G.K. Chesterton said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
His quote comes to mind after I inherited a box of family paraphernalia upon the death of my dear sister, who suddenly suffered a massive heart attack in 2015. The contents include a series of letters my father wrote my mother – before they married in 1948 – from the South Pacific during WWII. The box has many Kodak snapshots (with Navy wartime censor notations on the back) of Dad having a grand old time with his buddies in the Admiralty Islands and elsewhere. The photo of sailors playing with puppies, appealing to feminine sensibilities, is particularly amusing.
Dad convinced us for many decades that his time in the Navy was like a vacation in the tropics. It was only later in life – like so many veterans of the…
