{"id":7474,"date":"2009-11-09T06:05:47","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T14:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/?p=7474"},"modified":"2012-01-29T01:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T09:40:05","slug":"taking-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/7474","title":{"rendered":"Taking a break, simulated Veterans Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"400\" height=\"302\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/embed\/video\/x1ecxv\"><\/iframe><br \/><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Today is almost my day off. So I&#8217;m sort of taking a break. Listening to R\u00f6yksopp. Veteran&#8217;s Day is this Wednesday, but the two schools where I teach have decided on different days for the holiday. So I have half of today off. <\/p>\n<p><strong>dad &#038; war<\/strong><br \/>\nMy dad was a veteran. He ended up in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usmm.org\/ww2.html\">Merchant Marines during WWII.<\/a> The Merchant Marines were not a combat force, they kept the supply lines going and the ships were mostly unarmed. They had a ridiculously insane amount of casualties. <\/p>\n<p>He thought he&#8217;d be killed at any moment, but he wanted to see the world. He delivered supplies to combat zones just about everywhere, was surrounded by lots of violent death, ships sunk, really horrible stuff. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/B\/mehallo_MM.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n<em>WPA Merchant Marine recruiting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usmm.org\/postertrain2a.html\">poster<\/a> by Glenn Stuart Pearce<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dad was pretty sure this was the poster (above) that sucked him in. He signed up at the Philly office; he was underage, but they were taking <em>anyone<\/em> at the time. <\/p>\n<p>Good thing: The Merchant Marine had fully integrated multicultural crews. Bad thing: They also had criminals and total whack jobs. <\/p>\n<p>They were taking <em>anyone<\/em> who could climb on board.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" height=\"295\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fSlXvzNwmKc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>Trailer for Action in the North Atlantic, 1943<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;hollywood&#8217;s version of the war&#8217;<\/strong><br \/>\nMy dad always complained that movies and documentaries revised a lot of what actually happened during the war. Dramatically and politically. It was a sore subject. The Merchant Marines of WWII didn&#8217;t actually get veterans status until 1987 &#8211; and today, the few survivors <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonwatch.com\/bills\/show\/111_HR_23.html\" target=\"_blank\">are still fighting<\/a> for some, <em>any<\/em> form of recognition.<\/p>\n<p>In 1943, he went to see <em>Action in the North Atlantic<\/em> (above) with his crew. He said they laughed their asses off in the theatre. I remember watching the movie with him one afternoon \u2013 his comments:\u00a0 <em>&#8216;I don&#8217;t know where they got those uniforms from,&#8217; &nbsp;&#8216;U-boats can&#8217;t actually do that!&#8217;<\/em> \u2013 there was a lot of giggling.<\/p>\n<p>He often took issue with documentaries that never quite got it right. NBC&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvworldwide.com\/vas\/\" target=\"_blank\">Victory at Sea<\/a><\/em>, he felt, was skewed a bit too much by the Navy. For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fOYLl1e41H4\" target=\"_blank\">this episode<\/a> tells the story of The Mermansk Run (which he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vrcurassow.com\/2dvrc\/maps\/murmansk.html\" target=\"_blank\">part of<\/a>) but, in his opinion, glazes over exactly who is delivering the supplies. And who was getting killed for it.<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, we went to the theatre to see <em>Saving Private Ryan.<\/em> He said the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gZgKo46X8CI&#038;feature=related\" target=\"_blank\">opening scene<\/a><em> &#8216;finally got it right.&#8217; <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>post-war<\/strong><br \/>\nIn 1945, at the end of the war, my father was identified as a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Draft_dodger\" target=\"_blank\"><em>draft dodger<\/em><\/a> by the FBI, arrested and thrown into the Army. He wasn&#8217;t at home when his draft card arrived &#8211; he was <em>in the war<\/em> &#8211; and my grandparents didn&#8217;t speak nor read English.<\/p>\n<p>He insisted on wearing his Purple Heart in basic training. That didn&#8217;t go over very well.<\/p>\n<p>About 6 or 7 years ago, he was in a Veterans Day Parade in North Highlands, California. Regarding his war service, it was one of his happiest moments.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Mehallo, veteran (1923-2006)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/B\/Mike_Mehallo_WWII.jpg\"><\/p>\n\r\n\t<div style=\"float: left; \">\r\n\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-count=\"horizontal\" data-text=\"Taking a break, simulated Veterans Day\" data-url=\"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/archives\/7474\"  data-via=\"mehallo\">Tweet<\/a>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is almost my day off. So I&#8217;m sort of taking a break. Listening to R\u00f6yksopp. Veteran&#8217;s Day is this Wednesday, but the two schools where I teach have decided on different days for the holiday. So I have half of today off. dad &#038; war My dad was a veteran. He ended up in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7474"}],"version-history":[{"count":77,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31161,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions\/31161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mehallo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}