November 11th..................

At our  Rotary meeting this week the speaker was Don Jakeway,
a veteran of  WWII.  Jakeway served in the 82nd Airborne and
jumped into Normandy on the night of June 5th,  1944.  He
admits to being the luckiest man alive and shared several stories
of amazing close calls.  The experiences shaped the rest of his
life.  A video of his story is here. 

Listening to Don made me think of my Dad.  Dad was a Sergeant
with the 9th Infantry and was overseas for three years, serving in
North Africa, Sicily, France, and Belgium.  He also spent a few
months in England prior to D-Day.

Growing up, he would never talk about the war.  If the topic was
brought up, he would brush it off and change the subject. It was
only after the 50th anniversary of D-Day that he became willing to
unlock those memories and share them.  One day he asked if I
would like to read some letters.  Turns out he wrote regularly to
his mother and some close friends, who saved all the letters and
gave them back to him upon his return.  50 years later, he handed
me the shoebox they were stored in.  "Here you go," he said. 

This is a brief excerpt from a December 1944 letter, written to a
close friend, just before the Battle of the Bulge:

  




















   "Kit, this must sound very jumbled and rather incoherent,
but I have been groping for words as I wrote.  How I wish I
might be sitting with you and Terry.  I know so well that it
would be far easier to talk to you about this and then I could
get across what is really in my heart and mind.
     "There is so much to live for and so many pleasant things
to do for, and with, close friends, that it honestly hurts to be
here.
     "But then two years of combat makes a man sentimental,
even though there is seemingly nothing but cynicism and
bitterness in his heart.  I found out how easy it is to shed these
hurts, for although I had but forty-eight hours in Paris, just
to be where civilians were made me surprisingly happy."

Thanks Dad. 

Happy Veterans Day.