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    White RAF Roll Neck Sweaters

    Conditions before they went is were not good, either. Poverty is an efficient recruiting sergeant. White roll-neck sweaters, it occurs to me, were probably only RN issue, weren't they? Yet I have seen several photos of soldiers wearing them (in WWII). That's another instance of the...
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    White RAF Roll Neck Sweaters

    There were also a few other things just for issue to submariners but I took no note of them. I find old army manuals and regulations to be fascinating. Soldiers were issued very little two hundred years ago and had to pay for some of it themselves ("necessaries"). But one has to be careful to...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    The 1980s ended with the opening of the Berlin Wall. I saw the wall when I was in the army and even visited East Berlin.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    Well, for what it's worth, two things I remember from that decade were the Muppets and Solid Gold. But my son would remember Knight Rider and the A-Team better. We never went to taco stands, although we have them fairly often at home.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    According to my father-in-law who was living here at the time, MacArthur should get the blame for that. And that's what Truman remembered.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    For whatever personal quirks Patton may have had, I believe he was one of our better generals. But he sure was aware of his public image and the value of publicity. It's surprising he wasn't a Marine.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    There was a cartoon showing two British soldiers talking to a German P.O.W. who was behind the wire. The German said "I'll be in Berlin before you are." One of the British soldiers said to the other, "I wonder how many points he has?"
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    I think that might be the big difference between them and the Vietnam generation. The Vietnam war just seemed to go on and on, especially when you realize that it started in the 1940s. For an American draftee, you went in, did your time and if you survived, as most did, you came home, even...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    My opinion of Carter in all respects has continued to go up, but then, so has my opinion of all the others, including Reagan--after they left office. For those before Kennedy, I couldn't honestly have a realistic opinion. Under Carter, at least, we were never at war. The rest of the time, we...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    That reminds me of something I won't mention but there are people who think "free" means "free," as in something that has no cost but in what I'm thinking of, it has to do with money. There is a big museum that used to be visible from where I sit, if I turn around, until they built a tall...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    I think perhaps people divide up time, in a manner of speaking, based more on events in their own lives than on world events. Of course you can't do that for time before you were born, so you probably tend to see things they way they are conventionally divided, logically or not. In your own...
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    White RAF Roll Neck Sweaters

    I just checked the clothing (kit) scales for the Royal Navy in Annex 39L of the Naval Personnel Management manual and they (submariners) are indeed issued a white wool jersey. They don't seem to be an issue item for officers, though. But everybody gets a "Jersey H/W Blue."
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    I was born in the 1940s and so I lived through all the decades since then. Mostly they just sort of run together without any distinctive break, although I divide my life into certain segments, but not neatly by decade. And I see the rest of time that way, too. For instance, the 1950s only ended...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    Puffed up hair? You would have loved the 60s.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    There is a scene in the WWII movie "The Fighting Sullivan's" of the father letting one or two of his sons try smoking after catching them experimenting in the shed out back. I worked on a tobacco farm one summer and the "tars" they used to mention in advertising is very real. That's where the...
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    I generally don't like any form of seafood, not having grown up near the ocean. The only "seafood" I ever ate was another typically 1950s food, fish sticks. The current varieties aren't bad when smothered in tartar sauce. One food that is so typically American all the way from here to Peru is...
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    Wearing hats: Then vs. now

    Alas! I can't do pictures and anyway, I don't have any of them in a railroad setting. Three of my uncles, my grandfather and at least one or two cousins worked for the railroad, which at the time was the Virginian Railroad. They had a large facility in my hometown of Princeton, West Virginia...
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    Safari Express rifle pic thread

    It is curious how so many different cartridges, mostly for rifles, come to be. And there has always been such a huge variety every since metallic cartridges became common. Usually the older ones disappear because there's something about them that makes them less useful in newer guns. But the...
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    Wearing hats: Then vs. now

    The uncle I referred to above work in a railroad shop. My father was a truck driver. Yet my father, a faithful church goer, would wear his suit all day on Sunday, at least in the 1950s. Saturday was a workday for him.
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    The 80s, myth and reality?

    We were at the local zoo once (The National Zoo in Washington, D.C.) when there was a birthday celebration for an elephant (I'm not making this up). In attendance was the ambassador from Sri Lanka who commented on how the elephant's weight gain was due to his American diet. Like others, I grew...

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