When the July Fourth parade passes me by, I think of the men and women who served in our military. World War II veterans I remember most often.
In 1945 I was seventeen, working part-time as a sports writer on the Abilene daily. I would graduate from high school in May. The war ended in August. Never found out if the Navy would let a near-sighted eighteen-year-old enlist. In the 50s, the Naval Reserve did.
A decade after Japan surrendered I met a drilling contractor, the late Al B. See. To help our children learn to sail, Al and I built four, eight-foot plywood Optimist pram sailboats in his garage. That is when Al told me about his Navy duties in WWII.
Al was a frogman. A college swim team letterman who joined the Underwater Demolition Team. He told me he volunteered to swim ashore the night before our invasion of Japan and check beach fortifications. Al would have been one of our first to step on Japanese homeland. Maybe one of our first to die there. We might have never built boats for our children.
When I wrote my alternative historical fiction–publication pending–about the end of the war in 1945, I included Frogman A. B. See in an early and the last episode.
Photo by Getmilitaryphotos at Shutterstock