Season 3 Prequel: OPERATION MAGIC CARPET Tribute on Memorial Day 2021... A Replay Before This Year's 2 Part Special Memorial Tribute to the USS Houston and its Crew in 1942

<h1>A REPLAY: Memorial Day Tribute to Friendship &amp; Patriotism</h1> <h1>'Home Alive By ‘45’</h1> <h1><a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-pacific/japanese-surrender/operation-magic-carpet.html">Operation Magic Carpet 2021</a></h1> <p>Operation Magic Carpet was the most extensive combined air and sealift ever organized during wartime. Elmer A. Struss, my father, was an officer in the Navy, one of many assigned this task and helped bring back home millions of soldiers at the end of WWII. It was called… by all the servicemen and women as the scope expanded worldwide as <strong>“Home Alive By ’45!”</strong></p> <p>My special presentation on this Memorial Weekend is of the First Nighttime Torpedo Drop in Naval History, Operation Magic Carpet, and action in the theater of Northern Africa. Today, my words are a tribute to the patriotism about Eagle Lake, Texas’ Three Musketeers, as they were known in school in the 1920s and 1930s… Robert Jack “Coogie” Ney, Elmer Struss and Freddie Frnka..</p> <p>Over my entire life growing up, I heard some pretty wild stories of these three men who fought for our country during World War II. The stories I heard and some treasured pictures from the 1920s dug out of Antonio &amp; Cleopatra cigar boxes go way back before the War. As a matter of fact, before relating their wartime contributions, I want to talk about something else amazing between the three… their <strong>FRIENDSHIP</strong> with each other.</p> <p>Let’s first talk about friendship and the differences in levels of friendship.</p> <p>Good friends are those that care for each other…close friends really understand one another… but ladies and gentlemen, TRUE FRIENDS, stay forever…beyond all words and beyond all distances, beyond all boundaries… wherever they might move to and between one another and absolutely beyond time itself…!</p> <p>You know, speaking from personal experience, we all have made friends in our lives over the years. I suppose I got started in Mrs.