Mind travels on Veterans Day

By Suzy Blackhurst

“Hey Suz. Where did we get this?” my husband asked as he held out a rather wicked looking tarnished brass knife-like thing we have used as a letter opener in a pinch. I did not really know; it might have been something from my mother’s family.

Hubby left my office and I thought maybe I’d find a clue in one of the “family history” files I keep meaning to clean out. Finding the photo of a grandfather I really never knew well has catapulted my memories through a lifetime of snapshots.

“That was my dad in WWI,” I remember Mom telling me, pointing to a rather heavyset young man in a trench coat posing stiffly for the camera. As I thumbed through the file, my mind began its time march through years of the men in my life who wore military uniforms and the mental snapshots of them that occasionally invade a good night’s sleep.

I see my father and his brother, World War II pilots whose planes were shot down over Germany three years apart, but who miraculously were held in the same POW camp before the war ended. The same uncle also served during the Korean conflict and their younger brother wore an Air Force uniform in Europe in the late 1950s.

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https://estesvalleyvoice.com/2024/11/11/mind-travels-on-veterans-day/

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