Flyboys Trailer

[CrazySchmidt]

This looks very cool, check it out here.


CS.

[MaXMhZ]

Nice! ...Time for Grennadich Team to deliver! I wanne shoot a zeppelin
Maybe if it's that big I won't miss

[Luckyboy1]

It's kinda nice and strange at the same time to see history come back around in, for me, a very personal way.

My grandfather, Henry A. Merker trained many of the flyers in the "real life" this story was based on because he got involved in WWI alot earlier than most Americans due to a strange twist of fate.

Grandfather recieved his Masters degree in Chemistry from Georgia Technical University in Atlanta Georgia shortly before the dude... whoever he was got shot in Serbia or whatever really started it. Who knows, when the bullets are flying past your head and exploding the head of the guy next to you who passed the mashed potatoes to you just an hour ago, it all is a rather rediculous question as to who started it all!

Just after graduation from GTU, he married a Woodruff girl...

Woodruff = Coca-Cola

He then went to work at a local company that's still in business to this day called Flint River Ink company that makes printing inks. Then for reasons a gentleman doesn't discuss in public or even private, he decided to end the marraige... how did they put it back then?... without ever consumating it?... whatever that means! This is where the fun begins! Even Robert IV will tell you his family has many members who easily and early let the cheese slide way off their collective crackers and this girl was no exception. She wanted to Keep Henry under glass, unused as a husband forever and he he wouldn't go for that. To add some pressure for him to submit, the Woodruff family, who was Flint River Ink's biggest customer had Flint River fire Grandfather and not give him a good reccomendation. Back then, that would about finish a guy professionally, but being a bonehead like the rest of us, he wasn't about to knuckle under.

He joined the French Foreign Legion to get away from them! Kinda extreme if you ask me, but you would have had to have known the man, the place and the times to truly understand what he did and why he did it. As a result, he was a flyer for the French from the start and when we (the U.S.) got involved, he becaome an instructor.

He was trained as a ballonist first and then as a parachutist, where he was called a coward for wearing one... and when you called him a coward, he would without a word, walk right up to the bloke and give him several severe orthopeadic injuries and then quietly walk away! Then he was trained in Spads and then when we (the U.S.) got involved he was assigned to the U.S Army Signal Corps and was posted at Dover training pilots where one day, while sitting in the back seat where the instructor sat, his trainee in front of him froze on the controls while landing. Henry just unscrewed the stick from the yoke and beat the guy unconscious and took the stick and screwed it back in and brought it around to land the Jenny. When almost touched down, the trainee woke up and hit the stick to the left.

Now, when that package of gasoline, fabric, wood, paint dope and everything else highly flammable hit the dirt, like Jenny's tended to do, it compacted mostly at the front seat position pinning the trainee into the burning wreckage. As hard as Henry tried and he had the horrible burn scars to prove he did so, he couldn't save the guy from a horrendous fate.

Despondent, Henry tore off a piece of the fabric from the plane, used a burnt piece of charcoal strut to write and wrote a sappy love letter to his fiancee back in the States. It starts...

My dearest Anna, how I love thee so. Today went well enough for me, but due mostly to my shortcomings, others have suffered fairly for it...

He rolled up this piece of fabric into a steel tube that was used to send messages up and down from the ballonists and he sent it to his lover back home. I have this steel tube at a safe deposit box in Chicago, IL



I'm going to be offline for quite some time. I hope all stays well with you and yours,


Mark A. Merker

[CrazySchmidt]

I enjoyed that story LB. Where are you off to?, you've also been quite lately, what's up buddy?

Anyway hope everything is ok.

CS.

[Luckyboy1]

Well, I'm now divorced again, with the exception of fixing her car when the mechanics can't and her daughter's EE Engineer boyfriend can't and her new boyfriend can't and her vibrator can't even with a fresh pack of batteries... but an old, unemployed and pennyless farm boy CAN and did fix it!

I'm waiting for my unemployment Insurance checks to start coming again and then I'm off to West Texas, OKlahoma, Kansas type area to con the drillers into thinking I can work as a deric hand again on an oil rig in spite of the fact that I'm missing 5 discs from my spine. I'm sure I'll be alright because my own government is sure I'm not disabled, just ask them, all those hard landings back in the Army as a Medic/Paratrooper were actually good for my spine, just ask them, they'll tell you. And besides, all those people who for some reason couldn't fix my ex's car, they all promised to help her move and guess who's the only one who showed up and is helping, with his healthy, surgically modified spine?

I know I shouldn't be giving out my real name and telling you guys unpleasant details, but I wanted you guys to know my family's service to this country is no "story"... and Schmidty, I know you didn't mean it that way, but many of the suburbanite, living in McMansion, driving down the road at 80 miles per hour with a yellow ribbon thingy glued to the bumper all the while calling themselves pacifist types will look at it and because the tale doesn't conform to some sort of relative morality, self centered greed kinda thing they can relate to, they'll wanna discount it as a false tale. Well, look it up with the U.S. Army for all I care.

I'm sorry most can't seem to get their brains around the idea that I grew up on a wheat & cattle operation. I'm sorry that I learned to cut cattle on horseback at 6 years of age, to weld at 8 years of age, to fly a P-51 at 9 years of age and to by the time of my 11th birthday, had my own checking account, owned a car and was responsible for trading 1/12th the world's pasta wheat supply because we raised that much of the Russian Red variety. I'm sorry I served in the U.S. Army at a time when we were under strict orders NOT to wear our uniforms off base or mention even worse, that we had any medals and I knew from the start that my general discharge orders would say that when asked by anyone about my military service, that I was to say...

For complete and accurate information concerning my military service, please contact Defense Department Information Services.

Silly me... at the time I thought it was about stopping the threats to our Constitution and NOT about Vet benefits or anything self serving. To think that way... how would that honor Henry A. Merker?... or Robert A. Merker wounded twice seriously as a tankman in WWII or Rand Russell Merker who died flying helicopters in Vietnam... or any of my Cousins and Uncles all the way back and to present time?... how would that sort of thinking fit into all of that?

So in the end, it is more important to me that you guys know this is true than for me to protect my privacy, or my false sense of pride... after all, I'm not about to make up a Hollywood version you'd believe because a man who's going to be living in a tent as of 6-20-2006 could care less anymore because he's beat and bewildered and can't find his way back home... wherever the hell that was in the first place.

Crud! Sorry about hijacking this thread, but it caught a nerve and I'm kinda emotionally at whits end, so please try and forgive me this much for now.

I gotta get back to moving the ex-wife's stuff because my daughter who's sure I'm a complete loser and my wife's vibrator didn't show again today to help out as promised!

My best to all of you. Just try to remember that just because it didn't happen to you or yours' that it can't and doesn't happen in life and history.

[MaXMhZ]

Gees it's the same everywhere. friggin govs - can't live without them, but you sure can't live with them. As long as they get heaps of money coming in themselves they don't care

Anyway, Good luck LB! oh, and the foreign legion still exists... (no more bi-planes sadly. But they do pay in time and even have good disabilities and pension insurance

[Luckyboy1]

Max, do me a favor and find out if possible something about the French Foreign Legion if you could? My grandfather told me something kinda weird and I'm not sure if it's still true. He told me that when you join the Legion, they give you a new name that can only be spoken by others in the Legion. It was not considered legal or even gentlemanly to speak this name in public or break that rule in any way. As a result, I don't have a name to use, so I can't see a point in trying to research his service to the Frogs. Still, I think that part of his service would be most fascinating to learn about for sure.

I'm only able to grab internet services in bits for the next couple of days by hooking up my PC at theex-wife's place while she's gone, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[MaXMhZ]

It's true allright. When joining the Legion you will be given the French nationality and a new identity. Problems you might have had in the past are of no importance.The Legion will never disclose anything about it's members either. They have a couple of institutions in the south of France where former members can live out their last days, all expenses payed by France. It's not an easy life though, If there's a conflict anywhere in the world, the Legion will be at the frontline... and they're very tough (and brave) bstards indeed
Members do not talk about each other either.
You might get information about your grandfather here http://www.info-france-usa.org/atoz/legion/
There is some info about the legion there too.

[Luckyboy1]

Thanks Max, I've e-mailed them and we'll see if there's anything that can be done, but it doesn't sound promising.

[Luckyboy1]

Just one last little story about a former WWI flyer...

When I was six years old, I was taught how to dig a proper ditch. I bet you didn't know there was a right or a wrong way to do it! In fact, there's a whole discipline to just maintaining the shovel! You need to keep it polished clean and sharpen it about every 45 minutes as you take a bit of a break from digging by sharpening the edge with a file. You'd be surprised how sharp you can get that edge with just a file.

Grandfather did not approve of my Father's choice in a wife and felt her backwoods, Kentucky upbringing was not good enough for his spawn. Fair enough, but he would have been better off to have kept a gentlemanly tounge about him in front of me at least.

I'm out front, turning over dirt to prepare a spring flower garden for Mother and Grandfather pulls up in his Lincoln. He gets out and straightens out his tie and checks his cuff links and walks up to me and says...

Tell that whore that mothered you that I'm here to sign the papers my son needs.

With that, I quickly took the shovel and stuck the point into that mean old bastid's neck. I don't mean up against it... I mean into it! He's backed against the house with a crazed 6 year old holding a shovel IN his neck and dangerously close to ending his singing, or any other kind of days. I tell him...

You will leave now and if I ever catch wind of you disrespecting my Mother ever again, here or elsewhere, I will kill you!

Did the mean old man respond with fear or righteous indignation? Nope! He actually almost smiled as if he was proud of me and said...

Very well.

Just then, my dish-rag of a Mother burst through the front door and said...

Ah, Rand, Bob, Mark...

There were three sons by her and for the longest time, I felt my name was Rand, Bob, Mark but that's a whole nother story!...

Mark, what in heaven are you doing!...

Grandfather, shovel still in his neck says...

Madam, this is between men and I ask you to respectfully stay out of it!

I let him loose and he put a cotton hanky to his bleeding neck, got in the car and drove off.

My Father desperately wanted to beat me for that deal and Grandfather wore a scar from the stitching he needed afterwards to his death. Fortunately for me, Grandfather specifically ordered his son that the issue was strictly between him and me and three weeks later, he formally apologized to both me and more importantly, my Mother, which distressed his wife (my grandmother Anna) to no end!

So you can see, both me and Grandfather are just two sides of the same @sshole coin!


I hope this story gives you some insight into the men who fought, suffered and died so we could have the things we take for granted and so easily disrespect.


Again, my very best to everyone reading this,



Mark A. Merker (and now you know what the A. stands for!)

[Proud IL2 ACE]

The guy who wrote the screen play for this movie was born in raised in my town of Enid, Oklahoma.