Israel hospitals instructed not to treat captured Hamas who have piled up in the public hospital sy

[DFW]

35. Just my point, thanks!

My father-in-law was drafted off his farm at age 17 in 1941, sent to Stalingrad at age 42, returned minus a leg in 1943. He was treated very well by the Russian and Ukrainian people in the MASH units that successfully stopped the gangrene that was slowly killing him. He was from so far out in the boondocks, his native language wasn't even German. He couldn't do farm work any more, obviously, so he studied to be a rural banker, and worked at a bank that helped out farmers with loans to keep their farms running. At his funeral, there were over 400 people, just about none of whom I recognized. Mostly local farmers whom he had helped stay solvent over the years.

Never a fan of the Nazis as a teenager, he obviously was less so when he returned home. Even over 30 years later, when I first met him, I remember his face growing cold and silent, his jaw rippling in silent rage whenever Hitler's face was shown in TV documentaries. A fervent anti-militarist, his greatest wish was that all his grandchildren be girls, so that they would never be submitted to compulsory military service. It turned out to be a wish that fate was to grant him. He did marry a local girl, but his daughter, also a product of the flat farm country of the northwest, had the questionable judgment to marry me. At our wedding, her dad and mine, who wore "enemy" uniforms during the war, got along just fine, although my dad spoke no German, and he spoke little English. It sure as hell beat a scenario with both of them growing up hating the other for the rest of their lives.