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[WreckWench]

If you are active duty personell in the military and want to go on a SingleDivers.com dive trip we will now offer discounts to you to help make the trip more affordable since we know how little you are paid to help protect our country and our freedoms!

And your premier membership to SD.com will be free!

I'm a military brat and thanks to the men and women in the Armed Services like you and my father....we are the country we are today! And because Freedom is not FREE....I'm going to try and at least make diving with us less expensive for YOU!!!

Thank you again for all the hard work you do on behalf of our country!!!

-Kamala aka "Wreck Wench"

Please click here for our "Divers In Uniform" forum!

[WreckWench]

As part of our tribute to our military....please take the following to heart. My father recounted a similar story when he was a POW in Korea.

In light of the recent appeals court ruling in California, with
respect to the Pledge of Allegiance, the following
recollection from Senator John McCain is very appropriate:.

"The Pledge of Allegiance" - Senator John McCain

As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room.

This was,as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.

One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian.
Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967.. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed.

As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.

Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt.

Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.

One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically,and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it.

That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could..

The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.

As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.

So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance,you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world.

You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,with liberty and justice for all."

[WreckWench]

As many of our members head out to 'the sandbox' as they call it, the opportunity to thank them for all the sacrafices they are making for you and I grows shorter. It is my hope that our "Divers in Uniform" will say hello to us in this forum regardless of which allied flag they fight under so that we'll have a chance to say hello back and 'thanks'! Please take a minute to wish them well! -Kamala aka Wreck Wench