We must ride to the sounds of the guns. Yell out 'YGBSM'!

In one of my most cherished flying assignments, I had the honor of being a Wild Weasel. Those are the intrepid airmen who were given the task of finding, then attacking, surface to air missile sites. Those who flew these great aircraft and this most dangerous of missions felt much like the brave British warriors who were with King Henry V at the battle of Agincourt. In Shakespeare's great play about “King Harry,” the King gives one of the most inspirational speeches ever given to a group about to enter battle against overwhelming odds. That speech—the one about St. Crispin's Day—will stir you to your bones. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...” That is from where that line comes made famous by Stephen Ambrose in his book, then television series, about Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne in WWII— Band of Brothers. The tie-in back to the Wild Weasels is that we took on overwhelming odds every time we took off and raised the gear handle. Though we never had any in our ranks who were as eloquent as Shakespeare, we did have a modernized response to going into combat— YGBSM. This acronym means You’ve Got to Be S******g Me. I know, it’s a little crude, but it certainly captured the feeling of most of us. That acronym made it onto all of our unit patches. People used to ask what it meant. Once they found out what we did for a living, they stopped asking. Funny how that works.


“On you Wolverines. Let us ride to the sounds of the guns.”

The point of bringing this long explanation to this edition of the newsletter is to express how we might feel as we fall inside 80 days or so to the election. The odds seem overwhelming, the chances of success seem so slight. Still, we must put on our gear, go to the airplanes, fire up the engines, taxi out, take off and then engage the enemy with cold, aggressive abandon. We must be merciless in how we execute our grim task of destroying those pockets of cancer that are infecting our American body. We must be ruthless, precise, concise and deliberate in our mission accomplishment. Few will follow us, because they are weak, timid or are more interested in going along to get along. Take heart, though.
 As Custer told the Michigan cavalry at the Battle of Gettysburg, “On you Wolverines. Let us ride to the sounds of the guns.” Though his arrogance did him in later in life, he still inspired frightened soldiers to screw their courage to the post and to fight furiously for each other and the Union. There are times when we face what appear to be overwhelming odds in life. The events that are rocking the nation right now are being perpetrated by doctrine-driven anarchists, the very kind of individuals who led the seizures of power in Russia, Italy, China, Vietnam and Cambodia. And where are our feckless elected officials and most of the voices on our side of the aisle? They have been shamefully and despicably silent. YGBSM. The Marxists who founded and still run Antifa and Black Lives Matter are taking advantage of the insidious indoctrination of two plus generations of Americans in an education system overtaken by the evil doctrines written in 1848. The building blocks of Marxism have been improved upon and refined over the ensuing decades. Socialism as an economic system has overtaken much of the industrialized world. We even have remnants of it her. Look at our healthcare insurance industry, social media companies, utility companies, and any number of other elements of our economy where the “state” essentially dictates, through legislation, regulation and rules, who can and cannot enter the market. We must ride to the sounds of the guns. Yell out YGBSM, but take on those threats to our society. Call, write and confront your elected officials.