My Uncle John (married to my Mom's sister) was in the 1st Infantry Division from Day One. His unit was over run at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, and he went into the bag. After 10 days in a POW enclosure behind German lines, he and his buddies were loaded onto a leaky old Italian freighter for the trip across the Mediterranean and eventually to a POW camp in Germany. As the ship was leaving harbor, under escort by a couple German E-Boats, a British air attack hit them. The E-Boats took off on an evasive maneuver, and a couple bombs nearly hit the freighter whereupon the Italians who were guarding the GIs abandoned ship. John saw his chance, and he and a couple other guys jumped into the water and swam to shore. Some friendly Arabs found them all water logged/bedraggled and spirited them away to safety, and eventually back to American lines.
He was gone two weeks but in that time the War Department notified his mother that he was MIA. She immediately headed to the bank and withdrew the money he had been sending home since 1940 when he was drafted- and went on a spending spree buying a used Chevrolet and a fur coat. A couple days later she got another telegram saying they had John back and that he was OK. Oops. He served through the end of the war and was subsequently wounded three times. Funny thing- he stopped sending his pay home to his mother, rather it went to his fiancè, whom he married as soon as he mustered out, and lived happily ever after. Not once after returning home did he go visit his mother. I hope they buried her in that car, wrapped up in that damned coat.
