captainenema

Hahah... Some of my fondest memories of my grandpa were of him telling me all about his service with the British Army in WW2. Which was an interesting experience as I was born and raised in the US. So I got a bit of a contrasting view of the war from the British perspective vs my relatives who were American veterans.

Made for some good conversation.

Well, My grampa was in the Royal Signals Corp and first started out being a mobile sort of radio post after the Dunkirk evacuation. The Royal Signals Corp didn't want their radio network wiped out by the Germans so they put shortwaves in cars and deployed them to the coast to keep their eyes open for the German armada. Not sure how this worked, grandpa was kind of wasted at the time when he told me.

Anyhow, his perspective on the whole thing was from that as a British Soldier and an Englishman. He lived through the bombs raining down on England and went in 3 days after the Normandy invasion and went with the British Army all through the lowlands and was nearly killed a half a dozen times in Market Garden.

The biggest contrasting view of the war isn't the rightness of their cause, my grandpa, much like my American relatives, both believed they were fighting Evil Inc. However, after the war my grandpa was released from the British Army and given 50 pounds or a suit of clothes as his demobilization pay. American soldiers were given heaps more benefits for their service.

My grandpa spent 6 years in the British Army, he joined in 1938 and was cut loose right at the end of 1944. For that he walked out with a raging case of Ptsd and 50 pounds.

My American relatives spent from 1941/2 to 1945 and were well received by their families. Where as my grandpa came how to a nation of bombed cities and exhausted civilians.

A few knives? A few beatings?

It makes me sad that we live in a universe where this kind of 'stuff' is considered standard.

Please be careful and god bless.

I went to a private boarding school right across the road from the Neverland Ranch in the early 1990s. I remember hearing that @#$#ing tram tooting its whistle all hours of the night and day. Kids from my school used to try and sneak onto his property, but apparently he hired his security from Delta force because none of them made it very far.

Ol' MJ did used to hire local kids to work on his ranch. One of the faculty members had a son who did some work for the ranch on a few occasions. He said it paid well, never once saw MJ, and was treated pretty well by everyone there.

I personally think the VA ought to be mostly abolished with the exception of certain mental health services that need a specific sort of support group best found amongst veterans.

The US has a perfectly workable medicaid system that would get veterans the medical care they need a hell of a lot more efficiently than the VA mess.

That being said, glad you are doing ok.