I have an aunt named Gillette.

We don't call her that.

t /random

Ugh. Why do I need a job again?

Ugh. Why do I need a job again?

I blame the media.

I blame The Man.

Yeah! The Man is holding me...

Wait. I got distracted.

I'm supposed to go to a play tonight. Mostly I just want to put on my pajamas and nap and then watch The Daily Show.

My Uncle Noel (my dad's brother) served in the Navy in the Pacific and saw action.

His ships was shot up badly and wasn't battle-worthy, and barely seaworthy. They limped back to San Diego and their commander was so gung ho he took the ship back out before it was completely repaired.

Half the crew went AWOL since they knew the ship wouldn't survive in battle, and indeed, it was sunk with all hands. My Uncle was one of the ones who went AWOL. Having uniform he bummed around by going from base to base. Finally an officer recognized him, told him to turn himself in because they'd go easy on him considering the circumstances. He did, spent six months in the brig during which time he learned how to be a radio operator. Then he was a radio operator in the Navy on submarines for the next 23 years.

My grandfather was drafted into the Seebees towards the end of the war. He was in his forties.

My dad tried to enlist in the Marines when he was sixteen, but they wouldn't take him. He joined the Air Force out of high school and worked as a medic and physical therapist in the hospital, treating vets coming back from Korea. My mom was a WAF and nurse's aid and met him there.

One of my uncles on my mom's side died during WWII. He fell off the back of a truck and cracked his head. Surprisingly a fairly large number of military fatalities are from just such stupid accidents.

Hec, do you know any of the details of your Uncle Noel? Like the ship name and/or type, what battles it was in, etc? I've never that story. (Although there were a lot of odd stories like that.)

One of my uncles on my mom's side died during WWII. He fell off the back of a truck and cracked his head. Surprisingly a fairly large number of military fatalities are from just such stupid accidents.

Yeah. My Sweet Crazy Ex,who was in the first Gulf War, talked about that a lot. The people dying stupidly in front of him seemed more distressing to him than the ones who were actually shot.

(Of course, he was wounded in an incident with someone trying to keep an enemy grenade as a souvenier so that may well be part of it.)

My dad's feet got him put into some odd category like 3B. They eventually took people in that classification, but by that time he was working for an industry "essential to the national defense" and the company wouldn't let him go. He was working at a packing plant that was putting out three grades of beef for the Army: A, B and C.

My mother's three brothers were all in the war in Europe. This comes up everytime we discuss my status as a non-ironer. "I ironed my brothers' uniforms during the war," she says. Her oldest brother, born and raised in Nashville, was put into the ski corps in Italy.

My ex-FIL, a nice man who still sends me a Christmas card every year, lost most of his face and most of his hearing at Anzio. He was in a hospital undergoing plastic surgery for about two years. By the time I met him, you could tell that the bottom half of his face was all scar tissue, but it wasn't glaringly noticable. I understand that was not the case for many years, which is why there are no photos of him at all. He ended up managing national cemetaries, a job reserved for disabled officers.

I had a work thing last night and so missed much of the WWII discussion. Probably a good thing, as having your mother shot at by German planes as she fled her home with a random neighbor who just happened to have a car, does not make for a very rational view of when the US should have gotten involved in the war.

My father spent much of the war playing basketball (he was semi-pro before the war) for the US Army in San Francisco (yeah San Francisco!), but then fought in Europe and dealt with the aftermath of concentration camps and reconstruction in Germany. He never talked about it.

In WWI, my grandfather (on my Mom's side) recruited African soldiers and was present for the whole battle of Verdun. The only thing that I know that resulted from that experience was that he became a lifelong Communist and forbid horsemeat to ever be eaten in the house.