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Showing posts from May, 2011

Memorial Day 2011: My father the Soldier

(Picture of my father plowing my garden earlier this Spring) My 87 year old father is busy watering his garden so I thought I'd post to say thanks to all the vets and those serving today in the forces. My father was in World War 2 and was with the Fighting 36th Texas T-Patch Division. He was in the Battle of Selestat and received a Purple Heart for wounds. He has almost lost all hearing in one ear since a shell exploded on top of a fox hole where he was one night.  The foxhole had beeen built a few days before by the Germans and was roofed with logs and covered with snow when the shell exploded beside it. My father doesn't tell many war stories but I know he witnessed several of his buddies and his sergeant killed while standing near him.  I know that a guy from New York taught him to keep his head down and to walk on the side of the street and not in the middle of it.  I know that as long as he heard the tat-tat-tat of German machine gun fire, he knew that he had