The WWII Vet

When I started at the VA four years ago, half my day was filled with seeing WWII vets. These days I am lucky if I see one per day.

These are the men and women of my father's generation. Well, mostly men, but I actually do have a couple female WWII vets. I even have two married couples from that era. Well, I used to. Unfortunately, I've recently lost the husbands. This happens when your pushing 90.

I have the greatest respect for these fellows. They changed our world, you know. They made our modern America and our modern world what it is today. Sure, it is all changing again, but this foundation from which things are changing is thanks to the WWII vet.

I've heard so many stories from these guys, stories that are a part of history, stories that could make movies.  I've had survivors of the Battle of the Bulge, survivors of the Normandy invasion.  I have patients that helped free Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

I have one fellow that tells me the story of how he was stationed in Hawaii when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened. He was on a different Island at the time. He saw wave after wave of Japanese planes flying over head, and he had this sudden dread, he knew exactly what was going to happen. He didn’t have any communications available, and he could do a thing about it.

Can you imagine how horrible that must have been? I can't get my  head inside that. To see these planes  over head, to know they are about to bomb your countrymen. To know that this will certainly pull you into a war. To not be able to do a dammed thing about it.

I have one patient who was a survivor of the wreck of the Indianapolis. The ship was bombed by the Japanese after the treaty was signed. The attacking vessel didn’t know that the war was over. Most of the people on the Indianapolis were killed, but there were several survivors who  drifted on debris, waiting for rescue.

My patient tells me about another fellow near him who slowly went nuts over the ensuing hours and days. The other fellow starting hallucinating, seeing bottles of clean water under the ocean. My patient kept trying to talk sense into the fellow, but he just couldn’t do it. The other fellow would repeatedly work himself up into a fervor about the hallucinated water bottles, and dive down to try to retrieve them. This continued with increasing intensity until one time the fellow never returned from his dive.

I feel privileged to hear these stories from these old guys. These are stories that shaped our world. These are stories that are rapidly fading from live memory.

I am honored to hear what they have been through.