I sure hope your uncle is successful - I have no living grandparents and many stories have been lost, I'm sure. First of all, when my father was in the Army Reserves (a unit in my hometown of Quincy, IL) he wore a patch identical to the one you pictured - somehow I had it in my head that the name was "Ozark Company" since the letters O, Z, and C appear in it, and since Fort Leonard Wood, MO, close to the Ozarks, was some sort of headquarters for the unit. My Uncle Eddie was in the unit also - he served in WWII (where he received a bronze star), Korea, and stayed in the reserves unitl 1980. He died last month a few days shy of his 86th birthday. I gave the eulogy at his funeral; I did make reference to Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation" book. My father was born on December 8, 1932; his memory of his ninth birthday (the day after Pearl Harbor) was of some of his brothers going off to enlist. He said, "son, birthdays aren't always happy times". I don't know how many of his brothers served, but another one got a bronze star in the Air Corps. Hard to find out now, with almost all of them gone, including my father, felled by cancer at 58. A few years ago I visited a baseball museum run by Bob "Rapid Robert" Feller, a legendary hurler with the Cleveland Indians who, despite being in his thirties at the time, enlisted in the Navy right after Pearl Harbor; the museum also has lots of memorabilia from his ship. As I was in the Navy myself (mid-seventies, tail end of Vietnam, though I spent my time in Spain and the Meditarranean), we swapped some sea stories. And I got him to autograph a picture, "from one former sailor to another". So those are some of my connections to WWII. As a people, we should do what we can to keep them alive.
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rosecarmine
WWII memories
Date: 2006-07-03 03:17 pm (UTC)First of all, when my father was in the Army Reserves (a unit in my hometown of Quincy, IL) he wore a patch identical to the one you pictured - somehow I had it in my head that the name was "Ozark Company" since the letters O, Z, and C appear in it, and since Fort Leonard Wood, MO, close to the Ozarks, was some sort of headquarters for the unit.
My Uncle Eddie was in the unit also - he served in WWII (where he received a bronze star), Korea, and stayed in the reserves unitl 1980. He died last month a few days shy of his 86th birthday. I gave the eulogy at his funeral; I did make reference to Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation" book.
My father was born on December 8, 1932; his memory of his ninth birthday (the day after Pearl Harbor) was of some of his brothers going off to enlist. He said, "son, birthdays aren't always happy times". I don't know how many of his brothers served, but another one got a bronze star in the Air Corps. Hard to find out now, with almost all of them gone, including my father, felled by cancer at 58.
A few years ago I visited a baseball museum run by Bob "Rapid Robert" Feller, a legendary hurler with the Cleveland Indians who, despite being in his thirties at the time, enlisted in the Navy right after Pearl Harbor; the museum also has lots of memorabilia from his ship. As I was in the Navy myself (mid-seventies, tail end of Vietnam, though I spent my time in Spain and the Meditarranean), we swapped some sea stories. And I got him to autograph a picture, "from one former sailor to another".
So those are some of my connections to WWII. As a people, we should do what we can to keep them alive.