MEMORIAL DAY - 2014

Thank You to all the Veterans for the service they have given our country over so many years.

Thanks to my dad for his service in WW II.

All veterans have a cross and a small flag placed by their headstone at Carter's Cemetery in Tuolumne, California for Memorial Day. I'm very sad this year that the beautiful green grass around all of the graves is yellow.   This year we are in a critical water crisis in our state, and we are not allowed to water our lawns in our county.

My very favorite story from my dad's army service.  This happened while he was in Algeria in 1943.  He was just a kid, barely 20 years old.
In his words:

"One night I was assigned guard duty.  We were on two hours and then off four in a twenty four hour period.  My first shift was two hours in the afternoon.  We were each assigned a post to walk back and forth a certain path.  After my two hour shift, I went back to camp to get supper.  When my next shift started it was dark.  All the posts, because of it being in North Africa so close to the war front, had no lights.  As we were leaving to go out on our posts, the Corporal of the guard would drop one guy at a time off at his post and pick up the guy going off duty. As we were going to our posts we were told the Army had an Intelligence report that some German Paratroopers (the enemy) were going to land in that area in the next day or two.   I probably had a 50 ft. path.  I know it ended in a corner because sometimes I’d meet the other serviceman coming from the other direction at the corner.  None of us had bullets for our guns.  We carried our guns with a bayonet on, but no shells.  When you’re first in the dark, it’s hard for your eyes to adjust.  When the Corporal left with his flashlight, I couldn’t see much, but I started walking my post.  Right across the road I could hear something…..like some movement on the ground.  I strained my eyes to see.  Finally I could see some movement, like men crouched down.  They didn’t come closer to me, but I was scared.  I didn’t meet the guys on either end of the post for a couple of times.  Finally I met one and told him I could see and hear something moving across the road in a field area.  He thought my eyes were deceiving me.  This went on for about a half hour.  I was almost too afraid to walk my post.  I just kept watching.  I could see there were several, but they still weren’t coming any closer.  We weren’t to leave our post.  If they had come closer I would have yelled, “Corporal of Yard….Post Number such and such.”  Then he would have come to see what the trouble was.   All of a sudden, I remembered I had seen in the afternoon, Arab shepherds had brought their sheep to a cement watering trough.  Then I could tell it was sheep.  I think that’s the most frightened I had ever been up to that time or have ever been since then."