My father goes to dialysis three times a week at what he says is $1,200 for each four hour session. He never pays a cent for it. He has medicare and a medicare supplement insurance policy. Medicare for everyone, I say.
But that's not what this diary is about. It's about the Battle of the Bulge. This is an 89 year old man that had a stroke 12 years ago. He can't remember a lot of details about a lot of things although he's pretty sharp all things considered. This morning on the way to dialysis he remarked to me that he'd read in the paper that it was the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. "I remember it very well", he said.
Dad didn't talk about WWII when I was growing up. There was a box of memorabilia from WWII, a Nazi flag, purple heart medal, etc. He was in an Anti-Aircraft unit. I knew it was the First Army because I'd wear his jacket as a Halloween Costume and it had the big red "1" patch on it. We knew his unit went ashore about midnight on D-Day. That much we did know. He talked about cold feet in the winter in Europe and the lack of toilet paper.
We knew grandpa served in France in WWI. Grandpa NEVER talked about it. Even less memorabilia from that war was around. I'd give all the money in my savings account to spend a dozen Saturday afternoons with grandpa and his cronies in the garage down the alley. To talk with them about their lives while they played pinochle and schmoozed with each other in broken german-english. But I digress...
Today dad said he remembered the Battle of the Bulge very clearly. Note: I'm paraphrasing a little of this – our conversations can be a bit disjointed. "We were on the northern edge (of the Bulge) at what was previously a German Motor Pool facility. We were put temporarily under the command of that British General. We had 90 mm anti-aircraft cannon with armour piercing rounds. Had a range of 7 miles. We'd fire at coordinates given to us. Yeah, Montgomery. That was the General. We were ordered to stay put. My foxhole was about a dozen yards from one of the guns in the battery and when it fired It'd lift me up off the ground." I asked if they ever used their anti-aircraft cannon to shoot at German planes. "Yes, but we never shot down any with the cannon. They weren't very good. We did shoot down eleven planes with machine guns."
Now I'm going to go look at one of the most valuable books I own. Life's Picture History of World War II. I grew up with this book. Read through it dozens of time. I went into the Marines and when I came home it was gone. No one seems to be able to remember what happened to it or the very few other books we had while I was growing up which I've replaced (Ernie Pyle, Bill Maudlin). Or if they do remember they're embarrassed to say. I suspect a garage sale where it was sold for a pittance. I recently purchased a decent copy of the Picture History from the Mesa, AZ public library. I highly recommend taking a look at this book and feeling nostalgic for the glory days of the weekly photo journal magazine. We didn't have a lot of books but Life Magazine came every week. But again I digress...
Wow, that was emotional. Deep snow. Churned up mud. At least the dead bodies were too cold to rot before they could be recovered. My dad's unit was probably south of Aachen at the time based on other things he's said.
Here's an interesting note about war crimes. There's a picture on page 295 of American soldiers bodies laying in the snow with number tags on them. The caption is as follows:
A HEINOUS CRIME was the murder of U.S. Prisoners near Malmedy on second day. Later their bodies were tagged for identification and in 1946 the Nazi killers were put on trial for the "Malmedy massacre."
Take a look at this web page. Very interesting about the Dachau trials and the sentencing. We're still struggling with what to do about situations like these today. Probably, there are no good answers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Dad said his unit got five battle stars but he can't remember which ones. I'm sure the invasion was one and the Bulge was another. He says his purple heart was for, "Almost cut my finger off trying to salvage some plexiglass from a German Fighter Jet. Yeah, a jet. They (whoever "they" were) were very interested in those planes."
Well, it's time for me to go pick up his prescriptions, eight of them at four to twelve dollars each for a total of $52. Thanks, generic drug makers. Then I'll go get him from dialysis.
Thanks, dad.