Sometimes when Spring is about to break out and the winter sun moderates, I think of one of the two men who influenced my life the most, particularly the one who spent the winter of 1944-45 in the Ardennes fighting the Nazis. I remember some of the things he told over the supper table or while we were tending cattle.
When quietly sitting and watching patches of sunlight break through a tree line. "That always reminds me of seeing those parachutes hanging from the trees."
On artillery barrages: "You just prayed to live one more second, just one more second."
On fear: "The ones who got killed were the new ones who would freeze when they told us to move up."
On karma: "It was during the last couple of days of the war. We were camped at a spa in Germany and the Germans were up in the hills. They would lob a shell over from time to time, just getting rid of their ammunition. One landed near us in the chow line and took the head off of a man just standing there. And he was the shortest guy in the company."
On life: "It's hard to kill a man. It's amazing how much a person can take."
On luck: I was by a window when the shell landed. Shrapnel hit me all over but I survived it. There was an iron stove across the room that was completely destroyed."
On Russians: "They would ask us, after the war, "What you gonna do when we come after you?"
It may be best that he is not alive to see what they are doing to the country he defended.
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