[dreadgeek]

Thanks for starting this thread.

My father was a member of the 761st Tank Battalion (the Black Panthers) as a driver, fighting in Patton's Third Army. He didn't talk a lot about his experiences, like a lot of combat veterans he was very tight lipped about what he saw. When I was younger, like in my early teens, I asked him about the War (and for me 'The War' means WW II, everything else is some specific war--Vietnam, Korea, First and Second Gulf Wars, etc.) and he told me one very humorous story.

They were driving across France, traversing some farmer's field when a cow, which was walking maybe 20 yard ahead of his tank, stepped on an anti-tank mine. Being a cow, it was heavy enough to set it off and the cow was blown upwards and ended landing on the turret of the tank.

I asked him about the camps and all he did was look at me and tell me that he *never* wanted me to ask him about that ever again. "There's things you just don't ever want to revisit and that is definitely one of them".

He also told me that at one point he was thinking about ex-patriating to France and playing in a jazz band. When I asked him why he said "because in France, they treated me like a man". As it turned out, my grandmother talked him out of it.

My mother worked for the Boeing aircraft company building bombers.

Of my mother's brothers *four* of them were Tuskegee Airmen.

Ten years ago, when my father died and I realized I was seeing fewer and fewer WW II veterans around I became seriously concerned. Here was the last generation of Americans who had stared uncompromising evil in the face and *knew* (didn't think but knew) what evil lay in the hearts of men. I worry for those of us left behind because I am concerned that we have lost the sense that there is evil loose in the world and while it isn't the only thing that evil men need in order to do their malevolent deeds, that kind of forgetting certainly facilitates the creation of an environment where it can grow until it is too late to check it.


Cheers
Aj