Heros

Just a thought my Dad and Uncle Red were 20, Uncle Ken was 24.  Uncle Ken was in the second wave to hit the beach in Iwo Jima pulling a radio trailer through the water on to the beach under fire. Red walked to Germany risking his life daily getting up close and personal with German soldiers. That's how he got the German Knife that used to hang on the wall in the basement in Wyandanch. Dad's adventure was a bit more then the paper indicates. I walked the two-foot wide catwalk while in the air over AZ that went over the bomb bay doors. It was pretty scary with the doors closed. 
When Dad was fixing control cable the doors were open and he had one foot pushed against the catwalk railing and the other pushed against a fuselage beam which had rounded corners and was maybe 3 inches wide. No safety harness or parachute just in case. The pilots had to keep their hands off the flight controls while Dad pulled the shot-up control wire together and U bolted it. If one of the pilots had moved the flight controls it would have pulled Dad off balance. The temperature at ten thousand feet is around 23 degrees. Do you remember the underwear Dad had with all the hoses running through them? They were all kids and they all enlisted because they believed it was the right thing to do! We have a family of heroes! Afterthought, Grandpa Cooke was 19 and a medic dragging the wounded off the killing fields of Flanders in WW I.J