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My dad is one of those veterans who never talks about his time in the service. I've seen his personal photo albums before, where he has pictures
of friends from back then, and heard the stories once, maybe twice about the good times, and that was minimal. But that's it. And that was dragged out of
him years ago. He did have one good friend from those days who was in the Army, named Ted Stratton. He used to visit with his family sometimes, but they've lost
touch over the years, and I can't find any information on whether he's still living. My aunt had given me some things that belonged to my grandma Lange years ago, so I had seen this article many times, but it didn't take on any real meaning to me until last year (2002) when I started putting our genealogy pages together. Digging through all of the old papers that I have, and with the internet at my fingertips, I ran a search on the Marshall Island invasion. Here are a couple of the links that I found: History of the 4th Marine Division Link 2 It took awhile for me to bring up the subject of Roi with my dad because I didn't want to drudge up those memories in him. It surprised me that once I did bring it up he talked openly about it, seemingly relieved to be able to tell me. We've never discussed it since and I'm sure we probably never will again. I know things now about WWII that you only hear Vietnam Vets talk about. And I know now why my dad isn't very sympathetic towards Vietnam Vets. Not to say that they didn't get the short end of the stick when they came home . . . they did. But they're experiences are not unique |
