Veterans' Day
Veterans:
Thank you for your service.
My veteran thoughts
My grandfather served in Europe, mostly as a liaison between the Army Air Corps and the RAF. Got a Bronze Star. No idea what he did for it.
He wrote about 700 letters home to my grandmother, and she saved them all. My father went through them and got the best ones scanned and transcribed, and assembled them into a book.
My father-in-law's father served in the Navy in the Pacific. His last assignment involved 45 straight days of shelling Okinawa, with a two day resupply break. It included liberty on an island so bleak that only half the crew bothered going ashore.
He was promoted to command his destroyer. Six days later it was hit by shore fire. He was in command of fire suppression and the attempts to refloat it, then he led the abandon ship order. Until shore fire hit the bridge. Most of the crew survived, but he didn't.
An uncle served in the Navy, in the Korean War. I think he was a Seabee. Most of his sons (six, including a stepson) served in the Navy too. They joined for the benefits, but chose Navy because of their father.
My father was too young for Korea. He got a draft card number for Vietnam, but it was just in case they raised the draft age. Instead he was a Cold War civilian employee of the military. He worked for the Navy when I was a baby and toddler, for the Air Force when I was a preschool kid, and for the Army when I was starting school.
My main contact with the military was being evacuated from Guantanámo during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mother tells me I was the only baby on the ship that didn't get seasick. I applied for a civilian job at Strategic Air Command but didn't get it.