H A P P Y 4 th OF JULY ALL 
© by Catta
Page by Jilli 1998
All Rights Reserved
MAIL From CATTA
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 From: CATTA
To: JILLI
hey lady!
I posted this on the Arkansas forum and, because time is limited, I have
cut and pasted it here for you guys ....if you can post it. I know I'm
kinda late - please do.
I was going to wait and post this tomorrow night kind of for a
Fourth of July special thingy - but the fires are moving closer to us
here and with the winds picking up today, I may not be able to post
anything for a while.
Before I take up space with my little offering, I
would ask all of you who do such things to please keep us here in
Central Florida in your thoughts and prayers.
Especially our
firefighters, who For a month, have been battling wildfires, working
around the clock, exhausted, in 100 degree heat and high humidity and,
from the way things look right now, they have lost the fight. I cannot
speak without tears about the courage and dedication of all law
enforcement and Fire Department people here and the selflessness of
those who have come from all over the country to help out.
These
men and
women, many of them volunteers, are the last line of defense against the
hellish conflagration threatening to consume us. It breaks my heart to
see them, staggering with weariness, weak from heat and smoke and
frustration, silent with the awesome task before them and knowing now
that their best just isn't enough.
Please keep these heros in your
thoughts today....and, in case I am unable to post again for a while,
Happy Fourth of July everyone.. !
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IN CELEBRATION OF COURAGE
Mike's Flag
(Condensed from a speech by Leo K. Thorness, recipient of The
Congressional Medal of Honor. )
You've probably seen the bumper sticker somewhere along the road. It
depicts an American Flag, accompanied by the words "These colors don't
run." I'm always glad to see this, because it reminds me of an incident
from my confinement in North Vietnam at the Hao Lo POW Camp, or the
"Hanoi Hilton," as it became known. Then a Major in the U.S. Air Force,
I had been captured
and imprisoned from 1967-1973.
Our
treatment had been frequently brutal.
After three years, however, the beatings and torture became less
frequent. During the last year, we were allowed outside most days for a
couple of minutes to bathe. We showered by drawing water from a concrete
tank with a homemade bucket.
One day as we all stood by the tank, stripped of our clothes, a young
Naval pilot named Mike Christian found the remnants of a handkerchief in
a gutter that ran under the prison wall. Mike managed to sneak the grimy
rag into our cell and began fashioning it into a flag.
Over time we all
loaned him a little soap, and he
spent days cleaning the material. We helped by scrounging and stealing
bits and pieces of anything he could use. At night, under his mosquito
net, Mike worked on the flag. He made red and blue from ground-up roof
tiles and tiny amounts of ink and painted the colors onto the cloth with
watery rice glue. Using thread from his own blanket and a homemade
bamboo needle, he sewed on stars.
Early in the morning a few days later, when the guards were not alert,
he whispered loudly from the back of our cell, "Hey gang, look here." He
proudly held up this tattered piece of cloth, waving it as if in a
breeze. If you used your imagination, you could tell it was supposed to
be an American flag.
When he
raised that smudgy fabric, we automatically stood straight and saluted,
our chests puffing out, and more than a few eyes had tears.
About once a week the guards would strip us, run us outside and go
through our clothing. During one of those shakedowns, they found Mike's
flag. We all knew what would happen. That night they came for him.
Night interrogations were always the worst. They opened the cell door
and pulled Mike out. We could hear the beginning of the torture before
they even had him in the torture cell. They beat him most of the night.
About daylight they pushed what was left of him back through the cell
door. He was badly broken;
even his voice was gone. Within two weeks, despite the danger, Mike
scrounged another piece of cloth and began another flag.
The Stars and Stripes, our national symbol, was worth the sacrifice to
him. Now, whenever I see the flag, I think of Mike and the morning he
first waved that tattered emblem of a nation. It was then, thousands of
miles from home in a lonely prison cell, that he showed us what it is to
be truly free.
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