“Old enough to remember a bunch of WW2 vets not much past their prime”
I’m ten years older than you and remember in the mid 50s sitting on Dad’s old woolen USMC blanket watching the military equipment roll by during Memorial Day and Independence Day parades in town. Only ten years after the end of WW II, every family had personal connections to the war and was still deeply thankful for the allies winning the war. Little did we know how precious and fleeting those beliefs and feelings would be.
I’m 61 and as a boy almost all my peers dad’s were WWII vets
As a young cowboys and Indians or rebs and Yankees or us versus krauts or japs
We’d always ask how many folks they killed ....most took it in stride knowing we were grade school
The usual answer was I was too busy ducking I couldn’t tell or I’m not really sure they were far off
One man though who was career marine and was a lt colonel by 1934-64 at that point and had done the Pacific island hopping campaign
He looked square in the eyes and told me more than I could count son....they just kept coming...they were fanatics.....we were lucky we whooped em.
I never forgot that man his dad was like superhero to all of us in the neighborhood
Course nobody ever brought it up again
My uncle killed a young jap in Borneo in a clearing face to face...he took the boys personals and mailed them to his family after VJ Day
It bothered him