Memorial Day 2008

I wrote the post below two years ago for Memorial Day as a tribute to my Dad, who served as a soldier during World War II. This is the third straight year for this post, and I'll continue to run it every year. I've thought of his service often, and have read many books about war and military history to try to understand what he did, what he went through, and also who he was. As Dickens pointed out in A Tale of Two Cities, the human heart is a mystery even to those closest to us, and there are many things I know about my Dad, but so much I don't. I do know this much. He was born to farmers, he farmed before he went to war, and he came back home to farm. In a way, he was a descendant of the citizen-soldiers during the Peloponnesian War -- farmers who left the land to put on ar