Upon my Father

It has been ten days since posting, and I have been quite busy.

Moreover, the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day really bothered me this year, as the anniversary of my father’s death is occurs quite close to it.

He was there, in the very first wave at Omaha Beach, and I will never forget his advice, that if I ever found myself in an amphibious invasion, go in the first wave, as the enemy, though able to fire upon you, is scared- very scared, and by the time the second and third waves hit, he has his mettle and is much more dangerous.

Many have made statements of what a great man FDR was in relation to World War II, and the Great Depression. I will not, as I also remember my Father’s utter lack of respect for him. My Father was born in the early 1920's, in an area of the Republic that is historically dirt-poor- and his family was. He was the eldest of twelve children, of which not all lived beyond their third year, and during the Great Depression, he quit school in sixth grade, so that he could get work to help feed the family, and worked on refrigerators, automobiles, along with any other work he could find-like the rest of the clan (which included running moonshine).

My Father use to say how FDR would swear, during his Fireside Chats, that there would be no war, but, just as so many other young men of his time, on Monday December 8th, 1941, he went to enlist. He was not accepted at first, due to a heart murmur, but nearly every day for seven months, he went to enlist, and finally was approved by the old doctor (whose name I have forgotten) just to get rid of him. The doctor told my Father that he would not last two months, and nearly twenty-five years later, my Father retired from the United States Army after two wars and traveling the World.

I miss him.

--WP