A poppy is cheap; remembrance and solidarity are not

[LongTomH]

2. Always true, whatever the war, whatever the country.

My WWII vet uncles all had problems with the bottle. All of these brave gentlemen had the experience, in early manhood, of having very unreasonable people shooting at them, and of seeing the horrors of war.

I remember making a comment to my uncle John about the terrible things the Nazis did in the war; he quietly replied: "Americans did some terrible things too!"

I didn't press him on this. It's not that I was afraid of him; Uncle John was a gentle man; but, from his tone, I knew this was something he didn't want to talk about.

None of them talked much about their war experiences until late in life. It was very late in his life that my Uncle Robert related a story that Uncle John had told him. Uncle John's company commander had the entire company march around the perimeter of one of the death camps (I think it was Auschwitz) and told them to remember what they had seen there.