I met one of my wife's great-uncles only once. He spent most of his life in Australia, but came back to Kansas when he was in his 80's to see his family one last time.
When I asked how he wound up in Australia, he told me that he was in the Army in 1941 and was being transferred to the Philippines. The ship stopped for a couple of days at Pearl Harbor the first week of December and then headed out. When they got word of the Japanese attack they were redirected to Australia. Sometime there he met the lady who would become his wife and went back to Oz after the war.
Images of the Bataan Death March flashed in my mind and I asked if him if he realized what a close call that had been. He replied "Yeah, I had a couple of things like that happen to me during the war." Sadly I didn't get to hear about them, he had way too many folks to say goodbye to.
'Four legs good, two legs baaaad."
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"Jimmy, some of it's magic,
Some of it's tragic,
But I had a good life all the way."
(Jimmy Buffett)
SotG
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