Salute!

Salute!

Have you ever thought just how important that wines are in our lives? Every great occasion that we experience is shared with a glass of wine. With our wine goblet in hand we toast each other’s health.  Graduations, promotions, birthdays, weddings and great triumphs are memorialized by raising our wine glass in salute!

With your permission, with this month’s Blog, we’re going to vary off course from our normal discussion of wines. Instead, we’re going to raise our wine glasses in a toast to a group of fellow Americans that fought to protect and preserve our precious freedoms. This month, the last survivors of “Doolittle’s Raid” will meet for the last time. More than 70 years has passed since these brave men flew into the pages of history. Without them, and the countless other warriors of WWII, we would not enjoy all that we have today. So, it’s only fitting that we glance back into our past and remember a moment that changed the world!

Lest we forget, on the morning of April 18, 1942, at about 8:00 in the morning, sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bombers lifted off the deck of the American aircraft carrier…Hornet! They were approximately 600 miles from the shores of Imperial Japan. Led by Lieutenant Colonel James (“Jimmy”) H. Doolittle the planes of this group of 80 volunteers lifted one by one from the rolling deck of the carrier. Still reeling from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941, the United States and its allies needed something to boost the morale of its soldiers and of their citizens back home. This bold and daring venture by “Jimmy” Doolittle and his brave men became the catalyst for the change of the momentum of the war from the Axis powers to America and her allies. Due the embarrassment of the “Doolittle Raid”, the Japanese high command resolved to prevent this from ever happening again by destroying America’s aircraft carriers. A month and a half later, japan suffered its greatest disaster of the war at…the “Battle of Midway”.

 

So, please, join me by raising your wine glasses in a solemn toast to these men of uncommon valor and bravery. At the very moment in our history when courage and sacrifice was needed most, these men stepped into their airplanes and flew into certain danger. With humility and gratitude to each of you we say..

”Thank You, Salute and Happy Days”!