My Dad, Clifton W. Harwell, was in WW2. He will be 87 next month and still works every day at his job! He runs his own small business, Harwell Printing Company and has done so since 1956. He was an enemy artillery spotter using the “sound and flash” system to call in counter-battery fire against the Germans in the European Theatre of Operations. His unit was the –-(temporarily forgotten the #) FOB, standing for Field Observation Batallion in the 15th Corps, assigned the Patton’s 3rd Army. He is a big (read BIG) Patton fan and saw the General on three different occasions. He saw a lot and has at least a hundred fascinating “war stories”.
Years ago, my Dad he agreed to go see “Saving Private Ryan” with me,…and to tell the truth after the movie was over I could see he was dealing with some 'memories" of his service. He started talking them out and then wrote one down as an article in the country newspaper he edits and prints. He received a lot of good feedback from his readership and was encouraged by them to write some more articles. As he did so he not only ended up with a book’s worth of memories but it really helped him to deal with these experiences and get past them.
I am obviously very proud of my Dad and his service. I have several dozen pics of him in the Army that I’ve had digitized and put on a CD. I would be very happy to share some or all of them with everyone in this forum if you can explain to me how to do it..
By the way, we started playing Axis & Allies back in the 1980’s and about 8-9 months ago started playing the A&A 1940-Global version with a huge map, 48" x 108" professionally enlarged for us. I ask you,…how cool is it to play Axis & Allies with a real life WW2 vet? Tall Paul