My father was a waist gunner in a B-25 in Italy. He’s been gone thirty years this spring.
7 thoughts on ““My Father Asks For Nothing””
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My father was a waist gunner in a B-25 in Italy. He’s been gone thirty years this spring.
Comments are closed.
Thanks for that link! What a well written story, and it reminds me of my father as well. He died 14 years ago yesterday. He was in the artillery in Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe. That generation of men were the humblest heroes. We would do well to live up to there example.
My father died last year; the day after Boxing Day. As luck would have it, he was never called upon to put his life on the line in combat – he was 12 years old at the end of World War II. Nevertheless, he volunteered for service in the RAF, and would have done his duty, and took the risks associated with the training.
I wonder whether the act of volunteering was enough; or does one actually have to be shot at for it to count?
“Count” for what, Fletcher? If he was in the service, he was a veteran, whether he was in combat or not. That’s worthy of respect.
My Dad (an American) volunteered for the RAF in WWII, and flew sub-hunting missions out of Reykjavik. He had some interesting stories.
He died in February of 1985. Yikes, that’s 24 years ago now. I still miss him.
Not in the least. It’s his own fault and bad luck there was no shooting war in Europe during his adult life.
/sarc
My own father was in his 30’s during WW2 and was an Engineer who commanded aircraft maintenance troops in the Army Air Force in N. Africa, Sicily and Italy. He never flew in combat but came under hostile fire many times from Luftwaffe dive bombers and strafers. He died in 1995. His birth centennial is coming up in April. After the War he went back to what he’d done before the war, working in the paper industry. He was just a guy with a college Physics degree who, through no intention of his own, wound up keeping bombers in working order for a few years while ducking the occasional Nazi bomb.
There is a B-24 that has made a number of visits to the So. California area over the past couple of decades, usually in company with a B-17. I go to see these planes whenever I can. If there is a sound more evocative of an era than that of four big radials firewalled at takeoff, I don’t what it would be. Glorious noise.
Despite being much larger than the typical WW2 airman, I’ve even manged to squeeze into the insides of these planes once or twice. I always liked to think that just maybe my dad’s boys twisted wrenches and patched holes in these very planes at some point along their back trails. Now it seems that the B-24 Sippican Cottage’s dad visited may well have been this very same plane. I’ll confess to a bit of a frisson reading his piece and thinking I may have stood in the same places in the same plane as his late father who went to war in one like it.
R.I.P. to all absent friends, especially the WW2 vets.
My dad was a ground-pounder in the pacific, a Marine (like his dad and uncle before him, the uncle having been wounded, but surviving, Belleau Wood). Born in 1923 he signed up in mid December of 1941, eventually serving 2 tours. He was in all likelihood saved (and I in all likelihood exist today) because Truman decided to drop the bombs. He would have been in the early waves had we decided to put ashore in Japan instead.
He is still kicking ass and taking names today (in Spokane WA) with no significant health issues. He is largly deaf in one ear due to proximity to artillery; although all marines are riflemen, he spent most of his time as a gun-bunny.
I sent him that article last week (snail-mail; he doesn’t own or use computers) and he told me he enjoyed it. He is, and always has been, typically reticent about his service. I will be seeing him in two weeks.