This is my uncle W.C. or “Peanut” as some of his cronies called him.
This article mentions that he received the Purple Heart from injuries he received during the Allied Invasion of Sicily.
While recuperating in North Africa he was sitting and talking to someone and he noticed some Sailors standing at the Red Cross tent getting coffee. He told his buddy, see that sailor, it looks like my younger brother. And it was. The short article mentions that meeting also.
W.C. never got over his WWII experience. It haunted him the rest of his life. In the late 1950s or early 1960s he was put in a VA hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, where he spent the rest of his life. He died in 1998.
Once in the mid 50s he went to huge Lockheed Aircraft complex armed with a shotgun. He demanded for the to vacate the premises, they were on his parents farm land. Which, it would be more correctly to say they were on the farm land of what used to be owned by his parents. The head of the Lockheed Security call the Chief of Police and he came and gently led his older brother away.
What a heartbreaking story. It serves as a good reminder that whether or not war is justified, there is always a price to pay. I'm so sorry that W.C. and many others like him had to pay such a heavy price.
ReplyDeleteIt also should serve as a reminder that there are some Iraq war veterans who are facing the same thing. As well as future soldiers who will see and experience things that are unimaginable to those of us who have never been there.
Button,
ReplyDeleteW.C. was probably a typically Universal Soldier... disposable and replaceable. Shame.
Hi ;)
ReplyDeleteoh... what crazy comments!
what do you think about it?
That's very sad, Eddie. I had a cousin who was a POW in the war. He didn't lose his mind, but he was never the same physically.
ReplyDeleteJudy,
ReplyDeleteI would think being a POW takes a lot out of a person.