Remembering those who gave

valiantwagonguy said

I always think of my uncle who I shared a room with growing up in the 1950's. He was a tail gunner in a B29 .He traveled a lot for work and would never fly.When I was around 10 I asked him why and he told me he saw too many of his friends go down into the drink . I can't even begin to imagine how brave he was sitting in a glass bubble shooting a 50 cal machine gun at some Jap who was trying to blast him out of the sky. He never married,had no real friends,just worked and came home. That is the sacrifice these guys made for us.

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Sounds somewhat like my dad. He was in the USMC Aviation corp. He only spoke of WW11 3 times to me. He showed me pics of a few islands they wre stationed at in the Pacific campaign. They flew the B29 also but with no guns, cameras for recon, but with fighter escorts. After the service he never could set foot on any plane. He returned home after he had 1 tour in Korea. He left the Corp in 55 when I was 7 yrs old, and 1 year later had a bad breakdown, PSFT or what ever it is now called now, but bad. He pulled out of it after electric shock treatments. I remember as a child then him walking the floor all night, many nights. I remember my mother and me sitting in that doctor's office at age 7 and hearing the doc explain that if my dad did totally flip out, he would kill those he loved the most. I am 71, I remember that day like yesterday. Thank God Almighty he healed.
So many scares are invisible.