A Story This Sub Will Appreciate
So I just randomly realized this sub existed and figured the people here would appreciate this story. Hopefully this is an appropriate post here.
Around 2008 or so I worked at Home Depot and one day I was wondering around helping people. I saw an old guy looking exhausted sitting on a stool at the pro desk. I asked him if he needed any help. He said "No, I sat down because I got tired and I am waiting for my wife." As I was turning around to walk away I noticed he had an old, faded Easy Company logo tattooed on his arm.
At the time I had recently finished rewatching Band Of Brother and reading Brothers in Battle.
I turned back around and asked him about his tattoo. I swear to God this hunched over, frail, tired old man straightened up got a huge smile on his face and appeared to instantly be 20 years younger. He asked me if I knew what the tattoo meant.
It told him I knew a little about what it meant and I was a fan of Band of Brothers and Brothers in Battle. He told me he served with "Wild Bill" Guarnere and was there for all of it.
We talked for probably 20 minutes, mostly about general life stuff. He didn't talk about the war and I wasn't going to grill him about it.
The only thing he really told me about the war was that the first 11 times he was on an airplane he jumped out of it. It wasn't until his twelfth time on an airplane that he experienced a landing. The thought of landing in a airplane scared the hell out of him. He would have strongly preferred to jump out of it over riding it for the landing.
I love that I got to talk to one of these guys before they are all gone. Even if he didn't tell me one thing that he did or saw, just talking to him about his wife, kids and grandkids made me feel like I was in the presence of history.