“69 years ago today my father in law was landing in Normandy France in a glider....”
69 years ago my uncle was slowly starving in a Japanese POW camp after enduring the death march. Doing his duty meant sharing his rice with his badly injured friend who ultimetly died.
Another uncle was in Italy doing his duty as a translator in his former homeland.
My grandfather’s duty was to build railroads in North Africa and Iran. He served in both WWI and WWII.
God bless all those who did their duty.
Yes....nobody thinks of the Pacific. My grampa landed on Bougainvile and Tinian before (maybe not in that order) landing back state side with jungle rot and malaria...he was lucky.
69 years ago my uncle was slowly starving in a Japanese POW camp after enduring the death march.
My Grandfather (taken at the fall of Corrigedor) always said it was pretty close to a death sentence if you were over 6 feet tall in captivity. He was 84 pounds when he was liberated from a Hitachi copper mine on the mainland. When I was little, sometimes he'd jokingly refer to it as being "guest of the Japanese Emperor", but when I got old enough to come home late and they were visiting or I was at their place, I'd hear him having dreams about it (Pops too, who was a decorated helo pilot during Vietnam). THAT really brings it home...
69 years ago today great-uncle was on New Guinea.