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On this very night, 77 years ago, paratroopers were being dropped behind enemy lines on D-Day minus 1. It was my privilege and honor to escort one of them, the late Ralph Yeager, 82nd Airborne.
Lest we forget....
- Thread starter Cabin Fever
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God bless those heroes!
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Sometimes when I see the old guy with the veteran hat I can't help but try to imagine when he was a bad ass and running toward the enemy.
I used to go to church with a vet that was in 82nd on D day, still good friends with his daughter.. He dropped on St. Mere Elgise. Kindest man you could imagine. But no doubt he was a bad ass that day.
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It wasn't until my wife's grandad's funeral we found out he had a Congressional medal of honor. They read the letter that accompanied it. He was at Iwo Jima He never talked about it.
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I have also escorted an Iwo Jima vet in a 4th of July parade. He was a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Marines. He was the father of my wife's employer. That night my wife' boss invited us over to their lakehome to watch the City's fireworks from their lakeshore. All during the fireworks, our poor Iwo Jima vet stayed hunkered down in a corner of the house alone.
Fortunately, due to flat feet, dad wasn't part of the D-Day invasion but he was all over France and Germany afterwards.
Dad told only a few stories about the war and they were all jovial in nature. One was how he was driving a bus full of nuns on a winding mountain road and because they were nervous they started singing church songs and the faster he drove the louder they sang. Another was how he received a package from home and his sister had sent him a can of Spam, but by this point dad was kind of tired of eating spam so after saying a few choice words he opened the window and threw the can of Spam onto the hillside. My favorite was how he was out gathering firewood in Germany and made friends with a farmer who decided to give dad a present, a German Officers Browning Hipower with the German insignias, leather holster, leather ammo pouch and a hand full of German 9mm ammunition. The farmer wanted it to go to a good person and not taken by soldiers policing weapons at the end of the war. When he brought that home after the war my grandmother took it away and wouldn't let him have it until after he was married.
Dad told only a few stories about the war and they were all jovial in nature. One was how he was driving a bus full of nuns on a winding mountain road and because they were nervous they started singing church songs and the faster he drove the louder they sang. Another was how he received a package from home and his sister had sent him a can of Spam, but by this point dad was kind of tired of eating spam so after saying a few choice words he opened the window and threw the can of Spam onto the hillside. My favorite was how he was out gathering firewood in Germany and made friends with a farmer who decided to give dad a present, a German Officers Browning Hipower with the German insignias, leather holster, leather ammo pouch and a hand full of German 9mm ammunition. The farmer wanted it to go to a good person and not taken by soldiers policing weapons at the end of the war. When he brought that home after the war my grandmother took it away and wouldn't let him have it until after he was married.
