UNSUNG

What Tom Brokaw referred to as the Greatest Generation as a result of there ability to kill krauts and japs! Over the years I got to know several of them starting with a guy who had polio as a kid and was rejected by the Army. He would be accepted by the Army Air Corp and go on to become a lead navigator in the 8th Air Force. I would work for a former Army Captain who was in General Patton’s G-2. He would watch his Sergeant grab a bottle of hooch left behind by the Germans only to be blown to pieces as it had been booby trapped by them.

I had a drinking buddy who was a Tanker in Patton’s 4th Armor who was weeks away from coming home after fighting in Europe for a couple of years only to have his parents and kid brother blown up in a gas main explosion. Another boss over dinner got increasingly drunk telling me about how he thought he had been a dead man after fighting for four years in Africa, Italy and France. While over lunch another acquaintance began to weep over escaping from the Bataan death march having seen so many of his buddies die from starvation. They saved the world for democracy but paid a huge personal price for doing so!

And that is all I’m going to say about that.