Uncle Jack

I missed Memorial Day. I didn't actuall miss it. I just didn't post. Instead I spent the day recovering from a long, long week. I spent the day watching Band of Brothers. I love that mini-series.

This post is probably more appropriate for Veteran's Day, but here it is anyway.

I have two uncles who fought for our country. One, Uncle Bob, is now deceased. I visit his and my father's graves in Arlington National Cemetary twice a year.

My father, a 20-year Air Force veteran, joined up after the Korean war had ended. He served during war time, but never in a war zone. But don't take this post to mean that I'm not proud him or his military service. I am. Extremely so. Eventually I'll probably talk about my dad. Just not today.

My uncle Bob fought in Europe during WWII, and again in Korea. He was taken prisoner in Korea and held for over two years. My uncle Jack fought in the Pacific during WWII and again in Viet Nam.

Both of them trained as paratroopers at Camp Taccoa in Georgia, although neither were in the 101st. Both of them ran up Mt. Curahee. The mini-series made a big deal of that. Uncle Jack tells me that the Army eventually suspended the practice of running troops up Mt. Curahee. Too many men died doing it.

When Uncle Jack talks about the war, it's almost never about his combat experience. Usually he tells about getting into or out of trouble one way or another. Last summer I saw him at a family reunion and I mentioned having recently had the opportunity to hold an M1 Garrand rifle.

His response was a 20 minute story beginning with how his unit in New Guniea had been assigned M1's but he would rather have had a Browning Automitic Rifle. He then went on to tell about how while visiting some buddies in another unit he found out that their beer ration had been suspended as punishment for some unknown infraction. He asked where the beer was stored, and when told the location of the supply tent, said that he didn't really see a problem.

The tent was guarded by two soldiers at the front entrance, but that didn't stop him and three friends from liberating a case or two out the back. While in the tent he noticed a cache of Brownings.

Then next day while the rest of the troops in his buddies unit were getting chewed out over some beer that apparently went missing from the supply tent, he and the three friends were back there liberating a number of Rifles. That's the story he told. ...in a nutshell.

What he didn't tell me is what I learned the last time I went to visit him. I was flipping through a scrapbook that my grandfather (his father) had put together of his service in The War. In it was a newspaper article about his first encounter with the Japanese in the South Pacific and how, using a Browning Automatic Rifle that he 'borrowed from a friend in another unit' (the author of the article didn't want to say that he stole it), he managed to take out a Jap machine gun nest that could have taken out his whole platoon and that, he said, he could not have done with an M1.

He was awarded a silver star for that action.

Here's to him. And my uncle Bob. And my Dad. And every other veteran, living and dead, who helped make and keep this country great.