During the last weekend in MArch, Will & I took a short 4 day vacation up to SLO to go see friends up there and to attend the annual World War 2 Ranger reunion. Thee reunion was a two day event with a kickoff pizza and beer dinner in the hotel rec room and saturday consisted of  going to the SLO veterans museum and watching a documentary on the Iraq war with a q & a session afterwards with the film-maker.  The movie was interesting ( this guy spends a lot of time embedded in units) but I left the q& a session to go take a nap after a 'discussion' broke out comparing the calibar of modern tank thingys to the ones used in WW2. Below are a few pictures taken at the friday night party, which consisted of beer drinking, profanity and lots of cool stories.

 

 

A beret which belongs to one of the WW2 veterans. According to Will, Rangers don't wear green berets but this veteran was in a special forces -Ranger unti thingy which later became the green berets.

 

 

 

Various WW2 Ranger memorabila

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will and Seth. Seth was in battalion during the same period as Will but he was in 3rd Bat while Will was in 1st. Seth works at McCarthy's in SLO and is a cool/interesting guy.

 

 

 

Me with two very bad men. Yeah these guys really don't like Jerry (gerry?).

 

Mitch( left) and Roy (right) both fought in North Africa and Italy campaigns. Roy was awarded the Metal of Valor for his actions in the invasion of Tunisia. What basically happened was his cammanding officer was blown up and Roy was severely wounded by shrapenel ( guts spilling out wounded). Roy then used his belt to hold his intestines in and then went on to lead everyone else and did not stop until the mission was completed.  Afterwards, when he got to the Medic station, he just got in the back of the line and preceded to wait along with everyone else, until he was noticed and rushed in.

 

 

 

Another WW2 Ranger - I think he fought in D-Day also.

 

 

 

Afganistan and Iraq Rangers - Alex, Aaron, Bryce (Will's sparring partner up in SLO) and Rico.

 

It was a very fun night, for they were a very rowdy bunch! There was probably about 15 - 20 Rangers there and most of them served from 92' on. There were 5 WW2 rangers , who all really get a kick out of the younger guys.

 

A few pictures were taken thursday night too at the Mission Grill which has a killer happy hour (1/2 off all appetizers & drinks!)

 

 

 

Me with a bunch of my Sorority sisters . L to R ; Geri, Linda, myself, Somer,Stephanie and Jena

 

 

 

myself, Stephanie ( my old roomate at the Theta house) and Somer

 

 

 

 

Its the tired and pasty group! Myself, Maria & Geri. Those girls had pulled all-nighters that day and were really tired. Those crazy architect majors!