Very Personal… On Easter
In the past I’ve told my friends on this website about the sacrifices my dad made fighting with the 3rd Armored Division in France and Germany. And I’ve told you that I have five family members buried in Arlington. But I’ve never told you the following story because I didn’t know it until three weeks ago.
My dad was commanding one of General George Patton’s tank battalions in the last months of World War II when a German soldier fired a bazooka from the upper floor of a chalet in the town of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Dad, who had massive head wounds and extensive brain damage, was taken by the Nazis as a prisoner of war. How he got out is a story for another day. But he survived and after a long battle with Alzheimer’s he died in 1997. The basic facts are in his seventy year-old military and medical records.
