embyquinn wrote:My father served in World War II. He was there on the beach at Normandy. He saved his CO from a bombing run...then turned down a Purple Heart for his injury. (He got a piece of shrapnel...in his left butt cheek.) He captured four German soldiers singlehanded (but to hear him tell it, he picked up four frightened teenagers who were cold and starving and took them in to give them food and shelter) and received a Silver Star (which he tried to turn down but wasn't allowed to). He was the European Theater's version of Radar O'Reilly, a radar corporal who kept the jeeps running and the supplies moving. Everyone called him "Slim Jim" because he was 6 feet tall and weighed about 140 pounds. (He was named after a radio antenna, not the snack or the carjacking tool.)
He was a hell of a guy and I'm proud to be his daughter.
he IS a hell of a guy
... and you have every reason in the world to be proud of him
and from my own many years of studying history ... I can believe him the way he describes the German soldiers he captured ... by the time of the Invasion of Normandy ... a great many of the German soldiers WERE nothing more than teenagers ... who were answering their country's call to duty
... most Americans dont fully realize just how young soldiers can be ............ when I graduated from Parris Island, I was 17, I wasnt old enough to be sent into a combat zone yet