Seventeen Days Later

Category: Personal Experiences

How were you spending your 19th birthday seventeen days later?

Home, at Last

Category: Personal Experiences

A fallen World War II American serviceman is finally returned to his family after nearly 80 years.

Post 178 Rio Vista begins monthly newsletter

Category: Visual Arts

American Legion "The River Vets Newsletter"

The Warrior Wagon

Category: Personal Experiences

Horse-pulled wagon honoring veterans

A Distant Field: A Novel of World War I

Category: Books

CHAPTER ONE RMS Lusitania 2:10pm, 7th May 1915 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, the south coast of Ireland “Torpedo! Starboard side!” The lookout grasped the cold metal handrail tightly, his knuckles white, staring helplessly as a 20-foot torpedo, travelling at 60 feet per second, disappeared from his view to ram 400 pounds of high-explosive TNT-Hexanite into the majestic ocean passenger liner. The detonation rocked through the ship, instantly killing those below decks where the torpedo hit. Passengers and crew braced themselves against whatever they could hold on to or fell to the deck. A column of water powered into the air and cascaded over the ship, damaging lifeboats and leaving the surfaces slick with water and punctuated with debris. Then a second, much larger explosion ripped through the doomed vessel. The blast reverberated through the metal hull, buckling metalwork and shattering glass. Smoke billowed from the forward funnels, and soot rained down onto the decks be- low. Stokers in the forward boiler room screamed inhumanely as pressurized steam erupted from fractured boilers, blinding and scalding them. Within seconds, steam burned their bare sweat-drenched torsos, plunging them into a sensory hell before they found a merciful death from shock and drowning. No one near the first or second explosions lived. They were either incinerated or trapped in the forward boiler rooms, far below the waterline, as the cold dark waters of the Atlantic rushed in through the ruptured hull to drown those who lay blinded, bleeding, and damaged on the industrial metal deck. On the bridge, Captain Turner ordered a hard turn towards the Irish coast in a desperate attempt to reach safety, but just after the ship altered course, the steam lines ruptured, and the liner’s four Parsons turbine engines failed to respond. RMS Lusitania, once the world’s fastest ship- the greyhound of the seas- suddenly had no power.

Dust-off

Category: Poetry

Incoming beat of helicopter rotors Whipping sand-laden air into The hot pulse of a Blackhawk Flaring with indecent haste A mess of stinging downwash.

Pennsylvania Legionnaire is semi-finalist for Ms. Veteran America 2019

Category: Personal Experiences

Pennsylvania Legionnaire is semi-finalist for Ms. Veteran America 2019

'Final Roll Call' for America's Warriors

Category: Poetry

A poem to honor all of America's warriors on the occasion of them making their "Final Roll Call." This poem has been read at the funeral ceremonies of hundreds of our fallen warriors. Copy and Share it with veterans and their families.

Why I serve

Category: Personal Experiences

Why do veterans continue to serve

Don R. Marsh - French Legion of Honor

Category: Personal Experiences

Tustin American Legion Post 227 member receives France's Legion of Honor Medal

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