Dear Readers and relatives of service members:
These are two of the men of our military and law enforcement family who gave everything under the most violent and heartbreaking conditions of WWII. My sister’s father and my father… They somehow made it home, but from injury to spirit and body, died far too young afterward.
They truly gave their lives, along with millions of others worldwide, who made it home too, but who were not able to stay– and walked on just a few years later…
This is not ‘happy memorial day’ as some store ‘sale celebrations’ appear to have turned it into by some who are crass of heart.
It is a holy day, a solemn day of visiting the graves, of thinking of all that has gone down: planes, ships, submarines, tanks, wagons, supply trucks, domiciles, citizens who were babies, young, pregnant, just married, brothers, sisters, old ones, hearts, minds, and the soldiers who had many trying to pray them back home again with all their hearts. This is their day.
I live within walking distance of a national cemetery where the lines of white tombstones stretch on and on. There is not a day I do not hear taps, sometimes many times a day… for a once young solder is being buried again today in consecrated ground
To remember today and you and your loved ones… let me just commend and remember briefly here…
My sister’s father: These are two of our family people who served in combat who have since walked onward:
Lucy’s father, Stanley, was a 10th Mountain Division armed Skier ranging against the enemy axis powers in the deep snow covered mountains of Italy during WWII… Stanley was trained in the bone-freezing cold of the Aleutian Islands for long days prior.
When he came back from war, Stanley was so thin, and likely so shaken as so many who served were, by all he had seen. In time though, he went on to marry Lucy’s mother, Spence, a beautiful tall woman who designed cars at Studebaker’s.
Stanley cherished Lucy as a little girl, taking her many places, and he becoming a talented interior designer who had the eye and the touch for it all. He died way too young, receiving a cancer diagnosis when Lucy was yet a teenager.
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Tomas I call my father, 429th Squadron, 2nd Bomber Group. He was lead Celestial Navigator –flying 51 bombing missions into Nazi Germany in B-17 bombers, WWII. Flew Berlin Food Drop behind Iron Curtain/Communist territory when Soviets blockaded food supply to innocent people. Flew Hungarian mission 1956 to evac Hungarian citizens to safe quarter during Russian invasion with tanks against unarmed citizens. He was a Military Guard over Luftwaffe personnel, including Hermann Goering, at Nuremberg Nazi war crime trials.
Though awarded highest honor [Distinguished Flying Cross] and chest-full of medals as Lt Colonel, for saving entire squadrons of planes and crews from German air ambush at night, my father was depleted from the horror of losing entire 10 man crews of Flying Fortresses during steep air battles with German bombers. Meaning men he had prayed with, ate with, showed girlfriend pictures with, befriended, young men whose hearts he knew well… had fallen from the sky to their deaths.
After his retirement from what used to be called US Army Air Corps– now called US Air Force, on GI bill he went to college, became a teacher fo/to black students in inner city Chicago. He too would die far too young, at age 53.
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As you know, men of Stanley and Tomas’ time did not speak of these matters of the atrocities of war. But they were written in their silences, their digressions away from certain topics. Their living too hard sometimes, their ways of trying to forget and live ‘normal’ for which braggadocio or swagger is no help.
Many were bad hurt not because they were weak, but because they had huge hearts…and had no helps for war trauma. Stiff upper lip and all.
Many of us mourn, not on the appointed day. All days. That is how it is with soldier familias. We hope today that many might take a quiet moment to honor those who lost their lives while defending others, and those brave ones who fought in combat who have since walked onward, often far too young.
Most of all, I think/hope that the progeny they all brought to earth— that is, us — that we can live out their/our highest principles of integrity and love for humanity.
I love you all for all your sacrifices and kindnesses.
dr.e