As I was watching the President's comments outside of church services at Fort Hood, Texas and my mind wandered back to the memories of the stories of my father's time as a POW in WWII. It was September 1944 and my father and 3 other guys from his unit were captured in France and transported to a German POW camp.
When Daddy would talk of it, he always downplayed it and would say that by that time the Germans knew they were going to lose and there were only "old men and kids" as guards at the POW camp. Also, he would say that he was at a farm camp where they worked them hard and didn't feed them.
For the first few months he was a MIA and then his status was changed to POW and my mother began receiving these strange looking letters with parts of them blacked out before she received them. He always carried with him my mother's engagement picture and his New Testament.
When my father returned home he was very thin and had lost most of his hair. When my mother met him upon returning home, he said he remembered seeing her running toward him holding her hat on. He always smiled when he told that story. War changed him and being in captivity changed him. I think he always wondered why he survived and many men younger than him did not.
While watching the Bob Hope 100th Birthday Special, there was one story about a show for the 1st Marine Division. There were 15,000 men in attendance at the show and a month later, 60% of them were killed in an invasion. Hold on to your hat and hug the people close to you and fight for freedom.
There is so much to America. It is all a quilt of faith, hope, hard work and sacrifice. Never forget the price paid for the everyday things that we do and always remember that someone paid for your freedom.
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http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/4/179869