It makes me sad that our nation's greatest heros is slowly dwindling.
On average, about 300 of our Greatest Generation pass away.
Taken from the WW2 Museum website, at one time there was 16 million Americans who served in WW2.
Now, there are only about 325,574 of them left.
It must have been about 10 years ago now, but they had an Honor Flight to fly WW2 vets and a companion to Washington D.C. for a whirlwind tour of the monuments, that flew out of my airport.
I remember standing in the mezzanine, looking at all of the soldiers who were taking the trip.
Some were in their dress uniform, some wore camo, some wore civvies.
Some were in wheelchairs, some had walkers, some had canes, and some didn't use mobility aids.
I remember telling myself, "Remember this moment, for you'll never see this many vets together again" .
My own father was still in Basic when the war ended, so he never saw action, and because of that, he never saw himself as a true WW2 vet.
It was like he was embarrassed to be in the same category as those who went through hell.
A lot of these fine men who are in their 90's now, still have nightmares from what they went through.
My grandfather, (my dad's dad) was a WW1 vet, with the Army, and was stationed in France, and when he came home, he suffered from PTSD, even if it wasn't called that then. I think they called it "Shell Shock".
He never spoke about what happened, or what he went through, because nobody thought to try and heal the psychological wounds that these men suffered with.
They just expected them to forget about it, and move on with their lives, by getting a job, getting married, and raising a family.
The same expectations were put upon the vets who came back home from WW2.
They were expected to forget the horrors that they saw, and to just get on with their lives.
So in essence, they fought two wars.
One was the physical battle, the fighting, the killing, seeing friends get blown to bits, killing another human being.
The second, was the battle that they fought after they came home.
They battled the demons of their mind, the nightmares that would leave them shaking in cold sweat, screaming in their sleep, as they relived the combat of fighting an enemy long gone.
They delt with flashbacks, where a sudden sound instantly took them back to a life or death conflict.
They suffered all of this and more in silence, because it was thought of as being "weak" to seek help in coming to terms with their traumas.
May we never forget all of the sacrifices that these brave men made, both in and off of the battlefield.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistics
The Sky looks different when you have someone you love up there.
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