Dad's Army Life

As I watch a series of shows on PBS about the military, put on in honor of Memorial Day, my mind drifts back to dad and his military World War 2 career. Vernon L. Albin joined the 12th Cavalry at Fort Bliss, Texas because his family was poor and he needed to send money to them. The cavalry was disbanded and since dad had an amateur radio license and experience with radio communication he was trained as a radio operator and assigned to Patton's 3rd Army, 16th Cavalry Group, and sent to Europe late in the war.

Dad would talk very little about his experiences but they obviously traumatized him. Through the years he leaked bits of information that gave me a glimpse of this part of his life. Dad spent most of the war there in a jeep or halftrack relaying scouting information to the main body of troops. He told of touring through Buchenwald concentration camp and the piles of bodies. He told of the time he was running across a field towards a U.S. tank and was shot in the knees by a machine gun nest. He talked a little about the bitter cold of the winter in the Saar region. He told me about the time his colonel lined up the men after a battle at Trier, asking them "who stole general Patton's cognac?". (By the way, the missing case was put to good use by his group!) He told how his recon group was the first to enter Germany. He told of his halftrack hitting a mine and how he was blown out of the vehicle and landed in the road 30 yards away. His good friend who was driving suffered severe facial burns then. Dad lay in a hospital and for months the Red Cross would release no information to mom who was frantically trying to find out his condition.

Dad came home with a few items as souvenirs (someone stole the rest from the hospital when they took his duffle bag). He also came home with a severe case of shock to his nervous system that plagued him for years afterwards. His few pitiful items are not much for a person who gave up so much of his life.

Here are dad's thoughts about his war:
1) Junior officers were idiots. He regularly told them off and his rank bounced back and forth as a result.
2) The war was necessary but was a horrible time he would like to forget. He had nightmares about it for the next 30 years.
3) He did not want me to participate in the Vietnam war because he felt it was politically motivated and not needed to help make our country more secure.
4) He had fond memories of his early cavalry life but was bitter towards Patton whom he considered a "horse's rear" who was interested more in glorifying himself than in caring for his troops. Dad saw Patton a couple of times and he said the strutting image of a megalomaniac portrayed by George C. Scott was pretty accurate, right down to the ivory handled revolver.
5) Dad believed in fighting for a national cause but he said that today our wars ask soldiers to die without giving them a valid reason to do so.

His war experiences shaped his life drastically. They helped him to mature and gave him skills he would use after he got out of the army. They also led to occasional mental breakdowns for years after he returned. He struggled with this until after retirement. He also got the gift of trench foot he battled with until his death. What would he think of this current set of wars? He would probably not like the fact we entered into them at all.

All I know is that I miss him terribly when reminded by the celebration of Memorial Day.