Patriots

Since this is the last day of the Independence Day weekend, I thought I would tell you about some of the people that served in the military in my own family. My father was born in 1907, so he was only a boy when we fought in the First World War. However, he had five older brothers that signed up and went to war, a fact that made the newspapers at that time. I remember Uncle Pete, who was a victim of a poison gas attack, and also had an ugly wound on the underside of his left arm that left him with a disfigured elbow. Pete would have terrible coughing fits that seemed to me would be the end of his life right in front of me. He did live to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary, though, probably because of the judicious use of "medicine" that he hid in drawers, closets, the outbuildings and his tool box. One of the brothers, Matt, was the image of spit and polish, and even though he lived to be an old man, he always had a ramrod-straight posture and kept his hair cut short. I was about four when my father went to Sioux City to enlist for WWII. He was anemic and had suffered a nervous breakdown, and because of that was rated 4-F. I remember how angry he was when he came home, because he sure thought he was healthy enough to serve his country. My mother's brother, Everett, got in on the last of the fighting in Germany in 1945. In fact, he claimed that he had fired the last shot of the war. After the armistice was signed and the fighting stopped, he and a couple other soldiers went out into the forest to shoot a wild boar for a change of diet, when they were fired upon by some Germans who had not yet heard the word. Everett returned fire, didn't kill anyone, but claimed the last shot. I think it was all BS, but he made a great story out of it. His oldest brother, George, was a cook, and I loved to watch him break four eggs at a time. Brother Lloyd was in the signal core, and hurt his back when he came down too fast from a pole. Lloyd and George never made it overseas. My wife had three uncles who saw a lot of action in the Navy in the Pacific. I don't know their stories, but two of them had their ships shot out from under them and spent time in the water. That had to be pretty scary. On the other side of the coin, my first father-in-law fought on the German side. He told me that at one point he thought he was playing a joke on his comrades, and inadvertently captured several American soldiers. He had no idea what to do with them so he turned them loose again. My first wife's Uncle Karl was terribly wounded, by the Russians, I think. He took a round from the rear that went through his tailbone and pretty much destroyed his genitals. There were complications, probably infection, and he spent a long time in a field hospital near death. He made it, though, and he and I got to know each other really well. It was an honor to know this man.
I served in the Air Force in Germany for over three years, but I was never in any danger. When the Russians built the wall in Berlin, I was working at a site just a couple of kilometers from the border. From my vantage point I could see the show of force by both sides and all of the planes in the air. Because of the sensitive nature of what we were doing there, we were told to be ready for evacuation at a moment's notice, but it never came to that. There was a lot of saber rattling when the Russians shot down Francis Gary Powers, but nothing came of that either. When it was time for me to muster out in 1963, the rumor mill about being sent to the conflict cranking up in Viet Nam was in full swing. It didn't affect me, though and I was sent home and discharged. Over the years, I have always wondered if I could have held up in battle. Some obscure little corner of my brain still wishes I could have been tested, maybe so I would have something to write about now. I will never know.