From: Ben517@aol.com
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 9:07 PM
Subject: MAIL CALL NO.1744-517TH PRCT-MARCH 16, 2009
70 Pleasant St. Cohasset, MA. 02025 ,781 383 0215 * Mail Call : Ben Barrett  Ben517@aol.com 
 
Hello,
 
Please let me know if you want to receive Mail Calls or if you have a problem receiving them. You can always read back Mail Calls  by clicking on www.517prct.org/archives
Ben
Website                                www.517prct.org  
Mail Call                               Ben517@aol.com
Mail Call Archives                 www.517prct.org/archives
Roster                                  www.517prct.org/roster.pdf

  

Recent website additions:

A Chronology of the 517th PIR

Operation Dragoon Drop Zone Map, by Clark Archer

Marie-Pauline Rostagni 1944

Lt. Milton Kienlen, A Company

Happy Birthday, Col. Cross!

1944 Dec 14 - Hamburg Iowa Reporter - Howard Hensleigh in Les Arc

 

 Reunion info:                                                

                                                           

Dick Seitz

Mark Landreth,  Mark, congratulations on you chronology on the 517th.  I look forward to reading it.  You work is a tribute to you outstanding father, who served his country well in peace and war and made a tremendous contribution.  Too, you chronology  will enhance the history of our great 517th Combat Team.  A big well done. 517th all the way! Dick Seitz
Jay Sutcliff

Hi Ben,

Thanks for all your hard work!!

 I found a copy of “Yank“ magazine Dec 17, 1944.  In the magazine there was an article entitled “The Champagne Campaign". There was no mention of the 517, although in the article G Company was mentioned and I recognized some names. Spencer, Riddler, I believe these people were members of the 517?  On the top of one of the pages in my Dad’s handwriting was “517 PRCT 3rd Battalion”, so I would imagine the article was about the 517.  Were there other units involved with this operation?  There are also a couple of pictures, possibly 517 Troopers??

 Thanks

***********

Hi Jay, This is why we have the 517 Web site and Mail Call so that the 517 PRCT can receive the recognition that it deserves.  The 517 was a Combat Team and not a Division and the media in those days for most part didn't know one paratrooper from another paratrooper and usually gave credit for what the 517 accomplish to the unit  that we often aided, such as the 82nd and others.-Ben
Howard Henseligh

Note to Ben and Lyn Burton-Vickers (widow of David Vickers, G Co.

Although your notes almost say it all, I should add a little about California in contrast to Iowa, Massachusetts and even Florida weather.  In Iowa Massachusetts and Florida, when they announce there is to be a storm, it is best to dig a fox hole or go to the storm cellar.  Here in California the announced storms I have endured in the past two years would be called a gentle rain in the other three states.  We even had an earthquake announced in the headlines that I didn't even feel.  Just when I am feeling so secure, there must be an earthquake in the offing for Menlo Park that will make the great San Francisco quake seem like a baby rattling his/her crib. 

Lyn, this is from the kid that milked a cow night and morning in the winter of '36 when the thermometer got down below zero for more than thirty days in a row.  Howard Hensleigh

Gene Brissey

Ben, thanks for the note. My eyes AR failing me, so is the computer, I'll try to get back soon. Please keep up the good work/
fondest Regards
Gene Brissey 

We have had the following message on a previous Mail Call, but because Donna our coordinator for SLC reunion with for Armed Forces Reunions Com. has been kind enough to send it to us, we have it one more time.-Ben

Thank you, Veterans – for your service to our country.

Donna


 Please read to the end and then click on the website.
 
The elderly parking lot attendant wasn't in a good mood.

Neither was Sam Bierstock. It was around 1 a.m., and Bierstock, a Delray Beach , Fla. , eye doctor, business consultant, corporate speaker and musician, was bone tired after appearing at an event.

He pulled up in his car, and the parking attendant began to speak. "I took two bullets for this country and look what I'm doing," he said bitterly.

At first, Bierstock didn't know what to say to the World War II veteran. But he rolled down his window and told the man, "Really, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you."

Then the old soldier began to cry.

"That really got to me," Bierstock says.

Cut to today.

Bierstock, 58, and John Melnick, 54, of Pompano Beach - a member of Bierstock's band, Dr. Sam and the Managed Care Band - have written a song inspired by that old soldier in the airport parking lot. The mournful "Before You Go" does more than salute those who fought in WWII. It encourages people to go out of their way to thank the aging warriors before they die.

"If we had lost that particular war, our whole way of life would have been shot," says Bierstock, who plays harmonica. "The WW II soldiers a re now dying at the rate of about 2,000 every day. I thought we needed to thank them."

The song is striking a chord. Within four days of Bierstock placing it on the Web, the song and accompanying photo essay have bounced around nine countries, producing tears and heartfelt thanks from veterans, their sons and daughters and grandchildren.  "It made me cry," wrote one veteran's son Another sent an e-mail saying that only after his father consumed several glasses of wine would he discuss " the unspeakable horrors" he and other soldiers had witnessed in places such as Anzio , Iwo Jima, Bataan and Omaha Beach . "I can never thank them enough," the son wrote. "Thank you for thinking about them."

Bierstock and Melnick thought about shipping it off to a professional singer, maybe a Lee Greenwood type, but because time was running out for so many veterans, they decided it was best to release it quickly, for free, on t he Web. They've sent the song to Sen. John McCain and others in Washington . Already they have been invited to perform it in Houston for a Veterans Day tribute - this after just a few days on the Web. They hope every veteran in America gets a chance to hear it.


GOD BLESS every EVERY veteran...
and THANK you to those of you veterans who may receive this !
CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO HEAR THE SONG AND SEE THE PICTURES:
 
 
Before You Go