A sad but unusually written tribute. I’m glad the paper published it all.
I feel like I just read a five-minute version of War and Peace.
https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/obituaries/obits/4825048-William-Ebeltoft
the link above is to the actual obituary, and there are no ads there if you use the Brave browser with Shields up.
I’d like for you to read the obit, so your eyes get as scratchy and wet as mine. I enlisted in 1973, and volunteered for Vietnam. Didn’t get to go, didn’t know how lucky I’d been for a decade after, when I thought about how damaged all the Nam vets I’d worked with were. I did go to Desert Shield/Desert Storm, as an REMF. The difference in the welcome we got, coming back, was seriously striking, too. We were called heroes, and greeted as such, instead of criminals. I’d gotten called a baby killer and spat at, about 17 years earlier, when I was visiting my mom. That was what I was expecting, and what this guy probably got, too, when he went home.
WRM, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)