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My uncle Clem Hurda was killed in WW2, he was a radio operator/navigator on a cargo plane flying "The Hump" in the CBI (China/Burma/India) theatre of operations and the plane crashed while trying to land in the fog.
My dad received a Purple Heart (with silver star, I guess you don't get the Purple Heart twice, they add stars to it, so basically he was wounded twice) in Korea. Shot once and shrapnel the other time. He's been gone a long time now, but an interesting story though. He was born in '26, so he could have been drafted in WW2, but had a farm deferrment. By 50 he was off the farm and I guess the farm deferrment wouldn't have mattered in Korea anyways so I heard. But the draft board sent him to Milwaukee for a physical, and they were kinda standing around the place when a couple Marines walked in a sorta said "I'll take you and you and you" and the next thing ya know my dad was a Marine. So "so much" for the Marines being a volunteer outfit my dad always said. Always laughed at MASH when they showed the guys being flown out by helicopter, both times he was wounded it he said he was transported laying on top of a tank! 'Course he was in a tank unit in the 1st Marine Div. After the aid station he went to a hospital ship both times. He said when you were on the ship, if you hadn't been circumcised that they'd do it and you'd get an extra 2 weeks away from the action, a few guys had it done and it bothered him that they'd do that just to get out of a few weeks in Korea. He didn't need it done, so maybe it was easy for him to say.
Later on back in the states he participated in an atomic bomb test, "Operation upshot/knothole".
My mom, who is 83, lost many friends and high school class-mates in WW2.
My wife also had an uncle, who passed on last year, who was in the Pacific Campaign with the Navy. His job was to ride along in these landing crafts like they used in D day, with a rifle and was to shoot "any SOB", as he put it, that refused to get off the landing craft when it was time to go.
Gilly
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