This is the day we honor our war dead. In last year's Memorial Day blog I wrote how we had many service members in our family and none had died during service. They all came back battered and bruised emotionally and physically but we were extremely lucky that we didn't lose anyone.
My dad lost a friend thought during World War II. Dad signed up for the Navy when he was 17. When he first boarded the LST 734, someone asked him if he knew what LST stood for. "Of course", my dad replied "landing ship tank". Nope, he was told it really meant "large slow target!". Someone trying to obviously mess with the baby faced teenager. Many on the ship were years older than he was as the military were taking men into their early 40s. So he was happy when the first group of Marines they were to transport to their destination including another 17 year old. Dad made fast friends when him and they enjoyed what little time they had together. When the Marine was leaving he asked dad to look after his knife as he didn't want to take it with him and maybe lose it. So dad said he would take good care of it.
Dad took great care of the fancy knife and was so happy when they went back to the beach to pick up the Marines. He thoroughly scanned the crowd of Marines but his friend was no where to be seen. Finally someone broke the news to him that his friend was dead. He never even made it off the boat being shot in the neck when he tried to exit. Dad was heart broken and kept that knife for decades till it was eventually stolen in a home robbery. I wished he still had it and would have loved to pass it on to that boy's relatives. So as we remember today, may we honor the ones who gave all in service to their country.
No comments:
Post a Comment