My heartfelt thanks are given to all who served to protect our rights and freedom. My father served in WWII in North Africa and Italy. He was a commissioned officer and in Special Services, which among other duties, included tagging and identifying those killed in action. One story he told me that made a huge impact on me was this.
One day he and another American soldier were in no mans land somewhere in the hills of Italy tagging victims when they came upon two German Soldiers doing basically the same thing. It was a stand-off, with rifles pointed toward each other until the other American soldier spoke in German to the other two, and they in turn lowered their rifles, and my Dad and his partner did the same. They worked for over three hours identifying bodies, sometimes side by side with the enemy. When they finished at this particular site, they picked up their rifles, shook hands, and turned their backs on each other and walked away.
About six months later, near the end of the war, my Dad was helping out at a prison camp for captured German soldiers and as he was helping out some of them get to their barracks, one German soldier came up to him and in broken English asked my father if he was the soldier out in the field identifying bodies a few months earlier. From that point on my father and this young German became friends and when the war ended this German soldier came to the United States and settled in Milwaukee. He worked at the Shorewood Inn, on Oakland Ave., and I had the privilege to meet him in 1967 at a rehearsal dinner before my sisters wedding.
He passed away in Milwaukee in November, 1987, just one month before my Dad passed away. I wonder if they're up there talking about what went on at that moment they met. Naw.........they're laughing and drinking beer!
"MontanaBob" wrote: