For Whom The Bell Tolls

We developed the the 1911 model .45 caliber pistol because the .38's we’d been using would not stop our small Filipino foes. When they became our allies, they fought just as fiercely against the Japanese. The biggest navel battle of World War II was in the Leyte Gulf. It is also where MacArthur landed when he returned. I lived in Leyte from 1970-1972 and was treated like a king. They still, after nearly 40 years, felt a kinship with Americans. When I left Leyte the illegal logging, with the Japanese as the biggest pillagers, was alreadytaking its toll. I helped shovel 4 feet mud out of a school, but it was nothing compared to the burial of what was Guinsaugon. We owe these people a huge debt for the blood that they shed for us, the aid and comfort they gave us at great risk to themselves, and for the kindness that they have shown us over the years, in spite of the cruelty we showed them at times. Please help them. Please also note that the things that we do with and to our environment have consequences, and not just to polar bears. God help us and the Phillippines.

"No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee." From Meditation XVII, by John Donne