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And I'm a WWII buff. Here's why:
When I was growing up, one of my good friends was a kid named Frank. He was a "junior", and his father was a great guy. Now this was when I was 13-14 and at that age I was into making models (planes, ships, tanks, etc). Those suckers cost a bunch of coin, not to mention all the paint, brushes, glue, and the like you needed to make a really cool looking Sherman for your bedroom bookcase.
Big Frank ran a landscaping company that he had build from the ground up and for a number of summers would take Little Frank and me on as workers on some of the projects. In the course of our work, Big Frank taught me (and Little Frank) about how to make a piece of property look nice by using what Mother Nature has available and how to plant, threat, and care for the different flora.
He was a great guy to work for. Rather than yell, he'd just say "Ya screwed up and here's how ya fix it". He did have one quirk though. When you worked next to him, he always wanted you on his left side on account of his bad arm; there wasn't much too it, it was withered and scared. He could move it, but couldn't lift more than a couple of pounds with it.
I asked him one time how he got it and all he would say was; "During the War". He would not talk about his time fighting in WWII. All he would say was he had been a Marine and he had fought in the Pacific.
That was during the early Sixties.
Little Frank and I went through High School together, joined the Drama Club to meet chicks, and hung out with the same crowd. We graduated together, suffering through the shortened ceremony together, and wanting to get back to the tube to watch RFK's funeral. We split at that point, I went to college and he, to avoid being drafted, followed in his father's footsteps and enlisted in the Marines.
About two years later, while home during a break, I ran into one of the old gay who told me Little Frank was back from Vietnam recovering from a wound. I immediately called Little Frank and told him I'd be over.
To make a long story short, Little Frank had been hit in the elbow of his left arm while on point during a patrol. While walking down a jungle trail, he had raised his arm to signal the rest of the patrol forward when a VC bullet struck him. He had been flown back state side and was in the process of undergoing further treatment in the hopes that they could restore the use of the arm.
He and his father both seemed to be in good spirits, and were joking about "Like father, like Son" wounds, etc. Little Frank was upbeat about his chances.
About two years later, while home for Christmas, my father told me that both Big Frank and Little Frank had committed suicide. Not together, but separately. You see Little Frank never recovered from his wound. The art of medicine at the time couldn't help him in the end. He was pensioned off and drifted into a world of drugs, dirty lofts, and a life of petty crime. He ended up swallowing his .45 late one night.
My father and Big Frank were good friends. They were both Deacons in our church, were on the same bowling team, and would get together for an occasional poker night. He told me a lot about Big Frank that I never knew. Big Frank had been a Marines in the Pacific, true, but what he had seen and done was almost unbelievable. He had fought at Bloody Ridge in Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and finally, at Iwo. He had been on Suribachi. He received his wound when he raised his arm to motion his platoon forward, up into that hell.
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