[Ol' Sox]

God bless you and your dad. I've lost both my dad (a China Marine!) and uncle (a Marine Sgt. WIA at Okinawa), and I miss them both very much. Thankfully, I still have my step-dad who was a combat engineer in Europe and went ashore at Normandy. He and his unit built many bridges on the way to Germany and wound up in Czechoslovakia. Bless his heart, it still pains him to talk about what they found there.

[mlmr]

My father helped liberate Nazi prison camps in Italy which were filled with Italian nationals and resistance prisoners. He would drive these poor starved souls back to their families. There was a woman, Laura, a resistance prisoner that he carried to his jeep with a blanket and drove her to Lucca and reunited with her family. Later Laura introduced him to my mother (who he always called "My Little Fascist")and translated for them. My mother and Laura went to an Ursaline boarding school in Lucca...it was according to my father...Italy's version of Miss Porters of Farmington.