Thanks guys.....This type of thing means a lot to me.too.
I'll give you a few insights into my family. A few of you know about me and my family history, but most don't.
My Grandfather was born in Germany and was a recipient of the Iron Cross in WWI (roughly equivalent to The Congressional Medal of Honor), for saving his unit single handedly.His unit was trapped on a hillside and was under heavy shelling. They ran out of ammunition. Grandpa was a machine gunner ( because he was Germany's weight lifting champion in 1911, he could carry those huge machine guns). When the shelling started taking toll ( his partner was killed by a shell), he jumped out of the gun nest and ran up the hill and over the crest (under shelling and rifle fire all the time) .Everyone thought he had tried to make a break for it. A few minutes later he ran back down, now under rifle fire, as the enemy had started up the hill with no return fire,carrying four cases of ammo for his machine gun. The cases weighed 75 pounds each. He made it back and loaded the gun, firing all over the downhill area to repel the advance. While he gave cover, the rest of the unit retreated over the hill and escaped. Grandpa was left alone and running out of ammo again. He fired until the gun was empty, and jumped out of the hole and ran up the hill. The French soldiers all stopped firing and let him go.He had risked his life to save his fellow soldiers.
He and one brother of the eight boys in his family were the only ones to survive WWI.
His son, my father, was born in Germany ,and the family came to the USA in 1930. Dad went down October 1941,to join the Navy when he could see a war coming. He was only 17 and did not have a certified copy of his Birth Certificate. They told him to get a certified copy from the registrar in his birth town and he could swear in on his 18th birthday - Jan 6,1942. The birth certificate came on December 6, 1941 and dad took it down to the recruiter. The certificate had a Nazi seal on it . They accepted it and signed him in. The next day Pearl Harbor was attacked. Dad swore in on Jan 6,1942, and spent the war in the Pacific,as a corpsman, then post war in London as a medical processor of the wounded. He received many decorations for saving lives over his 27 year navy career. There were a lot of lives he couldn't save, though.
His son, my older brother, joined up with the Navy in 1965 , and became a corpsman. He volunteered to go fleet Marines in Vietnam. In 1967, his unit was ambushed, most were killed, and the few that got out saw him hit by machine gun fire, then blown up by a mortar shell.He was reported as KIA, and my parents got the visit from the Black Sedan. Four days later he crawled out, severely wounded ( the shell landed directly on a marine lying next to him. The Marines body took most of the shrapnel, but my brother got the concussion.) While crawling out ( he was deaf,half blind, and had one shoulder blown apart) he came across a marine whose legs had been shot up badly. He took care of him and hid him in the brush. He stumbled into a nearby US unit (that almost shot him) and told them where he had hid the wounded marine, before collapsing. The medics didn't believe he would survive. It was four days after the visit from the Navy that we were told he was alive....barely. It took him a year to heal. He had no hearing in one ear, a permanently useless right shoulder,weighed 115 pounds, was not right in the head at all ( go figure?) and was discharged with a 30% disability. He never complained.
He had tried to patch up many soldiers who died anyway. I lost many friends and class mates in Vietnam.
There is a case on the wall in my workroom holding these three men's medals. I face it as I work on knives and such. It reminds me of the things people have to do to allow others to have a nice life. Don't ever forge it!
Stacy E. Apelt
