The Real Memorial Day
Growing up in DC with a father that was a former war correspondent in WWII was very full of stories of a generation that rarely spoke of the horrors they witnessed in the Pacific and in Europe. Fighting on two fronts with very different battlefields must have been
My Father was out to dinner with his best friend Bob Ruben when my Dad pulled a letter from his inside breast pocket and it was a telegram telling him to report for jump school before his next assignment. Bob smiled and knew exactly what my Dad was up to. Bob knew my Dad was afraid of heights and this assignment was not going to happen. After a nice dinner Bob agreed to swap assignments. Bob would jump over Normandy on June 6th 1944 with the 101st Airborne. He trained with the division so he could do the jump as a journalist. He wrote a book about it and I have it as an unpublished piece of military history.
Soon after Bob took off for Europe Dad headed to the Pacific where he joined up with the Reuters Team in the Philippians. They would always deploy with docking ships and head to the battles as they happened. It turns out that if you have a case of CuttySark you have quite a bit of influence in the field. It was not uncommon for my Dad to draw a great battle to cover. Back then you would just travel with a unit for as long as you could. The ships were slow and the battles were incredibly violent...seeing men die was not something my Dad really wrote about due to the censors and he just did not like talking about it. I do recall Dad telling me about the Nuremberg Trials...as Jew he took a tour of the camps and he told me it almost broke him. To think that people did this to other people...he could not clearly write about it because it was so insanely cruel that words really could not give it justice.
Today is Memorial Day and Dad has been gone for over 10 years now. This weekend always makes me think of those who have fallen and all the stories about the greatest generation. WWII was a romantic war according to some, but war is war. The unity of the world against a common foe was the difference. Religion was not the driver, but world domination by another was.
Please pause for a minute everyday and remember that there are men and women overseas and here in the states doing what they can to protect us Americans from all those enemies foreign and domestic. Americans are hard to define...where are a bot of all on this great earth. Lets please all get along.
I was born on May 30th...the real Memorial Day and my Dad was proud for a few reasons. How fitting.
Peter
My Father was out to dinner with his best friend Bob Ruben when my Dad pulled a letter from his inside breast pocket and it was a telegram telling him to report for jump school before his next assignment. Bob smiled and knew exactly what my Dad was up to. Bob knew my Dad was afraid of heights and this assignment was not going to happen. After a nice dinner Bob agreed to swap assignments. Bob would jump over Normandy on June 6th 1944 with the 101st Airborne. He trained with the division so he could do the jump as a journalist. He wrote a book about it and I have it as an unpublished piece of military history.
Soon after Bob took off for Europe Dad headed to the Pacific where he joined up with the Reuters Team in the Philippians. They would always deploy with docking ships and head to the battles as they happened. It turns out that if you have a case of CuttySark you have quite a bit of influence in the field. It was not uncommon for my Dad to draw a great battle to cover. Back then you would just travel with a unit for as long as you could. The ships were slow and the battles were incredibly violent...seeing men die was not something my Dad really wrote about due to the censors and he just did not like talking about it. I do recall Dad telling me about the Nuremberg Trials...as Jew he took a tour of the camps and he told me it almost broke him. To think that people did this to other people...he could not clearly write about it because it was so insanely cruel that words really could not give it justice.
Today is Memorial Day and Dad has been gone for over 10 years now. This weekend always makes me think of those who have fallen and all the stories about the greatest generation. WWII was a romantic war according to some, but war is war. The unity of the world against a common foe was the difference. Religion was not the driver, but world domination by another was.
Please pause for a minute everyday and remember that there are men and women overseas and here in the states doing what they can to protect us Americans from all those enemies foreign and domestic. Americans are hard to define...where are a bot of all on this great earth. Lets please all get along.
I was born on May 30th...the real Memorial Day and my Dad was proud for a few reasons. How fitting.
Peter
posted by Unknown at 4:29 PM
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