My grandpa has just died after a long fight with a brain tumour. He was a kind, gentle man whose life was chaged irreversibly after WW2; before the war he was a fisherman, and for many years afterwards too, but he was never quite the same after 1946 when he finally came home.
During the Normandy landings he was the first man out of his landing craft, a conscript piper whose job it was to play the bagpipes at the head of his unit to act as a rallying call; he did not have a weapon but was at the head of two dozen other men, all young conscripts like himself. Only he survived, the beach defenders perhaps unwilling to shoot an unarmed man; all his unit was machinegunned before ever making it off of the beach. This experience changed him forever, and during his last days I tried my hardest to understand what he must have been through.
After the war he supported his wife (who was blinded in a bombing raid) and two children, and kept many stray animals.
Do you think he'll do OK?
2007-05-04
01:26:53
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21 answers
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asked by
Nelson
1
in
Religion & Spirituality