You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade
 

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This goes out to all the soldiers who embarked on great crusades and are buried in far away lands. Some battles are worth fighting and some are not, but in the end they all wind up planting flags in the sand.

My Gramps (an aircraft engineer) went out on the town in Sierra Leone the night before shipping. In the morning he was ill and got left behind by the ship at Cape Town.

Here he got ‘lucky’ on two counts; 1) met a nurse who became his wife and 2) the ship he had previously been on got sank in the Indian Ocean, losing him most of his pals.

On the other side of the family my grampa was a dentist stationed around Egypt. He had all sorts of tales of hijinks, including swimming across the Red Sea with a lit pipe for a bet. Another time he took an unsanctioned adventure “somewhere he shouldn’t have been”.

Obviously in a hot zone during a world war this is a pretty terrible idea and he got shot with the round passing through his lungs and spleen. Due to the multiple mortal injuries he was triaged to be left on the table to die (these injuries typically make you bleed out in minutes), but as it turned out he was an actual Asgardian - when they came over to dispose of his body he was still alive so they ended up operating and he survived.

So from these two mischievous paternal lines stationed in the opposite ends of Africa, both narrowly avoiding death’s touch, comes Jimjam.

Lets keep the memories alive for those who lived through such troubling times weren’t just heroes, they were also people with their own characters: flaws, charm and all.

its my understanding the best way to not die is to want to live, i think a lot of soldiers just go into shock and die from that even after stubbing toes, peoples bodies can survive a fuckton of injury if they are pissed or don't realize they are dead and have the right genes, for example not bleeding out when limbs are severed because ur body just goes into 'fuck u lol asshole' mode

ur gramps seems like a real cool dude

cool :)

my gramps dodged the draft and he used to sing these subversive FDR era folk songs and rhymes all the time. ("you're in the army now"; "the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole"). He was from Butte, MT which was one of these towns which was 70% male and very Irish-left-wing in the 20s-40s. I think he's a hero. @patriam, his blood fared well and indeed better than that which was squandered against squinty commies in his youth.

I agree both your grandpas sound like tough and honorable men. The statement or “understanding” before that though is dumb as fuck.