My dad enlisted in the Army in 1945 but only spent a little over a year in the service when he separated October 22, 1946. Dad never talked about his time in the service. We kids knew he had brought home a souvenir Japanese rifle with a removable bayonet. I remember sitting on our basement stairs and as silly as it sounds in today’s day and age, my brother and I used to play with that rifle and would take the bayonet on and off of it.

When my dad passed away in 1970, the local VFW had a short program for him at the funeral home. It was at that program we learned that he had been a guard in a prisoner-of-war camp in Paris (if I remember that right). I tried to document that through the  National Records Center but when I tried, I learned that his were some of the approximately 16-18 million records that were destroyed in a fire at the Center in 1973.

It wasn’t until after my brother died in 2024, I found this “Separation Qaulification Record” in his personal effects. It shows that Dad was a Guard for seven months.

 

 

 

 

 

Vietnam Era, 2nd generation

The Great Hunter is a veteran. He served in the Marine Corps from 1964 to 1968 (I was still in elementary school–lol). To this day, sixty years later, it is one of the proudest times in his life.

My brother who passed away in 1993 was a Major in the Missouri Air National Guard. He was active up until a couple months before he died when it became too much for him to attend Guard weekends.

3rd Generation

My daughter was an MP in the Army in the early 1990s. (Somehow I can’t ever seem to put the correct dates together). She was stationed at the Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia for eleven months.

My son during desert training, about 1998.

And the 4th Generation, Army National Guard. Both my grandchildren (children of my daughter who’d been station in Bosnia).

I thank them all for their service and love them all!