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| Steyn: Irony Alert | ||
| 2014-04-13 | ||
Which was the reason they buried him at Arlington. Larry didn't like to talk about his heroism that day. As he told Senator Harlan Matthews during his nomination hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "I was 18 years old and I was on board the SS Horace Bushnell in a convoy to Murmansk, which was an all-volunteer run known as the 'Suicide Mission.' We were torpedoed 15 miles off Murmansk. I was just coming out of the hole, and everybody down below was killed. I was thrown clear. I am told - - I have no memory of what happened -- that thereafter I suffered a serious concussion and was taken in a coma, subsequently, after going in the water, to Murmansk, then Scotland, and back to New York and home. It is something I do not particularly relish remembering for the record, Senator. You know. You were there. I told them to mail me the medal, but my wife insisted that we have the ceremony." He was so modest and retiring about what he'd done in the dark frigid waters off Murmansk on that "suicide mission" that Dianne Feinstein had to finish the story and tell how he had ignored his own grave wounds to rescue his wounded comrades. Senator Feinstein pronounced him a hero. No wonder they buried him at Arlington. The only problem was none of it was true. He'd never graduated from the University of Arizona, never played professional football, never been torpedoed off Murmansk, or indeed served in the military at all. And he'd never been vice-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize nominating commission. When it all came out, and the fulsome obituaries were replaced by the emptysome rewrites, they dug him up from Arlington in the dead of night and shipped him back to San Diego, to be buried near his merry widow's country club.
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| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 Torpedoed off Kilden Light 1945, repaired and rebuilt as fish carrier, scrapped 1978 5 KIA in the crew. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-04-13 11:54 |