Remembering the Soldiers

We should all take a minute out of our daily lives to remember the soldiers on this Memorial Day.  There are many who paid the ultimate price – giving up their lives – for our freedom.  There were many others who made it home again, some maimed or with other problems, but all of them having to live with the memories of seeing their comrades fall in battle.

No matter how you feel about any war effort, we still owe it to the service men and women, to think about them on this day and to offer up our thanks for their service to our country.

My father, like so many, served in World War II.  He was a tail-gunner back then, but that is really the only thing I know about that time in his life because he never talked about it with any of us.  He did miss out on most of the heavy battles because he had rheumatic fever and was sent to a hospital in England before coming home.

After his return and a job at the shipyard in Houston, he eventually ended up on his parent’s cotton farm 30 miles south of Houston.  I was only a baby then.  I can only imagine what my mother must have thought when he moved her and me to that farm, especially when she was used to city life and had never been on a farm in her life.  But that is a story for another time.  My parents would go on to raise seven kids at the farm in the coming years.

No, my daddy never talked about his time in the service, but yet I knew he was proud to go and serve his country.  He was a very hard working, stubborn man, yet determined and would never give up on anything he started, a trait he passed on to some of us kids.

I’m sure he must have thought about his fallen service buddies from time-to-time and he didn’t go totally unscathed himself, as a small piece of shrapnel lodged in the bone above his eye would eventually claim his eyesight by the time I was nineteen.  He had other health problems as well and passed away at the young age of 55.

I do think of him often, especially on certain holidays and his birthday.  I don’t live in Texas now, where he is buried, but I’m hoping one of my siblings who do will find the time to take flowers or a flag to his grave.  He would like that.