...my father, several uncles,even an aunt who served as a Yeoman in the WAVES; my father-in-law.....all served in some branch of the armed forces during the Second World War....all are now gone....interestingly, none of them really spoke much about their service...
My grandfather never had anything to say about it either, and according to mom and her brothers, none of his regular poker buddies ever brought it up and they all served. They were focused on living, I guess, and grateful to have a future to live in. And those days were only a few years after the war — ten or fifteen years on. These men worked and played as if the war years never happened. Too horrible to mention.
Same thing on my dad’s side. They would talk about neighborhood wars in NYC when they were kids, but nothing about battle.
I had a neighbor who passed on a few years back, he was at Guadalcanal. I saw him and chatted often but I never knew until I read the obit.