RE: Happy D-Day, Everyone!
June 6, 2022 at 10:18 pm
(This post was last modified: June 6, 2022 at 10:19 pm by Jehanne.)
My natural grandfather, Marvin, and my step-grandfather, Ray (who married my mother's mother after Marvin died), were both on beaches of D-Day together. I have always wondered if they had ever met each other! (Unlikely, of course!) My mother's dad (whom I never met, as he died in 1953) did not have enough of war and would go on to fight in the Korean War, where he would die of some exposure to some chemical agent. No one knew if he was poisoned to death or encountered something in his service, except that the Army had sent his body back to Waterloo in a glass coffin.
My father's dad had also fought in WWII, in the invasion of Italy; he was a corpsman whose job it was to clear the battlefields of the dead. During one assignment the Germans started shelling the field of battle and my grandfather's company run to their foxholes. One serviceman, his friend, did not make it, and was blown in half by a shell. He died in my grandfather's arms; his last words were that he wanted his mother.
My Dad was born in 1949; I was born in 1967.
My father's dad had also fought in WWII, in the invasion of Italy; he was a corpsman whose job it was to clear the battlefields of the dead. During one assignment the Germans started shelling the field of battle and my grandfather's company run to their foxholes. One serviceman, his friend, did not make it, and was blown in half by a shell. He died in my grandfather's arms; his last words were that he wanted his mother.
My Dad was born in 1949; I was born in 1967.
