I have worked in elderly housing for the last 20 years and have been honored to know many vets and I have heard a number of stories. Most of the vets have passed on but I will tell my grand kids about the men and what they told me.
I have a good BS meter, the stories that I have confidence in, came after knowing the men for years:
One day I went into the coffee room and got a pot of water. The only person in the room was Joe. I had known Joe for about five years and we talked a lot about the Bible and our experiences living on a farm, I knew that Joe was a WW2 vet but our talks never went passed “I served in Europe” that’s code for that’s not something I’m ready to talk about.
On this particular day, Joe was setting alone (he had recently lost his wife of 55 years) Joe looked at the water and said “many a time I would have loved to of had a drink of water as clear as that” I asked him if he had rusty well water and he said “no, I have drank muddy water out of tank tracts, and wished that I was home and could drink from my fathers well”
Joe went on to tell me that he had walked from the toe of Italy, all the way to the other end and he described how just a few miles from the border, they were ambushed, at a bridge, three of his buddies were hit and laying in the road, while he dove in a ditch, his best friend was one of the ones hit and he was begging Joe to help. Joe just stuck his face in mud and cried, he said that he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind that he wanted to see his daughter again and promised himself that he would help take care of his buddies son.
Joe’s 1st Sargent started scramming FIRE FIRE you #$$#%, that brought him to and he began shooting. About that time he felt a burning sensation in his but (he had been shot) and then someone dropped a mortar on the Germans and it was over. He and his buddy were shipped back to the toe of Italy and his buddy went home with a shattered hip and after a couple of weeks he was well enough to walk all the way back to his unit.
Another time he was behind a small mountain, with a rock cleft on his side, the Germans were walking “88’s” in, by lobbing them over the mountain, a new guy is running around (all the old timers were trying to get inside the rocks for cover) he yelled “get over hear” and made room for the new guy, about that time, a peace of scrap mettle cut the new guy in two.
Joe died about a year later, his wife and kids were already gone and I get the feeling he just wanted someone to know.
I remember trying to calm a WW1 vet who had altimeters,in his mind he was in a trench… the terror in his eyes was unspeakable and he would only calm down after I got may head down. Years later I went threw about the same thing with a WW2 vet, only this time it was Krauts and big dogs chasing him.
On a lghter note, I had a guy tell me that he was on the beach when Mcarthor (SP?) returned to the Philippians. He said that the General stepped out of the boat and went up to his neck in water, and went back to his ship, put on dry cloths and then went back and what you see on the news reels is the 2nd return. I always was leery of his story and didn’t really believe him, until another guy, years later, told me the same story.
May grand dad was a very religious man and he told me that during boot camp, he missed the targets on purpose because he knew that he could not kill, he ended up as a prison guard in Mississippi.
There is a Korean vet hear now and I take him shooting sometimes, he was on a “mortar team” and said that he once had to get a stick and push the dead bodies out of the way for the machine gunner.
We also have a vet who was a Mars Man in Burma, during WW2, he don’t talk about any of the battles but he dose like to tell about working with the mules and his friends, he is the guy who inspired me to get a Kirka. As his stories go, he will get to a place and get a sad look and then start another story, you can tell that some things he don’t want to talk about.
My final tail is of a woman who had been floded. I was helping her salvage some of her personal effects and she was taking everything in stride… until she looked at a picture of a young man in a Green Beret. She broke down and cried, then told me that that was the last picture ever taken of her son. She said that she remembered when her dad went off to WW1 and how she remembered standing on his “fancy boots” while he walked, that was the last time she ever saw him. She lost her 1st husband in WW2, her 2nd husband in Korea and her son and three nephews in Vietnam and now she has a grandson in Iraq and another in Pakistan. I considered it one of the highlights of my career to take the picture to Wal-Mart and after telling the man behind the photo counter what I was doing, he wouldn’t accept my money for making a copy.
If that don’t make you hate war, nothing will!
