[Cog]

I watched this video produced by Black rifle coffee, a veteran owned and operated company, and it made me think of my father and father-in-law. Both now passed within a year of each other at age 91. Both veterans of WW2. Soon there will be none of them left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IpDl4GO-cU

[Ibon]

I watched this video produced by Black rifle coffee, a veteran owned and operated company, and it made me think of my father and father-in-law. Both now passed within a year of each other at age 91. Both veterans of WW2. Soon there will be none of them left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IpDl4GO-cU

My dad also passed away this past year at 92, a veteran of WWII. There is embedded deep in my blood the legacy of this war since my dad, as a soldier, met my Italian mother while stationed in Italy. She was an irreverent metropolitan catholic Roman girl and my dad a rural Pennsylvania Mennonite farm boy. Only the chaos and calamity of a World War could have brought these two very different souls together.

[KaiserJeep]

My Father grew up - to age 14 anyways - on a farm in Oklahoma, which then blew away in the Dust Bowl. They then lived in a black Ford sedan as nomadic crop pickers - as in The Grapes of Wrath. They ended up in the North SF Bay area in Oakland where both my GrandFather and GrandMother got jobs in a shipyard making "Liberty Ships". They didn't know anything about ship building or welding, but they never-the-less each became the "Boss" of a crew of Black laborers who did - because they were White. In 1943 at age 15, my Father joined the Merchant Marine and went to the Pacific theater of war, where the Japanese submarines killed everyone he knew save his parents. Then in 1944 at the age of 16, he joined the USCG, and he hunted Japanese subs on his Coast Guard cutter. His Mother signed his papers a second time, as he was still not 18 years old. This job he held for the next 31 and a half years, when he retired as the most senior Chief Warrant Officer the USCG had, after serving in two other wars in Korea and Vietnam.

My Mother grew up on a dairy farm in rural Arkansas, a place without electricity or a phone as late as the 1950s, the oldest of 13 kids. She joined the US Army and was sent to Korea as a PFC clerk/typist in a M.A.S.H. unit (think of "Radar" O'Reilly in the TV show of the same name). She met my Father on a train and he persued her and eventually they married and I was the oldest of 6 kids. She was highly skeptical at first, she was Army and he was a white-hatted sailor, it was like oil and water.

My Father-In-Law came ashore at Omaha Beach during the 3rd day of the Invasion of Normandy. Recall the first 20 minutes of the movie Saving Private Ryan to understand what that was like. He drove a "Deuce and a Half" truck full of explosive ammunition up the beach through a German artillary attack, and was one of 29 men who survived WW2 in a Motor Transport company, from an original total of 150. He spent two years driving trucks while the Germans killed his buddies, the only time in his life he lived away from his home on Nantucket Island.

They were indeed the Greatest Generation. We have mild angst about nothing very important, they stopped the Axis Powers from conquering the World.

[Newfie]

My Father was in the Army, but was released back to service in the Merchant Marine because so many had already died in that service. My Father-in-Law served in the German army and was wounded three times, the last was nearly fatal.

As I tell my grandkids, WWII was when your grand father was trying to kill your grandfather.

For what ever reason that soapy patriotic propaganda gets on my nerves.

[vtsnowedin]

Ninety nine years ago my father was in camp Devens in the 76th division training in artillery in preparation of shipping out to the Western front in France.
Sixty six years ago my half brother and My future father in law were in Korea and fifteen ears ago My daughter was in Kuwait .
Just by chance of birth dates the family missed WW2 and Vietnam.
It is good to remember the service of our troops and the losses they endure lest we get talked into war too easily.

[Newfie]

Tribe by Sebastian Younger goes into these emotions between military team members in particular. He discusses just how much we humans need to feel part of a community, a family, how many had it's missing from our lives, and how how many folks find it in their units.

It's a great read for anyone truly interested in and concerned with our veterans.

[Plantagenet]

Going back in time a few more generations I've got several relatives who fought in the Grand Army of the Republic to defeat the Confederates and free the slaves and save the union. I was back in New England on Memorial Day a few years ago visiting family and we took a trip to the graveyard to see graves of our extended family. There was a grass hillside covered with graves of Grand Army of the Republic soldiers, each of whom fought to keep our country united and to free the slaves, each grave with an American flag put there for the holiday.

The sight of that hillside and the sense of history there moved me deeply.


God bless our vets

[vtsnowedin]

Isn't Memorial Day just another crap Hallmark Holiday? Do we really (as a people) care about our veterans? I doubt it. After all, why would we have gone to so many stupid senseless wars?

Or is Memorial Day just another excuse to look for bargains for crap that doesn't really fulfill us?

The only holiday I do a lot of shopping for is Christmas. My only purchase today was $2.00 for paper lapel poppies from the VFWWA to remember those lying in Flanders fields and other battle field cemeteries.
The car dealers can have all the Presidents day sales they want but it is a lousy time of year to buy a car so I avoid them and every other holiday sale.
The garden centers were doing a brisk business this week but that is due to the angle of the sun and length of day not just anyone special observance.