My godfather was in WWII and went from Africa up through Italy. He said they slept in their fox holes and didn’t get a shower or bath from October until April. He didn’t say much about it except you can’t understand unless you were there.
*** He didn’t say much about it except you can’t understand unless you were there.***
That was my FIL. I remember one year when my kids were in grade school and learning about WWII in social studies class. If the students knew a veteran they were encouraged to write them a thank you letter, and if they didn’t, names were provided. So our son wrote to his grandpa.
When we saw him at Thanksgiving, my son asked him if he got his letter, and grandpa said yes. Then my son told him he’d like to hear from him what it was like. Grandpa simply said, “You don’t want to know. It wasn’t very nice.” He left it right there. That was it. No more conversation than that.
My husband is the only boy in his family, so we have all of Grandpa’s medals, including his Purple Heart. These men didn’t want to talk about what they saw, and what they had to do.
My own father is several years younger, and would be 95 this year if he were still with us. He served on the back end of the war, during the Berlin airlift, and then at the beginning of the Korean War. If it weren’t for his records, we wouldn’t know much about his experience either.
God bless these men and what they endured.