You Decide

Aw, bless him. I remember reading...oh gosh, guess it was 20 yrs. ago...that we were losing WWII vets at a rate of a thousand a day.   That seemed like an unbelievable number until I did the math. Doing the math today, the very youngest of the WWII vets would be 90-91 and that's for those who got permission and joined at the age of 17.

I have an uncle who fought in Patton's Third Army during the push into Germany and I had badgered him for years to tell me about his experiences, but he always just deflected until one day at a family reunion he opened up. By the time he was through talking, he was in tears and so was the rest of the family. It made me ashamed that I had ever pestered him about it for my own morbid curiosity. I worked on drilling rigs, saw some gruesome accidents and a few deaths, but my experiences paled in comparison to what he saw on a near-daily basis.

Thanks Mike. I hope there are no more wars period.

That's really nice, great story.

Well, konane...that's an admirable sentiment and one I think most sane people share, but I bet there will be wars raging until the sun explodes.

Up until that time, all my uncle would say would be slams against the army. He was a minister, but came close to cursing Patton several times. "Old Blood and Guts? Yeah, his guts, our blood." My uncle's close up and personal account of history does not quite match up with that written about in the history books.

I've thought of recounting some of what he told us that day in my LP blog, but just never could bring myself to do it. I used to wonder about one side of my uncle's face; he was a red head w/ a ruddy complexion and with one side of his cheek pitted and pockmarked with what I figured had to have been a bad case of acne as a young man, but I found out that day it was a gunpowder scar from some hand-to-hand combat, the German Mauser going off next to his face. That was when he broke down, telling about that horrible incident...he didn't go into all the details, but since he lived to tell the story, I could figure out what eventually happened in that fight to the death.   I think it was nearly as horrible for him to remember and recount that as it had been for him to live it.

Thanks Sully. I wish every veteran who had no family would have the same tribute paid to them.

Thanks Mike. Actually hoping no more big ones where both sides are financed by the same bankers.