My generation grew up
watching, being entertained by and laughing with so many of these fine people.
Never really knowing what they contributed to the war effort.
Like millions of Americans during WWI & WWII, there was a job that needed
doing and they didn't question it,
just went and did it.
Those that came home returned to their now new normal life and carried on
and
very few ever saying what they did or saw.
They took it as their "responsibility" and their "duty" to the Country to
protect and preserve our freedoms.
American way of life not just for themselves, but for all future generations to
come.
As a member of that “Finest" generation, I'm forever humbly in their debt.
Here are only a few of these silent heroic Heroes that are slowly being forgotten
Do You Remember These Men?
Page #17
Gilbert Roland was a Mexican-born American film actor.
He served in the US Army Air Force during WWII.
Elisha Vanslyck Cook, Jr. was an American character actor.
Enlisted in U.S. Army on 15 August 1942 and served for four years.
William Windom was an American actor.
He served in the United States Army in the European Theater of Operations in
World War II,
as a paratrooper with Company B, 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry
Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.
Kirk
Douglas (born Izzy Demsky)
enlisted in the US Navy with the Sub-chaser in the Pacific, and legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas
before entering the United
States Navy,
wounded in action and medically discharged
during World
War II.
Jimmy Ray Dean became a professional entertainer after serving in the United States Air Force in the late1940s.
Phil
Harris enlisted in the US Navy in 1942, Harris and his whole band enlisted
together and served
until the end of the war.
William Smith a lifelong bodybuilder,
won the United States Air Force weightlifting championship during his time in
the service.
Smith was fluent in Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French and German.
During the Korean War he was a Russian Intercept Interrogator and flew secret
ferret missions over Russia.
Darwood Kenneth Smith “Waldo” was the former child actor in the Our Gang. In 1944 joined the United States Army.
Ty Hardin, (born Orison Whipple Hungerford, Jr.), served in the
U.S. Army during the Korean War.
He was commissioned after attending Officer Candidate School,
and became a pilot
of Forward Observer O-1 Bird Dog liaison aircraft.
Patrick Wayne (born Patrick John Morrison)
the second son of movie star John Wayne.
He enlisted in the United States Coast Guard in 1961, serving for four years.
Edwin
Jack "Eddie" Fisher (born Edwin Jack Tisch) was an American entertainer.
Fisher was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951, sent to Texas for basic training,
and served a year in Korea.
From 1952 to 1953, he was the official vocal soloist for The United States Army
Band and a tenor section member
in the United States Army Band Chorus assigned at Fort Myer in the Washington,
D.C. Military District.
Montel Williams served in the Marine Corps, and also was accepted
to go to the Naval Academy
and eventually became a Navy LT. Williams enlisted in the U.S.
Marine Corps upon
graduating high school in 1974,
completed Boot
Camp at Marine
Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, promoted to
platoon guide.
He was sent to the Desert Warfare Training Center at Marine
Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California,
where he placed in the Naval
Academy Preparatory School (NAPS)
at Naval
Station Newport, Rhode Island.
He completed the one-year NAPS course and was accepted to the four-year officer
training program at the U.S.
Naval Academy.
He was honorably discharged as a corporal
(E-4) from the Marines,
and sworn into the Navy as a midshipman.
He became the first African American enlisted Marine to complete and graduate
both the Naval Academy Prep School and Annapolis,
he completed Naval Cryptologic Officer training. Williams spent the following
year and a half in Guam as a cryptologic officer for naval intelligence,
honorably discharged as a corporal
(E-4) from the Marines,
and sworn into the Navy as a midshipman.
He studied the Russian language for one year. After three years aboard
submarines,
now a Lieutenant
(O-3) was made supervising cryptologic officer with the Naval
Security Fleet Support Division at Fort
Meade, Maryland.
And then beginning a three-year career in motivational speaking.
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