Men Like This Are Founding Fathers

I know men who made a difference. One was my Uncle Earl Redlin. He fought at Anzio. He matters. He Mattered. I fear for out country when so many weak and spineless men and women who have no stomach for heroism fill our population and our voting booths. We are being set up for tyranny.

Our fathers, the faith of our fathers, the greatest generation, were men and women of courage and valor. We have once more such men and women fighting for our very lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon in Iran. They matter too.
They give me hope that in the generation to come we will get our gonads back.

So, in salute on this May Day I point to one such man of valor who just passed away. We owe him much. Here's his Obituary.

WWII bomber pilot was shot down twice

April 30, 2007
BY RICHARD PYLE
NEW YORK -- Robert Rosenthal, a World War II bomber pilot who twice survived being shot down in raids over Europe and later served on the U.S. legal team that prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, has died.

Mr. Rosenthal, who lived in Harrison, N.Y., died April 20 of multiple myeloma, according to a son, Steven Rosenthal, of Newton, Mass. He was 89.

With 16 decorations including the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for heroism, Mr. Rosenthal was a quintessential example of the young Army pilots who carried out daylight strategic bombing raids against Germany's industrial war machine from 1942 to 1945.

Mr. Rosenthal's 52 missions included one on Oct. 10, 1943, in which his aircraft was the only one of 13 to return from a raid. Rosenthal's B-17 reached England with two of its four engines gone, severe wing damage and two wounded crew members.

His bomber was dubbed ''Rosie's Riveter,'' a play on his name and the sobriquet given to women working in U.S. defense factories.

Mr. Rosenthal's plane was disabled by flak over France in September 1944. He suffered a broken arm and other injuries in a forced landing but was helped to safety by French resistance fighters. Five months later, he was shot down again during a raid over Berlin and got home with the aid of Russian troops, via Poland, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Greece and Italy.

Born in Brooklyn on June 11, 1917, Mr. Rosenthal was football and baseball team captain at Brooklyn College, a summa cum laude graduate of Brooklyn Law School and was working at a Manhattan law firm when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He enlisted the next day.

After Germany surrendered, Mr. Rosenthal was training to fly B-29 Super Fortresses over Japan when the war ended in August 1945. He came home to a law practice but soon went back to Germany as part of the American legal team chosen for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Aboard the ship bound for Germany he met Phillis Heller, another attorney, whom he married in Nuremberg.

During the trials he interviewed ex-Luftwaffe Cmdr. Herman Goering, the highest-ranking Nazi defendant, who evaded the hangman by committing suicide, and former Gen. Wilhelm Keitel.

"Seeing these strutting conquerors after they were sentenced ... was the closure I needed," he said. ''Justice had overtaken evil."