Quote:
Originally posted by Frank the Tank@Nov 11 2004, 08:14 AM
Thanks Grandpa!
Well, Rememberence Day is huge in my family and my wife's family as all four of our grandfathers served in WW2. The photo is of my grandfather, Harold Irvine, on their initial push into Holland to liberate the Dutch people. He served in a British tank division, the 79th Armoured and drove the troop transport in the background. He told me once that the worst part was loading it up with soldiers, hauling arse to the front line and unloading the reinforcements then loading up his modified Sherman with the severely wounded and sometimes dead soldiers to bring them back to the feild hospital and continuing this cycle for days at a time.
I get annoyed when the word "hero" is thrown around i the media today because of men like my grandfather. We (our generation) can't even begin to wrap our minds around the sacrafices these people made. Imagine leaving your pregnant wife and two year old son to go halfway across the world knowing every day may be your last. Boggles the mind really.
Anyhow, thanks grandpa, I'll continue my personal crusade to make sure the world never forgets. RIP.
(Grandpa is the soldier on the left, holding the little boy. My grandma still gets letters to this day from this family)
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Right on FrankTheT. I felt like such an ass today as I drove along Crowchild at 11 and didn't register the moment. My Grandfather never used the word hero and would have laughed if someone described him as one. He had two ships shot out from under him while doing N Atlantic convoy duty, watched his aircraft shuttle crash
after he got off in Australia, and took heavy fire while liberating Hong Kong and always made it seem so casual. When I was a kid his stories were so matter of fact that I thought it only inevitable that one day my turn would come. So many stories to remember and so much thanks to be aknowledged.