My dad and his two brothers served in WWII, and my grandmother headed her county’s Red Cross knitting for the troops effort, knitting as much as twelve hours a day to try to bring her boys somehow safely home. She had rheumatoid arthritis. I don’t know how she did it.
One of them assured her the war would end after he got overseas. He could not tell her he was one of Oppenheimer’s men and would be the physicist on the Enola Gay. So many lives were lost–but so many more, in the end, were not.
My thanks to all who serve and who have served, and my gratitude for all those who’ve been able to come home.