Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day and I thought I'd take a moment to talk about my favorite veteran - Howard Gaertner.  Who also happens to be my dad.  Dad has been gone now for seven years already but I'm sure he'd appreciate the mention.  

This picture was taken on September 13, 1945 at Reims, France.  That's seventy-two years ago - an eternity by today's standards.  That's dad on the right and his best friend - Donald Darneider - a classmate from Cathedral High School in Milwaukee.  Germany had surrendered in the spring of that year and Japan had surrendered a month earlier.  At the time this picture was taken dad was all of 21 years of age.  He'd already spent three months in combat - including the invasion at Normandy, the battle of the hedgerows, the breakout of the bocage at Saint-Lô, the dash across northern France with Patton's forces and the liberation of Belgium.  He was evacuated to England after being wounded in the Meuse River crossing in September of 1944 and returned to be part of the Army of Occupation.  This was turning out to be an exceedingly long deployment and a boatload of experience for a previously skinny depression-era kid who was drafted after graduating high school.  

On one of our trips to France Jill and I brought along a handful of old, grainy, black and white photos and made an attempt to locate where those pictures were taken.  The two below were taken of dad (by classmate Don) in Paris sometime in July of 1945...  

The Trocadéro... 

Notre-Dame de Paris...

    click on images to enlarge

My pal NewGuy - who also happens to be a veteran - suggested this.  If you want to see something that is both awe-inspiring and chillingly creepy -  check this out.