On December 7, 1941, my brother and I were as yet unborn, our parents hadn’t even met. My grandfathers were 45 and 47, respectively, each with a full crop of kids.
My father, however, was 17. It didn’t take him long to enlist and get into an officer-candidate program in Missoula, Montana, where my mother had grown up. By mid-1944 they were married in Victorville, while Dad was stationed at an Army Air Corps field there training for a combat flight assignment. D-Day had just happened but the end of the war even in Europe was still months away.
Unfortunately on a training flight Dad’s lifelong sinus troubles flared up at high altitude and he was dropped from bombardier training and offered a medical discharge. By war’s end he and Mom were back to civilian life.
The treachery attributed to the Japanese in their attack on Pearl Harbor drew a lot of boys into the recruiting offices, and while on Memorial Day we honor those who fell in uniform and on Veterans Day we honor those who went over to fight and came back afterward, quite a few were unable to go at all for one reason or another. The fact he wore his country’s uniform during wartime made Dad technically a veteran, but I can’t honestly say that, deep down, he thought of himself as deserving the honor.
Not everyone can be Steve Rogers.
