George I respect you very much and all those vets of the greatest generation, and of course all vets. I worked with many friends that were in the WW2 war theaters and I heard mostly funny stories about their experiences like the accidentally machine gunning of a wild pig in the jungle while patrolling for Japanese, and getting fish dinners using hang grenades. Back then everyone of age from 17 to 35 and healthy was in the war. I had one cousin that was a submarine radio operator, one that was a Marine in the pacific and another cousin that was shot down over the North Sea and killed. The WW2 home front for us younger ones, was collecting metal and paper for the war effort.
Then for the Korean area when every one was required to serve, all of my friends mostly joined the Navy, four went to the air force and one in the army. One that made a career of the air force, was in the Vietnam war and shot down near Hanoi, and not found for 30 years later in his crashed jet. His bones were sent home and he was buried in our small home town. At the end of the ceremony while taps were being played, five jets streaked over the cemetery and shot straight up in the air in a star bust. Very moving.
I run into my cousins husband the other day and found out he has leukemia from the agent orange sprayed to defoliate the jungles in Vietnam. What a different world it was then when everyone sacrificed something for the common good.
A rare memory for me doing WW2 was a WW1 vet that had been mustard gassed came up to me and my friend while we played at marching and showed us how to do about face.
