My Grandfather drove a DUKW in the Mariana Islands during WWII - To him and all the other combat vets out there, Happy Veterans Day!
(media.communities.win)
🫡 WE’VE GOT THE BEST VETS 🪖
My Uncle Kenny landed the night before D-Day, crawled through enemy lines in the dark with his Ranger buddies, and while men like your Grandfather were landing the next morning, he attacked the Nazis from behind.
Fucking RESPECT.
I get a frog in my throat when I think about the generations we have come from.
We are NOT descended from cowardly men, anons! We have a lot to live up to.
(Edit: I had to edit my post for historical accuracy. Also, that's technically my "great-uncle" btw for anons doing math, but everybody in the fam just knew him as 'Uncle Kenny')
Some great role models that generation!
My Grandfather was in the Navy for the Korean War. On his final Memorial Day he opened to me and my dad about it.
He said he had to operate a gate on a landing craft while under fire (we were given no details of the battle or location), and every time he pulled the lever and dropped the gate, he got to watch some of his buddies get mowed down.
He said, "It felt like I was killing all my buddies." Exact words.
That was the only time in his life he told that story out loud, far as my dad and I know. It was a heck of a "war is Hell" moment.
I think my Grandpa died wondering whether his buddies' death really helped stop communism, or whether they died getting mixed up in some nonsense on the other side of the world that we didn't have any business in. I wonder too - I haven't done too much diving into the ins and outs of the Korean War.
That was 2013 when he told me that. Thank God he doesn't have to see what America's going through now, but if he was here I know he'd be telling us to press in harder.
We absolutely need to learn that generation's strength, bravery, resiliency, determination, discipline, character and honor. But we need to question our leaders more than they did. And right now, more than ever, we need a military that serves the American people.
....Wow. Thanks for the opportunity to write that, fren. Didn't know I needed to.
o7
Well, since we're all comparing our predecessors' war stories, one of my uncles ran a landing craft in the Pacific during WWII, delivering Marines to their destinations.
My father was a bombardier in a B-25.
Neither of them talked much about what they'd been through.