over France in WW2.
I'm sure it was a handwritten and thanscribed piece and it is good reading.
It is not some poilshed and highly edited piece, but the simple words of a guy that probably finished high school and traded in a pair of feed store jeans for the uniform of an airman.
In short, it is refreshing reading and I am grateful the author's son passed it on for me to enjoy. I'm about halfway through it.
The WW2 people are people I'm pretty comfortable with. I grew up with them. They were my parents, and neighbors. Just about every one of my friends dads were involved in the war somehow, most of them were in uniform.
A couple were in essential industry and as long as they stayed there they were ineligible for the draft. My uncle was taken into the OSS as a civilian and ordered NOT to join the army as he was assigned to be a teacher. He taught OSS agents to communicate in Morse code, as he had been a very active ham operator.
WW2 changed this country in ways you would not believe. Prior to the war you were either pretty well off and got an education or you worked for a living. A relative of mine told me that even though he had done well in high school, college was not even a dream.
The GI bill changed that and put an awful lot of people in the classroom that could not otherwise afford it.
It also started to lay out the groundwork for ending Jim Crow and shortly after the war, Harry Truman integrated the services.
No event I can think of has changed the country more than WW2 did.
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In other news, yesterday I was headed out to get some grub and Neighbor Bob's wife asked me to pick her up some limes to make pie with. I also realized there is an old bottle of gin sitting around in a cabinet so I decided to grab a couple for myself.
As I was checking out, I grinned and told the cashier I was joining the British Navy and bringing these along to prevent scurvy. She's a peppery old gal. SHe snickered and answered that what I was most likely doing is getting ready to get thwacked on gin.
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Neighbor Bob and I were yakking last night about doing a breakfast club thing. We narrowed it down to either a huge 28 ounce steak and 4 eggs or Piccolo's Amazing biscuits and gravy. The steak and eggs meal is called an invasion breakfast because it is generally served by the Navy to troops headed ashore on an invasion.
Either of the 2 aforementioned meals are a good way to start the day as you won't even be able to eat so much as an M&M until late in the afternoon.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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My late Grandad was a Navy cook in WW2.
ReplyDeleteI remember him saying something like "Steak and Eggs kept you feeling full, and corked your balloon knot up tight so you wouldn't crap yourself when the fist bullet whisteled past your noggin.