I first realized I was a being when I was about 1 year old. My grandmother & I were lying on a bed peeking through a blacked-out window at my uncle in the street with an Air Raid Warden helmet & flashlight. I had my stuffed black scotty dog. His stuffing had broken, but my grandmother sewed him up as good as new.
We lived near a large aeronautic plant where my uncle worked. Looking back, it seems ridiculous, given the technology of the day, Germans could fly planes all the way from Europe to bomb that plant, but these were nervous days early in the war.
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Ships were being torpedoed & sunk near New York harbor, as well as off Asbury Park & Manasquan in New Jersey. We heard on the radio constantly from people like Gabriel Heater & Edward R. Morrow about the blitz in London & England.
Later in life, I met the aunt of a woman friend who drove an ambulance with the future Queen Elizabeth during the blitz. She had taught my woman friend to drive, & said, "Always keep your vehicle full of petrol. You never know when you have to go quickly in the middle of the night."
They talked on the radio about "theaters of operation". The only theater I knew was the movie house my parents took me to. I thought of guys shooting at each other in a movie house.
My aunt, who lived with us, was a nurse. She became a Captain in the WACS (Women's Army Corp) in charge of nurses. If you called her a WAC, she would wack you.
She landed in Europe soon after the invasion of Normandy & finally reached Belgium. During the Battle of the Bulge, she was in charge of evacuating a field hospital under German artillery & machine gun fire. Like most real combat veterans, she never talked about her experiences in Europe.
When she came home, she brought a musette bag full of tent pegs. They were among my earliest playthings.
When I was a teenager, I was hammering a metal stake into the ground for a garden. My mother passed & said something. My mother was a narcissist & I hated her. I hit the stake too hard & a piece flew off & hit me in the arm. Blood gushed. I felt faint & shocky.
I ran to my aunt. She said, "That's just a scratch". She & my other aunt took me to the emergency room for steri strips. Then they took me for beer & pizza to ease my pain.
I think of the awful wounds my aunt saw as a nurse in Europe & during the Battle of the Bulge.
When we were drinking beer in the yard & threw a bottle
in the garbage can, my aunt would say, "Another dead soldier". She must have experienced many dead soldiers.
Soon after she came home from the war, my aunt was taking care of my brother, who was an infant & had colic. She put whiskey in his bottle to quiet him down. Too bad they don't practice medicine like anymore.
My aunt was like a mother to me.
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