Memorial Day

My father fought in World War II and the Korean War. He was in the Army Air Corp. He was shot in Korea. Sadly, this is about all I know of his military service. I would like to find out more, but the records for a lot of the military people serving in World War II were destroyed in a fire several years ago, way before the internet became so prevalent. I also was not able to be around him after my parents got divorced.

But there is a man whose story I am very familiar with. My Uncle Lew Bud Magee. He fought in World War I. He was injured there as well. Horrifically.

He was in a foxhole with many other men when a cannonball came whistling down to them and exploded. The shrapnel instantly shredded and killed everyone in the foxhole but my uncle. He was only shredded. They were able to get him to an ambulance. During the ride, there was a kid that had his toe shot off, screaming in pain. The man in the cot below my uncle told the kid to shut up, because the guy above him was raining blood on him and not saying a word. My uncle replied, "That's ok, I don't feel a thing."

By the time that they got him to the hospital, he had lost so much blood that he was non-responsive and they couldn't find a pulse. He was still awake though, just unable to let them know that he was still alive. They took him to the morgue with the other fallen.

My uncle was a Mason. There was a Colonel going through the morgue, paying his last respects to the dead. He was also a Mason. When he reached my uncle, he noticed my uncle's Masonic ring. He took my uncle's hand and sadly said, "Another brother down." My uncle was never sure what he did, but somehow, he let the Colonel know that he wasn't dead. The Colonel sprung into action.

He ran out into the hall and started shouting for some help. He screamed for blood for him. A very large Turk with very bad English skills came down the hallway yelling "Me give him blood!"

From there on, he was taken to surgery, stabilized, and recovered. He lived almost forty years after that. He was paralyzed from the waist down and still had shrapnel in his body until the day he died. There was just too much shrapnel in his body to remove it all without killing him. Pieces of shrapnel worked their way out of his body for decades after the attack.

My mother remembers sitting at his knee twenty years later. He was scratching his leg. Now, this was amazing, because he didn't have any feeling in his legs until this time. He was amazed that he could feel something under his skin itching like crazy. My mother was amazed when he pulled a bobby pin out of his leg. People think that the shrapnel in cannonballs is specifically made for the cannonball, and while this is true in a lot of cases, many times, they use whatever is at hand, like nails, screws, and bobby pins.

My uncle almost made the greatest sacrifice. The men in his foxhole did make the greatest sacrifice.