"I see death. Death that should not happen."

[paleotn]

7. Insanity it was....

Like many vets, when they hit the last chapters of their lives, they open up on things they've kept well hidden for years and years. Dad wasn't happy about either me or my brother serving. Not that it wasn't honorable. It is. He didn't want us to see and do the things he saw and did. He figured he'd covered himself and his sons in that regard. We didn't fully get it until, toward the end of his life, he told us why he felt that way. The bloated corpses in the French hedgerows. Frozen bodies in Belgium. After awhile, dead bodies just became part of the scenery, like rocks and trees, and he gave them little mind. Getting hit and wondering if he'd die in that awful place.
But bloody wounds, mangled stumps and injuries we couldn't imagine just didn't shock him after awhile. It was just part of the dirty business. I still can't wrap my head around towns reduced to rubble and strewn with the mangled bodies of soldiers and French, Belgian or German civilians. But even after being steeled to that carnage, the camps still left an indelible impression. Buchenwald. Half a century later, he said the horrible smell was a fresh as the day he first saw it.