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Flashback Friday

This past memorial Day weekend I binged on a few episodes of Band of Brothers.  If you have never seen this Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg 10 episode HBO series, do yourself a favor and see it.  It details Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles during World War II.  The actors are pitch perfect and the writing is excellent.  

It reminded me of a few pictures I'd seen in the family album of a few of Herb's brothers in arms while he served on the gunboat 61 in the Pacific.   








Herb didn't speak much or often about his time in the Pacific or his band of brothers.  We got the story of him on watch the time a Japanese sub fired a torpedo, and the long nights on patrol around the Filipino islands and how the moon was best friend/worst enemy.  We got the story about the cook and laundry guy who stole stuff from them and they put him on shore someplace.  We got the story of the captain who was sent home leaving Herb the 61's commanding officer.  Imagine that, a kid at Monmouth College who joins the Navy to help fight the war, is sent to Columbia University in NY to learn how to run a ship as a 90-day wonder.   And then, ends up being its captain.  Any other stories are silenced now.  A sword we boys swore had blood on it, muster papers after it was all over, and back home to finish his last year in college and then move to Seaton, Illinois to teach.  Go watch Band of Brothers, and remember what these guys did for us.  We take too much for granted in America, maybe that's changing.  Maybe we all need to wake up and think about what is dear to us as individuals, as a people and as a nation.  

I didn't mean to get preachy.  Thanks Herb, and your Band of Brothers - indeed all the Brothers all over in uniform who have sacrificed in ways large and small.     




This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Shakespeare's Henry V

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