I would like to ask for your support in a political
issue. No you don’t have to choose Democrat or Republican, this truly is a bi-partisan issue.
Over the last 3 years I have become a Veterans Advocate, earning my credentials from the Department of Veterans Affairs
as a Veterans Claims Agent, maintaining the Polk County Veterans Council website, and assisting in coordinating the Veterans
Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day events in our community, well, here’s one more project and I need your help.
When the Cold War ended (September 27, 1991) 18 years ago and the American Military defeated the Soviet Empire, most
Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines just came home and went about their normal lives.
The
Department of Defense recognized the Cold War as an actual war, with real casualties, so has the American Legion, the Veterans
of Foreign Wars, The Disabled American Veterans and the Cold War Veterans Association. Only Congress has yet to see
the same as all of the other organizations.
As the years have passed the Department of
Defense released more and more information, even though much of it is still considered classified and restricted, much information
has come out. I guess the information that intrigues me the most is a list of names.
Do
the names of:
William Meyer of Miami, or
Lloyd Smith of
Deland, or
Pat Taylor of Tampa, mean anything to you?
In fact there are 165 names that when spoken most people say the same thing, WHO?These are the names of 3 Florida
Service Members who have been listed by the Department of Defense as Missing In Action (MIA) during the Cold War, no, not
the Korean War and not the Vietnam War but the Cold War.
Not all 165 service members
are still listed as MIA, some were eventually returned by their captors, while others bodies were recovered and some just
the remains were returned, but all served. There are still 120 names of those whom have never been repatriated to the
United States of America.
Legislation is now before Congress to recognize the Cold War
Service Medal for thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who served honorably in many different places of the
world. Some served right here in the USA during the 24 hours around the clock bomber flights, some served on the borders
of Germany, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Korea, Japan and many, many other places. Some served under the seas and off the
shores of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and many other communist countries.
Some flew
secret missions while many just did their job and stood ready to fight if called upon. And in some cases they were called
upon, called to go to Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Granada, Panama, and Saudi Arabia and many other places.
For 18 years none of these service members have ever been recognized for their selfless sacrifices to protect our
nation.
Please consider signing this postcard and send it to the Senators of Florida,
Senator Bill Nelson and Senator George LeMieux just happen to be on the Senate Armed Service Committee.
For the cost of a stamp, you can show your support for thousands of our
nations Cold War Veterans. Also consider sending one to your House Representative in Congress http://www.house.gov/
"Pay to all what is owed to them ... honor to whom honor is owed."
(Romans 13:7 English Standard Version)
U.S. Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Olympia
J. Snowe (R-Maine), Jim Webb (D-Va.), and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently introduced the Cold War Service Medals Act of 2009,
bipartisan legislation to authorize the secretaries of the military departments to award Cold War Service Medals to American
veterans. No medal currently exists to honor those who served and defended the United States during the Cold War.
“America’s
Cold War veterans deserve every honor we can bestow upon them for their hard work and dedication to keeping our nation safe,”
Senator Lincoln said. “The Cold War Service Medal would allow military service members, veterans, and their families
to receive the recognition and honor they rightfully deserve. I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure our veterans
receive the support and care they and their families need. It’s the least we can do as a grateful nation."
The Cold War Service Medal Act of 2009 would allow the Defense Department to issue a Cold War
Service Medal to any honorably discharged veteran who served on active duty for not less than two years or was deployed for
thirty days or more during the period from September 2, 1945, to December 26, 1991. In the case of those veterans who
are now deceased, the medal could be issued to their family or representative, as determined by the Defense Department.
Your help is being requested.
Both the House and the Senate Armed Service Committees are debating the Cold War Service Medal.
Please send them a postcard asking
them to support the Cold War Service Medal.
If you do not have a postcard, please print this postcard
out and place it in an envelope and address it to your Senators and House represenative.
Please read the letter at the top of the website for some insight on the mission.
Click on the Postcard, Print the Postcard and send
the postcard to you Senators in Washington D.C.
Click here to view the Department of Defense's
POW/MIA website
Click here for still pictures of the 2009 Polk County Veterans Organizations Monument. A tribute to many of Polk County's
Veterans Organizations, including the Cold War Veterans Association.
The Cold War Veterans Association's name is inscribed on this Veterans Organizations Monument to recognize the Thousands of Men and Women who stood in silence
guarding the world's freedom and freed millions of people from the oppression of Communism.
Please remember the 165 Men
and Women who were listed as Missing in Action by the Department of Defense. These names do not include those from the
Korean War or the Vietnam War.
It sprung up overnight in August, 1961--a makeshift blockade
separating repressive, Soviet-controlled East Berlin from the Allied-run democracy to the west. Soon the barrier encircled
all of West Berlin, sealing its two million citizens off from the rest of the world. As escape attempts escalated, deadlier
obstacles were added. Eventually, a 97-mile barrier, virtually impenetrable, snaked along the border between East and West
Berlin. And 28 years later, it came down as unexpectedly as it went up. Observe the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall (November 9, 2009) with a dramatic look at how a line of railway cars and barbed wire evolved into the massively fortified
fortress that came to symbolize the Cold War. Computer-generated imagery, re-enactments, archival footage, and expert commentary
provide political and historical context while helping to illustrate how construction progressed over time--and how it was
suddenly demolished by civilians in 1989.
“At 06.53 pm on November 9, 1989 a member of the new East German government was asked at a press conference
when the new East German travel law comes into force. He answered: "Well, as far as I can see, ... straightaway,
immediately." Thousands of East Berliners went to the border crossings. At Bornholmer Strasse the people demanded
to open the border and at 10.30 pm the border was opened there. That moment meant the end of the Berlin Wall. Soon
other border crossing points opened the gates to the West In that night the deadly border was opened by East Germans
peacefully”
With that being said, the beginning of
the end of the Cold War started. November 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Iron
Curtain, a.k.a. the Berlin Wall and the beginning of freedom for millions of people across Eastern Europe.
On November 7, 2009 the Polk County Veterans Council will host
the 2009 Veterans Day Celebration. The celebration will consist of 3 events, a ceremony at Veterans Memorial Park where
we will dedicate a monument to all of Polk County’s Veterans Organizations, one of which is the Cold War Veterans Association,
a parade will follow the ceremony and a festival will conclude at Munn Park where various veterans’ organizations will
have displays for citizens to see.
One
of those Veterans Organizations which will have a display at Munn Park in Downtown Lakeland is the Cold War Veterans Association
(CWVA). The CWVA will set up a display with a few small pieces of the Berlin Wall brought back in 1991 after the Fall
of the Wall, pictures of the East German Border while it was a hot bed of activity, and a list of the names of the 165 U.S.
Military Service Members who were listed as Missing In Action (MIA) by the Department of Defense, 3 of which a sister veterans
and another 3 were from the State of Florida, Deland, Tampa and Miami.
Information pertaining to service medals which were authorized during the Cold War, such as the National
Defense Service Medal, which was issued 3 times during the Cold War, the Army of Occupation Medal which was issued for service
in Berlin Germany up until 1990, and a petition to Congress to recognize the Cold War Service Medal and the sacrifices our
brothers and sisters made during the Cold War. Application for Cold War Veterans Association will also be available.
"...from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste
in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent of Europe." Winston Churchill, Britain's
Prime minister during World War II. speaking in Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.
By Dale Wetzel - The Associated Press Posted : Monday Jul 13, 2009 21:04:09 EDT
COOPERSTOWN, North Dakota
— A former nuclear missile launch center that closed as the Cold War was winding down opened Monday to a public curious
to see what life was like at the once-top secret site.
The Ronald Reagan Minuteman site, surrounded by wheat and soybean
fields in eastern North Dakota, looked much as it would have in 1997 when it was still active. The former living quarters,
a building that stands about 60 feet above the underground nuclear missile control center, still has the kitchen equipment,
televisions, pool table and magazines it did when the site was closed.
“It’s a true time capsule. It is
furnished in ways that most sites could only dream of,” said retired Air Force Capt. Mark Sundlov, a former missile
officer who now manages the site.
The living area contains seven bedrooms, including one that Sundlov uses as an office,
a commercial kitchen and dining room, a weight room with a stationery bicycle, and a game room.
Visitors can go underground
and view where Air Force officers once sat to wait for a possible nuclear war. It was their job to monitor 10 nearby Minuteman
III nuclear missiles — and to launch them if ordered.
A freight elevator took about 30 visitors Monday to two
cavernous rooms that resemble railroad tunnels, where the underground air smelled faintly of diesel fuel and parts of the
floor were sticky with hydraulic fluid.
One room housed diesel generators and air conditioners to cool the equipment.
Another was for two officers who worked 24-hour shifts. Rows of light on a console showed the status of each missile. One
labeled “missile away” would indicate a launch.
One officer usually slept in a narrow bunk while a second
was on duty. But both officers, along with another pair in a separate facility, would have to give the command for any launch,
Sundlov said.
“We want to beat down that idea that one guy who has had a bad day can push the button,” he
said. “People who don’t know anything about the system, I think they go away feeling much safer.”
Lari
Helgren, 58, a former Air Force environmental maintenance technician, said his visit brought back memories from when he worked
there on the launch center’s air handling systems, diesel generators and warning lights.
“I’ve slept
in this site and eaten in this site, and I’ve worked down in this site many a time,” Helgren said.
“I’ve
seen just about every problem that could have possibly happened out here,” he said.
The missile site, about three
miles north of Cooperstown and about 70 miles northwest of Fargo, is one of a handful of U.S. locations that commemorate the
Cold War. The National Park Service operates a former Minuteman II launch center and missile silo in South Dakota. In Arizona,
historic preservationists operate a former Titan nuclear missile site.
On Sunday, October 23,1983 at approximately 6:20 a.m. 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers were killed and hundreds of others were wounded or disabled. This was the result of a suicide truck, laden with explosives carrying the
equivilant of 20,000 pounds of TNT that detonated on the ground floor of BLT 1/8 headquarters barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.
The largest non-nuclear explosion of its time. Other servicemen from 1982-1984 perished from sniper fire and other atrocities.
Others died years later or are permantly disabled as the result of their wounds. This makes a total of 270 Marines, sailors
and soldiers that died during a peacekeeping mission.
Veterans of the Berlin Airlift were recognized by the German government for their bravery and sacrifice
at a ceremony at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. The ceremony commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Airlift and marked
the opening of a six-week Berlin Airlift exhibit at the Travis Air Museum. To this day, German school children are taught
about the American heroes who came to rescue the city. For more information on the Berlin Airlift, including educational materials,
visit the Department of Defense's Berlin Airlift website, the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation website, the Berlin Airlift Veterans Association website, the RAF Airlift website, the Truman Library's Berlin Airlift website, and the Travis Air Museum website.
TAMPA - Mike Toma had just come off fire watch duty in Beirut, Lebanon, and was asleep in his barracks when a bomb exploded
less than 100 feet away.
It was 6:22 a.m. Oct. 23, 1983.
Somehow, Toma, a 20-year-old Marine lance corporal, survived
the massive explosion caused by a suicide bomber who drove a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of explosives through the lobby
of a four-story First Battalion, 8th Marines headquarters.
"The first thing I remember was waking up in rubble,"
Toma recalled recently from his Lutz home. "I could see the sun filtering through the dust."
The United States
lost 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers that Sunday morning. Toma didn't know it yet, but 15 men in his unit were
dead. It was the largest terrorist attack against Americans until Sept. 11, 2001, and amounted to the largest loss of Marines
in a single day since the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Twenty-five years later, the Beirut barracks bombing is fading into history,
overshadowed by Desert Storm and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But Toma and a growing number of Beirut veterans
refuse to let America forget.
The 45-year-old program manager for the Lockheed Martin defense plant in Oldsmar will
join hundreds of veterans and their families Thursday in Jacksonville, N.C., to remember the victims of the bombing.
"I
think about them every day," Toma said. "It's just one of these things in life you don't forget. It becomes
a part of you."
The annual memorial began in 1984 near Camp Lejeune, from which most of the Marines in Lebanon
shipped. With that country locked in a brutal civil war, President Ronald Reagan ordered Marines into Beirut to help evacuate
civilians.
On April 18, 1983, a large car bomb detonated in front of the U.S. Embassy, killing 63 people, including
17 Americans. By October of that year, Marines were routinely targeted by snipers as they struggled to keep the peace between
the warring Muslim and Christian factions.
Six months later, the Marine barracks were blown apart. The Islamic Jihad
took responsibility for the attack, but it was later thought to be perpetrated by Hezbollah, a known terrorist organization
in Lebanon.
The explosion cost Toma one eardrum and perforated his other. He had a partially collapsed lung and a fragment
chipped off the top of one of his hip bones.
He drifted in and out of consciousness, eventually waking on board the
USS Iwo Jima, where other Marines, including 20-year-old Corporal Michael Corrigan of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit, were
helping with rescue and recovery efforts.
Corrigan, now a 46-year-old Tampa retiree, was a radio operator and driver
who was taking some R&R on the Iwo Jima three miles offshore when the blast occurred. He spent the first day helping injured
corpsmen.
"The walking wounded," Corrigan called them.
Some were on stretchers, some slept on green
metal cots, some wandered aimlessly.
A day or so later, Corrigan was pulling bodies from the rubble.
"It
was overwhelming," he said. "I was numb. We all were."
The bomb had torn a hole in the building that
was some 30 feet wide and 40 feet deep, Corrigan said. It took days to find everyone. The experience changed his life.
"It
made me realize that life is so very precious," Corrigan said. "That in a moment's notice it can be taken from
you."
He left the Marines in 1993 as a sergeant and continued a career in public service as an emergency medical
technician and, later, a sheriff's deputy. Corrigan married an Army nurse and has three sons.
Beirut was a ticket
home for Toma. He re-enlisted in 1984, served until 1990, then graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree
in mechanical engineering. He is married with two sons.
This year's memorial will be his second. And he knows it
can't be his last.
During a meeting a while back with other Purple Heart recipients, Toma met a Korean War veteran
who couldn't remember what happened in Beirut.
Toma wrote down his memories five years ago for his sons. In the
last sentence, he writes: "There is rarely a day that goes by that I don't think of the bombing in one way or another
- it is ingrained in me."
For information about the memorial, go to www. beirutveterans.org or call Corrigan at (727) 742-0995.
Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.
The Cold War Veterans of Polk County support Wreaths Across
America.
Ronald Regan, America's 40th President made
the following comment
"Freedom
is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must
be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children
and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
President Regan also stood by our side during the waning days of the Cold War and said the
following statement in Berlin 1987.
"General
Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization:
Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Freedom has been fought and protected in many ways by many people. For those who never made it home and for
those who have passed on, the Cold War Veterans of Polk County send these Wreaths Across America in your memory.
Please consider
sponsoring a wreath in honor of someone who served you.
Ralph McClintock expected only a three-week mission when he boarded the USS Pueblo in January
1968.
Instead, he and his shipmates became pawns in a Cold War sideshow when North Korea captured the Navy spy ship
and imprisoned its 82 crew members. Some still suffer the physical effects of torture or malnutrition they suffered in 11
months of captivity.
McClintock is proud of his service as a 24-year-old communications technician and the bonds he
made with his crew mates, but that pride is tinged with bitterness.
"We were treated as heroes when we got back,
but what the Navy, the institution of the Navy really wanted, in my opinion, is the Pueblo to have sunk," McClintock
said at his Jericho home. "When we came back, the Navy now has to look at itself and they don't like to look at themselves."
The Cold War – America’s long war 1945-1991. 46
years of history.
After
WWII the Soviet Union took over half of Europe and moved into Asia.Communism is a philosophy of a way life, “All men are created equal only some are more
equal than others” (Animal Farm).
The only things equal among the people governed by Communism
is misery.Hundreds of thousands of people lost their home lands to Communism.
Click on Germany for info about
The Berlin Wall
In 1945 Europe was divided into the NATO countries and the Warsaw Pact countries.NATO countries flourished under freedom and self government
while the Communist countries floundered and began to fail, the only thing they had to export was misery and despair.In the early 1950s,
the Chinese Communist and the Communist North Koreans invaded the Republic of South Korea and President Truman commits U.S. Forces to Korea,
at the same time the French
were fighting the Communist in Vietnam.After an armistice in Korea the United States Military remained
in South Korea to maintain a balance of power.America was tired of war, after all she had fought in WWI,
WWII, and in Korea, but soon she would find herself trying to clean up after the French in South Vietnam.And
so, in the late 1950’s America sent “Advisors” to help fight the Communist in Vietnam.Soon
America became committed to the support of South Vietnam and the defeat of the North Vietnam Communist government.
NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command)
was developed to keep track of all aircraft in the Space and Sky.During the Cold War the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command
kept bombers in flight 24/7 for many decades to deter
the Communist from trying a North American invasion.SAC finally performed a stand down on
Sept. 27, 1991 when President George H. Bush ordered the termination of Strategic Air Command's alert which began in October
1957 following the Soviet launching of the Sputnik satellite. The alert forces ceased operations the next day, beginning the
successful conclusion of the Cold War. SAC alerts had been 24-hour, with precise
requirements for ever-faster takeoffs dependent on the type of scenario in test.Many bases were located in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, England, Germany, Turkey, South Korea,
Japan, along with many other remote places around the world.
The Cold War was primarily a covert war between the
two world super powers under the umbrella of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.It heated up in the 1950's and
1960’s and soon went from the battlefields of Korea to battle fields of Vietnam under the pretense of the Domino Theory,
if one country falls to Communism, it will soon take the neighbor.One hot point of the Cold War happened
in the October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world did not realize how close we all came to inhalation.
When the Soviet Union started building missile bases
close to the Black Sea, the USA started flying the U-2 Spy plane over the Soviet Union.The most famous
P.O.W. (Prisoner of War) of the Cold War, Francis Gary Powers,
he was shot down by the Soviets in 1960 during the Eisenhower administration. Many things happened throughout history, may
things we're kept quite.165 Service Members
have NEVER made it home, M.I.A. (Missing In Action), over 3,000 have given their lives in the defense of freedom during the
Cold War, not including those who fought on the formally recognized battlefields of Korea, Vietnam, and Granada, although
only a few were from hostile fire, many we're from training accidents and others contracted diseases, but no matter what
the cause, dead is dead, disabled is disabled.In 1968 U.S. Sailors were taken as P.O.W.'s from the
USS Pueblo
by the North Koreans, one sailor was killed while the rest of the crew was held as P.O.W.s for 11 months.Weather
formally declared as a P.O.W., being held as a captive by the enemy of the United States is still the loss of your God given
freedoms.You are still a prisoner with no crime committed.
I served during the Cold War (5 years out of 7.5)
on the frozen borders of Czechoslovakia and East Germany.The Cold War produced 165 MIAs, and 3,000+ fatalities.I was in Germany in 1986 when the Libyan’s bomb killed our soldiers (Sgt Kenneth T. Ford & Sgt James E. Goins)
in Berlin, and then the French would not allow our bombers from England to fly over French airspace as we repaid Muammar al-Qaddafi.I was there when Chernobyl exploded and all borders were sealed shut.I was there when the Soviets
shot and killed Major Nicholson in East Germany in 1985.And so were many other Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen,
and Marines.Each deserve to be recognized for their accomplishing their mission, Defend and protect the
Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God.
Here are some Cold War websites to help understand why Lisa and I
join the Cold War Veterans Association and we agreed to be the Polk County Representatives.
“A major guts-ball partof being a military veteran, at least in my view, is when you sign up for military
service in the first place. You're basically signing on the dotted line saying "here's my life -- I commit it
to my country to serve in the armed forces, and I will do what you tell me to do and go where you tell me to go -- all I ask
is that you train me and equip me so I have a decent chance to come home again one day." But when you sign, you offer
your life for your nation. What the nation and the military do with you from that point on is not up to you, but rather up
to them. Military service is not like placing your burger order at the local McDonalds!
Once you've made the above commitment, you then have very little to say about what you're
going to do or where you're going to serve. You go to basic training and then the military, based upon what they've
observed of your abilities, or lack thereof, decides where to send you next. You might go to cooking school or warrior training
or computer electronics or trench warfare -- but you do not get to say "I'm here for hero's school" and
chart your own course. The military just doesn't work that way. You go where you're told and do what you're told
to do and you serve where you're sent to serve.
Some guys and gals get greater opportunities to become heroes than others. Some go to sea in ships and
subs or fly combat aircraft or drive tanks or analyze satellite photos or train others to do these things. And some of these
become heroes and win medals for their heroism and others get stuck with the boredom of banging a word processor in some mundane
building somewhere in the nation's heartland and never leave our beloved America and are never heroes. But is their service
any less honorable? Not in my view. They signed their name on the line and offered their life to their nation -- and if they
then did what they were told and served with honor and were honorably discharged, then they should be treated as such, with
honor and dignity and respect.”
Click on the Cold War Medals to link to
Fox Fall Medals
During the Korean War some served in Korea, while others stayed to maintained the non-stop bombers flying 24/7 while
others manned Checkpoint Charlie, Checkpoint Bravo, and Checkpoint Alpha in East and West Germany, others manned the ICBM Bunkers all over the
USA, Don’t believe me? You can actually buy one now on 20 Century Castles Missile Bases. The same thing happened
during the Vietnam War, the invasion of Granada, the invasion of Panama, and Desert Storm.Everyone who
served honorably between 1945 – 1991 served during the Cold War.
Many people, Veterans and Civilians alike ask, "What
can I do to help?", the answer is, Write your Congressmen and Congresswomen. Both in the House of Representatives
and the Senate. Tell them to support the Recognition of the Cold War Veterans let not one of our Military
Men and Women go unrecognized for their efforts.
(In memory of my good friend from the 1st Infantry Division, SSG James B. Kluegel –March 9, 2001,
Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery and all others who have given their lives in defense of freedom)
03-02-08
A Veteran - whether Active Duty, National Guard, or Reserve, is someone who at
some point in their lives, wrote a blank check made payable to "The People of the United States of America" for
an amount of "up to and including my life".
The Polk County Veterans Council
endeavors to unite all of Polk County's Veterans Organizations to better serve the
Men and Women whom have served our country so valiantly.
The Polk County Veterans Council is - Veterans helping Veterans.
