fbhjr | Memorial day

I was never in the military. I tried to get a scholarship with them when I was a teenager, but was turned down. Since my parents loaned me the money to go to engineering school (at not too high interest rates) I didn’t have a compelling reason to join, and didn’t.

I do have a bunch of family members who served. And, since today is supposed to be in remembrance of people who served, I’m going to talk about them.

My mother’s father was in World War I. He got picked because someone else was picked and was able to pay the fee not to go and have them pick someone else. I guess that practice ended after WWI, which made my grandfather happy. He always thought it very unfair he had to go for someone else.

He was drafted into the army. But, something got into his lungs and they had to send him home. (He never said what it was. There were a lot of choices in WWI. Anything from mustard gas to the flu.)
Since they still needed people, they didn’t let him out of the service, but put him in the navy instead.
The lung thing left him on the permanently disabled list. It didn’t stop him from smoking for the next 55 years until he died of cancer.
But, it did help both his sons get into the Naval Academy.

My uncle Ted stayed in the navy for 25 years after the academy and became a captain. He did serve in Vietnam, but building Navy bases along the coast. He said gunfire got close enough that he heard it, but was never directly involved.

He now lives about 6 miles (10km) from me. I’ve offered to come visit, but he’s always busy. I can take a hint and have stopped offering.

My uncle Jack stayed in the navy a few years. My mother tells me he was a crewman on a support ship in Newport harbor. He says he was first officer on a nuclear sub and told my mother the support ship thing as what he did was classified.
I honestly don’t know which is true. Neither one had a habit of telling me the truth.
I will say that he had a bunch of photos of what certainly look like him on the bridge of a sub. But, if he was supporting subs, maybe he got the photos that way?
Don’t know.

Both of their sons joined the navy.

Ted’s son, also Ted, is a captain now himself. He’s also a doctor. After two tours in Afghanistan he’s now stationed at the hospital in San Diego in California. I haven’t seen him since his return from Afghanistan party in 2008.

Jack’s son John, got out of the navy, but they recall him from time to time. Last time they sent him to Ethiopia. Strange as he’s in the navy and it is a landlocked country. But, that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I haven’t seen him since our faire in 2011.

I’m told that one of Ted’s grandsons is graduating the Naval Academy soon. Maybe he already has. I don’t know my cousin’s kids very well. So, I only know what I hear third hand.

On my father’s side, his father was not drafted in WWI. His father was a doctor in Vermont and they decided it was better for the war effort if he worked in the logging and wood supply industries in Vermont that made a lot of parts for the army.
I never met my grandfather on that side as he died 28 years before I was born. But, I’m told that the logging and related injuries left him very shaken up, even if he was only the person trying to help the people who had them.

My father was drafted into WWII. He tried to dodge the draft, but couldn’t.
The people he went through training with ended up in the invasion of Italy. But, he got injured in training and didn’t go. He was getting on a ship in San Fransisco when they dropped the bombs on Japan.
So, he never saw combat.
He did stay in the service for 2 more years as part of the military government in Korea, but it was before that war.

My father’s cousin was in the merchant marines in WWII. He had 3 ships torpedoed out from under him in the North Atlantic. He said that on the third one he went to his cabin and packed a suitcase before abandoning ship as he knew how much time he had.
After that he said he got out of it.
"When you’re that calm about being torpedoed, it is time to find something else to do," he said.
He ended up selling cars.

That’s the family I know of who served. None of them died in the service. And, I know that is the main focus for today.
But, I still appreciate that they did work to defend the country. And, my cousins are still doing it now.

Memorial day

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