It's so great that you have this log of your grandfather's, Capt O! As M1 said - we just can't imagine what it felt like to be getting closer & closer to home & then - FINALLY!, after all
they went through - to be HOME. Thank you for sharing it with all of us!
Just knowing you were going home must surely have brought on a range of conflicting emotions. On one hand joy and on the other hand fear: "am I going to make it?", "will something happen to me before I can get home" etc.
Home meant everything to my Dad, so I'm sure there was a constant mental drumbeat
of "home,home, home..." playing in his mind throughout North Africa, Italy, and France.
He'd have to find away to tamp that down & not listen to it - or else he wouldn't have been able to survive and function. The same must hold true for all our servicemen & women - then & now.
Homecoming is one of the missing pieces of my Dad's history I'd most like to have.
Where did he arrive? Did he get off at the train station in Wellesley and walk through the neighborhood streets to home? If the ship arrived in Boston, were his parents there to meet him? I have all the letters that he wrote to his mother,
but there's no letter telling that he's coming home. I wonder if he just surprised them.
I would so much like to be able to see my father's and my grandmother's faces when they saw each other again. I strain to see it/ imagine it, but can't. In the same way, I try to see the beachhead at Anzio and the snow in France. When you love someone, you are anxious to be with them when they're sick, celebrate with them when they are happy, let them know you are with them when they are afraid. When you get right down to it, this is why we are all here - Marion's peeps - love & gratitude bring us here & the desire to understand, not only those we love (notice I didn't say "loved" because it's still very much in the present), but those who were there sharing those
experiences. We study old newsreels and photographs because we want to "see" what they saw, we want to be in the planes with them, stand with them on the LSTs, and be next to them in the foxholes. We can never, never experience what they did, but we can darn well try to inch as close as possible.
CoBill is so right about the need for successive generations to understand the sacrifices made by all our military. If they aren't made aware, even of the concept of sacrifice, how will they develop a deep appreciation of it later in life?
Not everyone is like us here in the M1 Peeps Community ( I know, it's shocking - isn't it?), not everyone is as fortunate as we are. When we pour over maps of Italy, hold our loved ones dog tags, read their letters, place flowers on their graves, or visit the war memorials - we are loving them and in a very real sense & knowing them as well.
My grandmother suffered from Alzheimers and died when I was 6, so I only have a few precious memories of her. Nevertheless, to me she is no longer just a name on the family tree - she is "Grandma". A 1907 photograph of her is the "wallpaper" on my PC and every morning I look into her eyes and say:"Hi Grandma!". I am now able to see her more as God sees her :the dear daughter of John & Eilis Jordan, beloved wife of Michael Howard, dearly loved mother of Francis, Mary, and Joe and - MY much loved Grandma. Is it possible to love someone you barely knew? Oh yes indeed! It's a mystery of Grace, but that love actually grows stronger with time. If we pitiful human beings can capture an image and keep it for 100 yrs - surely God has them forever in a
completeness we can't fathom.
Before I quit babbling on - I'd like you to meet her. I can only introduce you to her as she was in 1907, because the Lord has her now in fullness. In 1945, she was the most important part of "home" that my Dad was longing to see - Marion Josephine Jordan Howard: