[chuckles]

My father has been gone now for almost 20 years. He was a bottom turret gunner and a bombardier on a B 24 Liberator. He would tell stories sometime about how it really was when a war movie would come on TV. Jimmy Stuart was his commanding officer. I have a picture of him receiving his DFC and his 4 Oak Leaf Clusters. He would tell me that he knew some of the bombs were hitting schools and hospitals along with the target. The planes flew in formation so they carpet bombed everything including individual homes. He was prepared for this job by knowing some of his friends had been impaled on pitchforks with 11 yo kids. The mom would come out of the house with butcher knives to gut wounded airmen laying on the ground. The Hitler Youth's main goal was to find parachutes that had wounded soldiers and kill them, even with clubs if that's all they had.

As my father would see a hospital blow up, he knew those soldiers would not be returning to the fight and the doctors and nurses would not heal the enemy. He explained that when you declare war, it's on everybody. There is no "Kings X" for people that didn't want to fight. As he flew over the countryside, if he had the ammo, he trained his dual 50's on trucks and trains, and rake streets on his way back to England. He went over with an original 50,000 men, but left the military with less than 50 of the original deployment. His plane was the "Male Call" so he made 30 missions successfully and kept in touch with His crew after the war. Several of the crew had been wounded and killed, so out of the original crew only 4-5 survived.

He came to gripes with what happened over there by keeping things in perspective. He lost so many friends and acquaintances he had no problem maintaining the hate necessary to justify what happened. For every German woman that died or child that died, he knew as many Americas that wouldn't be coming home.

He knew that when the people back home stop supporting the war, the war will end. If the right Germans had died, someone would put a bullet in Hitlers head. Sure enough, as we tried to kill just the "right" people in Viet Nam, the war took so many American lives the War became unpopular back home. We won every battle over there, but lost the war in the end. War should be total. It's quicker and more savage to be unthinkable for the people that will lose. IMO, in the long run it will take fewer lives if everybody is involved in it.

When the new civil war comes to America, will you hold your fire because the person is 17 yo with body piercings and a circled "A" tattooed on their forehead? Will Jane Fonda be on your do not kill list? Is George Soros too old? How about the NYC congresswoman Cortez because she is too stupid to shoot? If you are fighting for your country, there should only be enemy or not enemy for you.

This poor man written about in the article fretted over a random shot 70+ years ago, and she probably voted Hitler into office in the first place. I'm sure all the dead Germans wanted to get married and have children and live happily ever after. So did a lot of GI's.

[whistleduck]

My best buddy (deceased) survived as an infantryman in the ETO. He said the cruelest most savage of the Nazis were the Hitler youth. They would torture a GI, restrain him and use his screams/moans as bait. He had multiple pictures of groups of women and kids he had eliminated. It was them or us he noted. Some were cooked almost to nothing but bones. It was, once in Germany, in parts as brutal as the war in the Pacific.