In Honor Of My Daddy On Veteran’s Day
He didn't like to talk about the war. But he thought about it all the time.
He wrote “18” on the soles of his shoes, so that when they asked when he was enlisting, “Are you over eighteen?”, he didn’t have to lie. He was really seventeen. That’s what boys did then, to defend their country in WWII — and not lie in order to do so.
He was in the 82nd Airborne. One of those guys who was dropped behind enemy lines (see “A Bridge Too Far”), one of the few who survived. He took a bullet in the arm and it remained there til the day he died.
He started talking about it toward the end of his life, a little. I wish I could have recorded him. But he never, ever would have allowed that.