All right - happy birthday U.S.C.G.!
A family Coast Guard story my dad liked to tell:
At the start of WWII all the boys my dad had grown up with in a small town here were busting to enlist, and they did. Except for one guy - he was chicken, and I guess in a later generation he would have been a hippie or a war protester. He did his best to stay out of the service.
Finally, the draft was breathing down his neck - and somebody in his family knew a congressman. They pulled strings and the kid got in the Coast Guard, which was about impossible to do at the time. He thought he had it made - he bragged that he'd just be patrolling New York Harbor or something.
Turns out that my dad went into Utah Beach on Normandy with the first wave on June 6, 1944 - but of course he only had to make the one landing. The guy who went into the Coast Guard was driving a landing craft at Omaha Beach, and he had to make lots of trips back and forth between the ships and the beach, landing troops under fire.
Dad liked that story - sometimes things work out the way they ought to.
|
Previous
Index
Next
Flat
Re: Guess who's birthday it is tomorrow.
Edit
Reply
Quote
