Uncle Elmer and the Navy

Uncle Elmer (the big guy)
with his brother and sisters (not on a porch but in PA nonetheless).

What is it that makes a person join the military...complain about it the entire time they are in, then can't stop talking about how great it was when they get out? When we visited Uncle Elmer last summer in PA, his talk was almost always centered around his time in the Navy. He talked about all the great times he had with his fellow Sailors. How he and the guys would have such great times on R&R in places all over the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, Greece - all that. He had a difficult job working in the steam engine room of his old ship 711, a Destroyer. Then all he could talk about in his final years was how good it was to get together with the "guys."

It's like the men who were at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. They visit the site almost every year they are able, then when they eventually die they want to be buried with their shipmates below the harbor waters. I mean - think about it. They are in the Navy for two, maybe three years, do their time, get out, marry, work, have a family, and grow old. They are 80 years old but the most significant event to them was that day in December. And when they die they want to return to be buried with their "Buddies." SGT Joe Toye of the legendary Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), 101st Airborne Division - the Screaming Eagles. He gets his leg blown off in the woods at Bastogne, goes home, gets better, then does all the things I listed above. He's in the Army for all of two years. What does he have put on his tombstone?

SGT. Joe Toye

E Co. 506th PIR

101st Airborne Division.

Here's what his Commander MAJ Dick Winters said at his funeral (in part):

"BASTOGNE - On January 1st the German Air Corps made their last big bombing raid of the war. They smashed Bastogne, they bombed our front lines. Joe caught a piece of shrapnel in his right arm. This was his third Purple Heart. He was evacuated to Bastogne for first aid treatment. By January 1st the 101st was no longer surrounded at Bastogne. Joe could have been evacuated to a rear echelon hospital. Instead, Joe preferred to return to Company E. As he was walking across a snow covered field to the left of the BN CP, I saw him with his right arm in a sling going back to the front line. I cut across the field to stop him. I said, "Joe, you don't have to go back on the line with one arm. Why don't you take it easy for a couple of days?" I'll never forget his answer: "I want to be with my buddies." Two days later he was caught in a heavy artillery barrage and he lost his leg. That kept him from joining his buddies on the front line then, but that did not stop him in the next 50 years from joining his friends at their annual reunion. Today, I know Joe has joined his assistant squad leader Cpl. Jim Campbell, who he lost in Holland and all the rest of his buddies who have preceded him - in Heaven.

Two years of life in the Army and in the end his only remembrances of a better time were when he was in the worst of times.

Same with Uncle Elmer I suppose. Nothing compares to what they did.