I think I wrote a while back about that kid named Ray Norris in my artificial and symbolic memory that lived down Hicks Road from us. I assume it is because I know Chuck Norris and we worked together on some of his movies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris
Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris (born 10 March 1940) is an American martial artist, action star, and Hollywood actor who is known for playing Cordell Walker on Walker, Texas Ranger. In 2006, he became the subject of an internet phenomenon known as Chuck Norris Facts.
I recognize the date 5/28/1982 as the official graduation date of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1982. I graduated on 4/30/1982 so I could leave deploy to the Falklands with the Royal Navy as an observer.
This Friday release date was 3 years, 3 months, 4 weeks, 2 days, after 5/28/1982.
3-3-4
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089348/
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
Release Date: 27 September 1985 (USA)
Plot summary for
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
A terrorist, Rostov, is planning to unleash a reign of terror on the U.S. but before he does he decides to go after, Matt Hunter, a former CIA agent, who lives in Florida, who once had Rostov's life in his hands but on orders took him alive, and now Rostov is plagued by nightmares of Hunter killing him. So Rostov goes after him but misses, so Hunter, who has already been approached by his former employers to go after Rostov, after initially turning down the job, cuase he believed that they should have let him terminate Rostov when he had the chance, decides to go after him. But he is only one man and Rostov has hundreds of men ripping the country apart, so how will he stop it. Written by {rcs0411@yahoo.com}
Foreign mercenaries start a reign of terror in the southern U.S. Norris is a recluse who lives in the everglades and is the mercenaries primary obstacle. Written by Scott Lane {rslane@ix.netcom.com}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_U.S.A._%281985_film%29
Invasion U.S.A. is a 1985 action film made by Cannon Films and starring Chuck Norris. It was directed by Joseph Zito. Both Chuck Norris and his brother Aaron Norris were involved in the writing.
Taglines
No one thought it could ever happen here...
America wasn't ready...but HE was!
Taking place during the Cold War, Soviet operative Mikhail Rostov (Richard Lynch) leads a band of Latin American communist guerrillas in a landing in Florida. The invasion force spreads out into the South and causes havoc by firing bazookas into suburban homes, inciting race riots, impersonating the police, attacking ethnic events, devastating a county fair, and planting bombs in churches, malls and on school buses. With terror spreading everywhere, martial law is declared. Only former CIA agent Matt Hunter (Norris), who has had previous encounters with Rostov, can take him on.
I have also wondered about U.S. Navy SEAL Thomas R. Norris. I think I knew him during the Vietnam War, but I can't remember. It could be that he earned the Medal of Honor the same day I did, similar to my theory about U.S. Navy Lt. Lassen in 1968. Reading through this citation for Lt. Norris, I remember some notes I made in my journal one day just after I woke up that seemed very similar and that was before I had read about Lt. Norris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Norris
Nickname: Tommy, Ratso
Place of birth: Jacksonville, Florida
Allegiance: United States Navy
Battles/wars: Vietnam War
Awards: Medal of Honor
Other work: FBI agent
Thomas R. Norris, USN (Retired) (born 14 January 1944) is a retired a U.S. Navy SEAL awarded the Medal of Honor for his ground rescue of two downed pilots in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam on April 10-April 13, 1972. At the time of the action, Lieutenant Norris was a SEAL Advisor with the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team.
Medal of Honor citation
Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris
United States Naval Reserve
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a SEAL Advisor with the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team, Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. During the period 10 to 13 April 1972, Lieutenant Norris completed an unprecedented ground rescue of two downed pilots deep within heavily controlled enemy territory in Quang Tri Province. Lieutenant Norris, on the night of 10 April, led a five-man patrol through 2,000 meters of heavily controlled enemy territory, located one of the downed pilots at daybreak, and returned to the Forward Operating Base (FOB). On 11 April, after a devastating mortar and rocket attack on the small FOB, Lieutenant Norris led a three man team on two unsuccessful rescue attempts for the second pilot. On the afternoon of the 12th, a Forward Air Controller located the pilot and notified Lieutenant Norris. Dressed in fishermen disguises and using a sampan, Lieutenant Norris and one Vietnamese traveled throughout that night and found the injured pilot at dawn. Covering the pilot with bamboo and vegetation, they began the return journey, successfully evading a North Vietnamese patrol. Approaching the FOB, they came under heavy machine gun fire. Lieutenant Norris called in an air strike which provided suppression fire and a smoke screen, allowing the rescue party to reach the FOB. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, undaunted courage, and selfless dedication in the face of extreme danger, Lieutenant Norris enhanced the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=5662&st=&st1=
President Gerald Ford
176 - Remarks on Awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Four Members of the Armed Forces.
March 4th, 1976
Medal of Honor recipients and their families, distinguished Members of the Congress, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Middendorf, Secretary Reed, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ladies and gentlemen:
We are gathered here today to honor four Americans for exceptional military gallantry in the service of our Nation. All four of these men distinguished themselves above and beyond the call of duty. I deeply regret that one of the awards, to the late Captain Lance P. Sijan, of the United States Air Force, is posthumous. The other three, Rear Admiral James P. Stockdale, United States Navy; Colonel George E. Day, United States Air Force; and Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris, United States Naval Reserve, are here with us today.
We confer our highest decoration upon them for their inspiring and heroic conduct. We do this in realization of the simple truth that they have helped to preserve America's future peace by demonstrating through their courage the dedication of those entrusted with our defense. Their bravery places them in the ranks of the finest of American heroes, from the present back to the year 1775, when we were forced as a nation to first take up arms to defend our liberty.
These four men served in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam is now over. But as we today confer the Medal of Honor on heroes who distinguished themselves in Vietnam, we have not forgotten others whose fate still remains unknown. We will continue on humanitarian grounds to press for a full accounting for those men, to resolve questions that keep many American families living in endless anxiety and agony.
The United States today honors four men of uncommon courage with the Medal of Honor, but we can and we must also honor these men by living up to their example of patriotism. We can do this by fulfillment of our own duty as a nation, the highest trust that we bear, the preservation of the safety and the security of the United States in a very dangerous world.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Journal June 12, 2006, Supplemental
There must be some reason to these thoughts I was having awhile back about the opening scenes to the upcoming movie HALO. I was thinking of how the story goes behind the military person that inspired Master Chief. It begins with the real MCPO arriving at his post on some planet. It is an isolated post in some kind of wasteland, desert, mountainous region. He arrives, talks with a few people, walks around. The structure is some kind of pre-fab building with a lot of walkways and observation positions, a lot of defensive positions. You can hear the clanking of deckplates and gratings as people walk around. MCPO finds a place to sit down his gear and look out over the land. He places a photo of an attractive blond woman, a weather forecaster, on a ledge in front of him and wistfully remembers better times. After awhile, he is sent on some kind of recon mission and climbs into an aircraft that is sitting on a landing pad a few levels above the other troops. The aircraft is some kind of advanced vtol craft and you can see some similarities in the window structure to a Seahawk helo. as MCPO pilots the craft up and starts moving out, he sees a large threatening group of one of the planets native species approaching. They move in a long, herd-like stream and he can tell that at their speed, they will definitely over-run the station. He immediately lands back on the pad and runs, with deckplates clanking, but leaving his weapon in the aircraft, and runs down to the main level and jumps over the ledge to the ground. He grabbed a couple of flares on the way out and starts trying to distract the herd towards him and away from the station. They are large cow-sized rat-looking creatures, that are fast, but at his peak speed, he can out run them but he isn't sure if they have greater endurance. He runs out and away for a while and then runs into a cave system that turns into a maze. He has some near-misses from the lead rats, but he manages to leap up onto a ledge and run in another direction although they manage to keep following him. He finds his way out of the cave and sees the station in the distance, thankfully he has bought them enough time to bring all the defenses online and there is a pretty chance they will be able to fight off the herd. As he run towards the safety of the station, he finds himself with one leg hanging over the ledge of a deep gorge, having almost run over the edge. He turns around that the herd is running flat out lemming-style towards him. He curses the rat-bastards just as the first one slams into him and drives him over the ledge along with all of them to their death a thousand feet below. Later, a group of marines venture out to dig him out from under that carcasses of the rats. One makes an off-hand comment about how he thought MCPO was invincible. The scene moves around MCPO as he is lying on the ground and you see a similarity in the shape of his helmet to the look of Master Chief in Halo. Then, the scene changes to the construction of Master Chief. I don't know what MC is constructed of, but if his smallest compenent are nuts and bolts, that is how this scene begins, of his smallest components being brought together through an automated process of construction. The musical theme is some form of classical music but I don't know of any work that would fit. It should match the crude start of his contruction and them progress into some form of elegant theme, an artful dance. After MC is finished, he steps out of the construction chamber, the perspective changes to show that 11 other cyborgs, whatever they are, were being constructed at the same time. As the music score dramatizes the movements, they all step out, then the focus returns to MC. He turns his head to look into the camera and says "I need a weapon." Later, it is revealed that the camera recording all this construction of the cyborgs was actually one of the bad guys recording it all, a spy that had snuck in to the construction facility. The is a subtle difference to the scenes that can later be recognized as being seen through the eyes, or ocular devices, whatever, of the bad guy. It is only later that it is revealed that they special scenes were being seen by the bad guy and that you realize there were earlier scenes where he was watching. The scene changes to some military office. A company officer, I think that would be considered a Major, wants to see an Admiral. The Major appears to have just come from a battle or something, he has mud on him and his uniform isn't really presentable. He is arriving after enduring 12 hours of being trapped in an overcrowded, dark bunker with a blistering, fierce mortar barrage from the enemy outside trying to break the bunker and then he is on a transport, some kind of windowless conveyance that is also overcrowded and hot and filled with the maddening and endless quietly blaring Muzac while the civilians around him are blathering on with moronic idiotic conversations that he can't help but overhear no matter how much he wants to tune them out and there is a communication panel where he wants to send a message to his family because he can't remember the last time he talked to any of them but some moron is doing something moronic on it. He eventually barges into the Admiral's office and the scene is reminiscent in certain artistic elements to an ancient Admirality environment, that type of environment that reminds me of HMS Pinafore, although I don't think I haven't actually seen that play. The Admiral and someone else are sitting around in some kind of stuffy, formal meeting, maybe even sipping tea with their pinky fingers extended, that seems to be a waste of time to the Major. He is frustrated because he lost several men in some kind of battle earlier. The Admiral doesn't want to be lectured because, as he points out to a machine across the room that is stamping his signature on death notices for next-of-kin, he is well aware of the loss. He tells the Major then that they are receiving a Master Chief unit in a few days to help turn the tide in their losing conflict. There are only 12 units so they are sent where they are most needed.
