Dad was a D-Day Dodger
My father enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1935 during the Depression. He was shipped to Hawaii and assigned to the 64th Coast Artillery for about six weeks. Then his "first shirt" tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had a new job. He became one of three drivers for the commander-in-chief of the Hawaiian Department, Major General Hugh A. Drum. The photos I have are a neat archive.
The day after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted again, and was sent to OCS becasue he had prior service. Again sent through artillery school he ended up in an anti-aircraft outfit that had its equipment sunk on the way to North Africa. The survivors were folded into the 185th Engineer Combat Battalion, and spent the war building roads, airfields, bridges, and seaports. He liked Italy well enough, but draining the marshes outside Rome gave him the malaria that eventually killed him.
Bob
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