Memorial Day 2010

One year ago next month we received the news that my dad had cancer. Daddy was a veteran of the Pacific theater of WWII, part of what Tom Brokaw calls the "Greatest Generation". He volunteered for the Navy when he turned 18 rather than be drafted into the Army. Daddy turned 18 on 16 November 1944 and he was a first semester junior at Clarksdale High School. He started school in the fall of 1932 and was scheduled to have graduated in May or June of 1944 just a few month short of his 18th burthday. Sickness during his younger years caused him to be held back a couple of years so he was technically not scheduled to graduate until the spring of 1946.



My grandmother Crawford told me that his sickenss was something like TB, but when asked he would deny that it was "that disease". Nevertheless, as he grew older he grew stronger but he still was two years behind his age group in school. Knowing he was probably going to be drafted he promised his mother that he would join the U.S. Navy where he certainly going be safer than in an infantry unit storming the beaches of some forsaken island in the Pacific or freezing somewhere in France. So, he joined the Navy and shipped off to boot camp sometime after his 18th birthday. Boot camp was in Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois just north of Chicago. While in boot camp you decided what "job" you would like in the Navy, so being the son of a contractor and liking the outdoors and building things...he chose the construction battalion or SeaBee's. SeaBee's go in after the island is taken and build runways and docks for ships, any buildings, etc. It was not a safety position by any means, but at leaast he didn't volunteer to be a corpsman. You see the Marines don't have their own corpsman...they get them from the Navy.



With a promise that he would keep his head down and come back to her, off to war he went. He left out Millington NAS on a train bound for San Francisco where he was loaded onto a troop carrier bound for Okinawa.



For those who don't know, Okinawa was the staging point for what was to be the battle of Japan. He would later tell me that the sight of 100,000 body bags sobered him up to the fact that he might not make it through this event. As we know the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stopped the clock on the Battle of Japan and brought Daddy and many others like him home to their families.

So, on this Memorial Day weekend I salute the one's like my dad who went and served and came home to be with their families. I also salute the one's who paid the ultimate price and gave their lives for the cause of freedom. God bless ou Daddy and all the one's who went before you and have come along since as we remember you on this Memorial Day.