mzpro5 wrote: 

Well, yes. He got a small check every month.  He always told us he got it because he got shot in the knee.  He had a scar.  But it was really from marching for so long without any "support"— a man thing.  His testicles suffered somehow.  I don't really know what you call it, but you know what I mean?

 2cats wrote: 



Just curious, did your Dad have any health related problems due to his imprisonment?

 cc_rider wrote: 
I know, my dad rarely talked about it. After they bailed out of their plane, the Germans marched them.  Once my dad made a list of every town that he had marched through.  There were a lot of towns.

 Coaxial wrote: 
Indeed. Even if they do have ruby slippers!

 Coaxial wrote: 
Having driven end to end a dozen times, I'll have to agree...

 oldviolin wrote: 
Being in Kansas is enough to piss anybody off.

 Coaxial wrote: 
Long history, that one...

 oldviolin wrote: 
No wonder they were ready to fight.

 jagdriver wrote: 
I think they were the First Infantry (or First Army), but they were in that battle as well as some others, I believe.

*edit: OV had already noted that while I was composing.

 jagdriver wrote: 
that's the 1st Infantry Division, Ft. Riley, Kansas

 jagdriver wrote:
 
Good movie. Lee Marvin, Mark Hamell. Written by Samuel Fuller.

 Proclivities wrote: 
Wasn't this the Big Red One? Or am I thinking of another unit?

 2cats wrote:  Being a prisoner has got to be near the worst, if not THE worst. It's impossible to imagine, frankly: there's just no frame of reference in our (civilian) experience.

 Coaxial wrote: 
Having been shot down, my Dad was in a German POW camp on June 6, 1944. He also said he was scared shitless.

 Proclivities wrote:
Had an uncle there...He went from Corporal to Second Lieutenant in one day via battlefield commissions. He always scared me to death.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
My dad was in the Third Army during the war.  They were not at the initial Normandy landings but they were deeply engaged in The Battle of the Bulge several months later.  He wasn't eager to discuss it very often either, but he would talk about General Patton every now and then.

 cc_rider wrote: 
My Dad was on the USS Altamaha, a repurposed merchant marine ship that as done up in a hurry as an Escort Carrier after Pearl Harbor. My Dad never talked about it either. but he kept some of the ships logs and one mentions them seeing torpedo trails heading towards the ship but they all missed.

 cc_rider wrote: 
My Dad was on the first plane into Tokyo after Nagasaki. He said they were all scared shitless.

 cc_rider wrote: 

Don't know if you saw the Ken Burns WWII documentary, but one story this one veteran was telling about how one night, the cans went off and they were braced and fired to ward off another horrible night Banzai attack. When the sun came up they were horrified to see dead and wounded civilians, women and children strewn all over the place. They had to tend to the wounded and bury the dead by their own hands. I cannot even begin to imagine the horror.

 cc_rider wrote: 
They don't make them like him any more.