Quote:
Originally posted by dantheman@Apr 13 2004, 07:53 AM
one of the reasons I watch it and enjoy it is that My granddad(pa'pa) went into normandy with the 1st div. he was shot and captured as for as I know(he died a few years ago and never talked about it) around the same time and area of the bulge. So I watch it thinking about how it effected him and how he made it though. Gives me chill bumps everytime I watch.Those boys had it very very hard. REAL heros of this century. 
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My Dad's plan to defend the Mississippi River by joining the Coast Guard in 1940 didn't work out quite the way he planned. He was on a Destroyer Escort (read: little bitty fucking ship) that was close enough to the shore off Omaha beach to be within range of the German field guns on shore, and in the zone where shots which fell short from the Battleships further out to sea landed.
He talked about to me it in detail exactly once, the night before I went into the Navy. By twelve hours after the invasion began bodies began appearing in the sea around the ship. 30 years later and it still choked him up.
I worked in a gas station/garage all the way through high school, and the guy I worked for was still popping the occasional piece of shrapnel from both legs; one leg was from D-Day, the other from the Battle of the Bulge.
It was very odd to think about it as I was growing up. My dad was an auto parts salesman, but before that he shot down 15+ German planes with a 50cal machine gun. My uncle was an engineer who designed bridges for railroads who was hard of hearing after island-hopping through the Pacific as a Marine. My best friend's dad was an insurance company lawyer with a bum leg from wounds suffered fighting in North Africa. The father of a girl I dated all the way through high school was a Chemical Engineer for Monsanto with a private plane; he learned to fly off carriers in the Pacific. The guy I worked for had a tenth grade education before the war, was a Private when they hit North Africa, a Sgt by the time they went into Italy, and a Captain when they crossed into Germany.
Brokaw wasn't lying when he called them "The Greatest Generation." The series is awesome.