[QUOTE=YoDaddy61,Dec 10 2009 10:37am]Thanks for letting me know about that. Also thanks for using the word "chagrin" in your response. I love that word.
This time of year always gets to me with regard to my remembrances of the "great generation" that my parents were part of. My father was the Commander of the local VFW post, and every Pearl Harbor Day I spent as a child involved watching an honor guard place a wreath into the Ohio River, followed by a rifle salute. Cool, mysterious and heavy stuff for a little kid. Probably the first time I saw adults cry.
My mother often shared her memories of "boys" (her term) that she went to high school with, some whom she had dated, that perished in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later in the European and Pacific theaters.
I suppose they both felt the unstoppable juggernaut of times' passing as the public's memory of WW1 diminished.
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I wonder sometimes if they almost wanted the publics' memory to diminish. Part of it may have been a sense of...... modesty maybe? I don't know how to put it, but my grandfather drove an ambulance on the front and must have had some heart-stopping stories to tell. And yet he always had an "aw shucks, it was nothing can we talk about something else now" kind of attitude about it. It may have simply been a disinclination to talk about it. You know, in the way they call it PTSD now. Maybe the war seemed so necessary and horrible to them that any sense of glory afterwards was gone, making appreciation OK but certain kinds of attention unwelcome.
Good morning all, especially Pierre ---- 2 User(s) are reading this topic (0 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
2 Members: dmrispoli, zex
This post was edited by dmrispoli on Dec 10 2009 10:24am