Middle Daughter and I have been watching the Band of Brother DVDs together. We just finished the third disc which takes us up through the Battle of the Bulge.
Young men, boys really, doing their duty for God and Country. If it realistically captures the chaos, blood, and fear of war I can understand why my grandfather still had nightmares decades after the end of the war.
One time, he talked about it with me. He was part of the Normandy invasion, he attained the rank of sergeant, and he was always being told to tell the men what to do rather than leading them in their assaults. That's all he had to say about the war. After a couple of minutes he went up to the attic in the row home he owned in Philadelphia and brought down a Nazi dagger that he acquired during the war.
I found out later that was the first and only time he brought out that dagger and talked about the war. It was probably around 10 years ago which means that it was about 50 years after he had been to war.
An after war story he told was he came back from the war to his wife and two sons with a bunch of unused condoms. One night, they blew them all up like balloons for the kids and were playing with them when my grandmother's mother showed up for a visit. The way they laughed when describing how they were trying to get all the condom balloons down the basement steps before Nana got in the door was priceless.
Posted by bbarton at December 13, 2004 09:26 PM