Inspirational: My Father Escaped the Nazi’s and Then Taught Me Everything I Know

Popular Mechanics senior home editor Roy Berendsohn sits down with his father Oscar to talk about the advice and inspiration he received from his dad, a veteran and satellite engineer.

For three decades, Popular Mechanics readers have turned to senior home editor Roy Berendsohn, 56, for instruction on nearly any home project, along with advice on the best tools to use for the job. But who taught Roy? His father, Oscar, 91, a German immigrant who helped design and launch two of the most important satellites in U.S. space history.

THE THUMB

OSCAR BERENDSOHN: My father owned a shipyard on a river near Hamburg, Germany. There were flatcars on it that transported heavy machinery on railroad tracks. I was five years old when a hired guy told me and my brother to sit on the flatcar, and he pushed. I sat down, but as it started rolling I got scared and jumped off. When my feet touched the ground, this car pulled me under and cut off my left thumb.

There was one doctor in town and my father couldn’t stand him. So my brother had to go across the river for another. That doctor sewed my thumb back on, but it didn’t work. Gangrene set in. They had to amputate.

ROY BERENDSOHN: I never saw the lack of a thumb impeding my father. He did all kinds of repairs around the house. He plays the piano.

THE STARS

OSCAR: When I was a boy, it was a marvel for me to look up at the stars. I saw a zillion of them. My father had binoculars, and I looked through them to try to see the details of the moon. For as long as I can remember I tried to make the sky closer.

ROY: My father’s life makes me think of what’s possible. That boy staring up at the night sky through binoculars in rural Germany would one day become an engineer who helped make a crucial spy satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope.

THE NAZIS

OSCAR: When the Nazis came to power, my father had to sell his shipyard. I didn’t understand it at first. My father had converted to Christianity. But his relatives were Jewish. The Nuremberg Laws defined my father as a Jew in 1935.

We moved from our small village into an apartment house in Hamburg. I can remember listening to a radio station and hearing glass smash. I thought it was an accident. Then I went outside to the edge of the street. People were smashing the windows of a Jewish clothing store. They smashed all the Jewish stores. I could smell the burning synagogues. That was Kristallnacht.

We felt like pariahs. We had no rights. Anybody could spit on you. Beat you up. Kill you.

We got out by bribing the Honduran Consulate. I thought the Nazis would get us even in Honduras. It was only when we arrived in New York that I could finally feel safe.

ROY: That kind of explains why I’ve been at Popular Mechanics for almost thirty years. I tend to cling to home. I put down roots. I like to stay in one place and get to know the job and my surroundings and neighbors. I think it’s a reflection of both my parents and what they lost when they were young.

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In Memoriam: MSgt. Rodney Buentello, USMC

Rodney Buentello, a retired Marine master sergeant, is being hailed a hero after sacrificing his life to save others.

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help the family of retired Marine Master Sgt. Rodney Buentello, a Marine Corps veteran and Purple Heart recipient, who drowned after rescuing two teens, in Bandera City, Texas, on June 8.

According to Marine Corps Times, Buentello was in Bandera City Park, about an hour northwest of San Antonio, when two teenagers became caught in the undertow of the Medina River.

“A female attempted to walk across the dam (in violation of city ordinance) she was washed off and caught in the undertow,” reads a statement that was released on the Bandera Marshal’s Office Facebook page soon after the incident. “A male teenager went into the water and quickly became caught as well.”

Buentello, who was visiting the park with his family, dove into the rushing waters and managed to save the teens before being dragged underwater himself. He drowned before rescuers could reach him.

Now, family, friends, and complete strangers are rallying on behalf of Buentello’s wife and three sons — ages eight, nine, and 20.

“He was our fellow classmate and our friend so we are raising money to help his wife cover unexpected costs and the immediate care of his young children, as Rodney was the primary breadwinner for the family,” reads a statement on the GoFundMe page.

The statement goes on to explain that Buentello had attended high school in the San Antonio area before joining the Marines and serving one tour in Afghanistan and three in Iraq.

Buentello had also served as a recruiter in San Antonio and as a training chief and class instructor for Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron in Iwakuni, Japan, according to Marine Corps Times.

The Bandera Marshal’s Office concluded its Facebook statement, which has gone viral, with the following epitaph: “Greater love hath no man, than to lay down his life for another. Semper Fidelis.”

The GoFundMe campaign has already raised more than $35,000 of its $50,000 goal.

Read the Original Article at Task and Purpose

Profiles in Courage: The Tank Killers of Roughneck 91

I highly recommend the book Roughneck 91: The Amazing True Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War. This happened early on in the War and did not get a lot of coverage, but next to the Marines at Fallujah, this is definitely one of the most amazing stories of the War. -SF

When a group of Green Berets found themselves outnumbered 30 to 1, they held their ground, and then some.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while the bulk of American forces entered the country from Kuwait, battling their way through cities like Basra and Najaf en route to Baghdad, a smaller contingent entered from the north. Among them was the 3rd Special Forces Group, which, on the 18th day of the war, engaged in the first major offensive by American forces moving from Kurdistan into government-controlled territory of northern Iraq.

Their mission: to sever Highway 2 and prevent the Iraqi army from reaching the oil fields in Kirkuk.

Even after 13 years of combat operations in the Middle East, one would be hard-pressed to find a story that better highlights the effectiveness of the U.S. Army Special Forces as a small and agile elite fighting force. And it all hinges on the heroic actions of two men: Staff Sgt. Jason D. Brown and Staff Sgt. Jeffrey M. Adamec, who’d both donned the Green Beret for the first time less than a year before.

“Two guys shut down the attack,” Maj. Curtis W. Hubbard, the company commander in charge of the operation, later told The New York Times of Adamec and Brown’s actions. “Two guys turned an organized Iraqi attack into chaos. They halted an entire motorized rifle company.”

Officially, the skirmish was called the battle of Debecka Pass. But among the commandos on the ground on that day, it became known as “the Alamo.” And for good reason: The battle pitted 26 Green Berets and their Kurdish allies against a substantially larger and much better-equipped Iraqi force. A 3rd Group company commander later estimated that the Americans were outnumbered 30 to 1.

Read the Remainder at Task and Purpose

 

Profiles in Courage: “He Was One Of Us”

Not sure if any of you caught this story last night on ABC News, but it was a good’un.

It is stories like this that as a historian and veteran, I absolutely love to learn about, mostly because you won’t find it in any official history books.

I did some digging and found this amazing article on Nguyen Hoang Minh and the SEAL’s he helped to save. As you read it this Memorial Day, say a little prayer for this humble little Vietnamese Man and his family…because of him so many American soldiers got to come home from that bloody War. What an Amazing and Noble legacy to have! -SF

“HE WAS ONE OF US”

Echoes from the Jungle

By Mike Hixenbaugh

July 26, 2015

Reporting from My Tho, Vietnam

The last time Rick Woolard left Vietnam, he didn’t think to say goodbye to the South Vietnamese interpreter who had guided his Navy SEAL platoon on dozens of hair-raising missions through enemy territory.

 “I figured I’d see him again on the next tour,” Woolard says.

But there was no next tour. After years of combat and hundreds of nighttime raids – missions that would help shape SEAL tactics for decades – the U.S. began pulling out of Vietnam in the early 1970s. The American public, it seemed, was ready to move on.

Woolard and his teammates moved on, too. Some left the service after the war, settled down, started families. Others, like Woolard, continued serving with the SEAL teams, through the Cold War and into the 1990s, helping shape a little-known special operations force into one of the most celebrated military units in history.

 “Relatively speaking, we’ve all lived pretty comfortable lives since the war,” says Woolard, who went on to become one of the first commanders of Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the Virginia Beach-based unit known as SEAL Team 6.

“We left Vietnam and got on with our lives,” Woolard says.

Nguyen Hoang Minh, the teammate they left behind, wasn’t as fortunate.

He had been so much more than an interpreter. Like the SEALs he worked for, Minh painted his face green and carried a gun on missions. He cussed and drank and chased women like one of the guys. At least once, his blood pooled on the floor of a rescue helicopter, mixing with the blood of his SEAL teammates.

“He was one of us,” Woolard says.

Only, he didn’t get to leave when the war ended.

Woolard and other SEALs were decorated with medals for their bravery; Minh was punished. He was arrested by North Vietnamese soldiers weeks after the South surrendered in 1975, then spent two years in a prison camp. In the decades that followed, he worked a series of back-breaking jobs, earning barely enough to feed his family.

Minh, a folk hero in early Navy SEAL lore, lived a peasant’s life.

In March, Woolard and Pete Peterson, another former SEAL, went back to Vietnam, returning for the first time to the communist country where they once fought.

They went to tell Minh they hadn’t forgotten about him.

Read the Remainder at Pilot Online

Profiles in Courage: Man Stops Knife Wielding Maniac in Target Store and Get’s Sued For It

Just one more sad example that the Target Corporation is nothing but a bunch of assholes that are NOT interested in the SAFETY of your family or mine. First they open up their bathrooms so grown men can assault/rape little girls and boys and now they decide to SUE a brave good samaritan who stopped a murder in one of their stores!!?? Yeah, Target sucks and I hope they go bankrupt very soon.

I would just like to commend this gentleman, Mr. Michael Turner for an OUTSTANDING Open Field Tackle at around :42!!. His actions saved a life!! Let us all SHOW OUR SUPPORT to Mr. Michael Turner who epitomizes the awesome qualities of a CIVILIAN OPERATOR OPERATING AT 110%!! 

I would remind the Corporate suck-ups at Target stores of this fact:

“Violent Crime is Feasible ONLY if it’s Victims are COWARDS!”-SF

The family of Allison Meadows says Michael Turner is a hero for saving their daughter from a crazed knifeman in a Target store—and that the chain definitely shouldn’t be suing him. Turner was among a group of men who tackled Leon Walls in a Target in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood in 2013 after the mentally ill homeless man grabbed the 16-year-old and stabbed her. Target, however, blames Turner for the incident, alleging that it wouldn’t have happened if Turner and his friends hadn’t chased Walls into the store after an incident outside, News Channel 9 reports. He was named as a defendant in a lawsuit the chain filed after Meadow’s family filed a suit of its own, accusing Target of not providing enough security.

In a 2015 interview with KDKA, Turner said that after Walls attacked his friend for no reason, he and three other men discovered he had entered a nearby Target. They went in to hold him until police arrived, but Walls grabbed the girl when they confronted him. Last year, Walls was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison by a judge who criticized Target for suing Turner,CBS Pittsburgh reports. Judge Donna Jo McDaniel said she considers Turner and his friends heroes who saved the girl’s life, and she thinks Target is suing to make the Meadows family back down from their complaint. The trial in the Turner lawsuit begins Monday, and the Meadows family, who WTAE notes had been visiting from Tennessee when Allison was attacked, plan to return to Pittsburgh to attend. (Cops called about an “active shooter” at a Target in Illinois found only an unarmed man protesting the chain’s transgender bathroom policy.)

Read the Original Article at Newser