A Veterans Day tribute

This is a letter I wrote to my wife’s grandfather for Veterans Day back when he was still alive.  He was pretty proud of it, and that made me smile because I knew that if nothing else, he deserved to be proud of what he did for America.  When he died a few months ago, I was able to muster up the fortitude to read it at his funeral.  Here it is, submitted as a personal tribute to him, as well as to the dying breed of Americans who fought to rid the world of fascism. *** Today I think about you more than any other day of the year.  I’ve only known you for about a decade, but a single event in your life shaped my own life more than you realize.  I married your granddaughter, and she and I are raising two little girls.  It seems like an ordinary story at first blush, and perhaps to most people, it is entirely ordinary. Long before I was born, you were on a Navy destroyer in the South Pacific during WWII.  During a valiant battle in which you and your fleet were severely overmatched and overpowered by the Japanese, your ship (the USS Hoel) sustained over 40 hits and was sunk.  You made it to a life raft, not realizing that your experience in hell was just beginning.  For three days, you and some “lucky” shipmates floated the open sea with essentially no food and hardly any water.  Some of the injured who made it to the raft died while on it, so you and the other survivors had to throw their corpses overboard.  I can’t imagine the anxiety of days spent not know...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Source Type: blogs