you and your buddies that I was trying not to hit you.
Not many of those guys are left now.  Bill

Ronbo: 

The WW II veterans are dying at the rate of hundreds per day.
Speaking of which - Saturday a young 20 something guy here in Seattle, after checking out my grey hair, asked me if I'd been in WW II when I told him I was an Army veteran.
I told him no..."Vietnam War veteran."
"Did we win that one?" he asked.
I said, "When I left, we were."
Cheers, Ronbo

TD:

Great answer. Typical northwest teenager? Hey, dude, let's vote for Obama, he's like, really cool and stuff.

Ronbo:

As a former high school teacher history teacher (1986-89), I can tell you from first hand experience that history is not taught in government schools anymore.

This is the reason about 10% of the population send their kids to private education, opt for home schools and/or Internet education.
I could tell stories about how ignorant my students were of basic historical facts, such as the girl who believed the London Underground was [were] resistance fighters against the German occupation in WW II, or the boy who thought Florida fought on the UNION side in the civil war.
Cheers, Ronbo

TD:

Well educated history students would learn that Lincoln in the civil war was plagued by slave-tolerating Democrats who were anti-war and ready to sell out the Union for peace at any price.
And that Z-Big Brzezinski wanted the US to fire on Israeli planes just as the Vichy French in World War 2 fought the British and Americans for their German masters. There must be something in American food that keeps our people's frontal brain lobes from developing; they will not learn - cannot be made to learn - anything from History.
Semper Fi,
Tunnel Dweller

Meanwhile, airhead celebrities and  journalists self-righteously pontificate against those who defend America, then sleep the sleep of the secure thanks to the sacrifice of people made from so much better stuff than they.

http://www.clker.com/clipart-24318.html

Warriors of Vietnam, please forgive us for the way we either treated you or allowed others to treat you.  I consider the chicken-foot "peace"symbol- now back in style- to be a slap in your face.   TD 

Update: Betraying Our History "A nation has to have a collective memory of the events that shaped it and a collective knowledge of its most important, essential documents. If the statistics about more recent generations passing through our schools are any indication, they do not.

"That is an act of betrayal. I can’t prove that it is deliberate, but it surely does not bode well for a nation so poorly led by its elected representatives since June 6, 1944 that it constitutes an insult to the sacrifices and acts of valor that day represents."  Alan Caruba; Warning Signs blog

This is the perfect companion article to the former.