Tauber had originally tried to enlist in the Army after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, but he was rejected due to partial color blindness. Sheehan describes writing as the “skeleton key to open locked rooms in my mind.”, The most important self-discovery he made during the writing process was coming to terms with the guilt he felt for the lives that he took in Iraq. Then he moved to Los Angeles where he spent many years engineering circuits and technology for the fast-growing television industry. He has also just finished a his first book of fiction, a contemporary fantasy novel. This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune. Show full articles without "Continue Reading" button for {0} hours. Patients lined up outside the mess tents in the rain and after each meal, someone shoveled out the mud they tracked in. His Thompson submachine gun was no match for the German tanks. Then as the war in Europe intensified, he was called up to fight in the 94th Cavalry, 14th Armored Division of Gen. Patton's Second Army. He was in Bavaria when the European war ended and was waiting for orders to ship out to Japan for a land invasion when the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs and Japan surrendered. "When I was 20, I often wondered if I’d live to see 21, to see my family again, to get married, or would I die in this snow-covered forest in Germany,” he said. "That was what gave me that slap in the face. "It never truly goes away, but learning to allow myself to grieve — for lost friends as well as the people I killed — has become a powerful tool for self-help.". Today, there are nearly 18 million American veterans in the United States, and nearly three-quarters of them served during this nation's armed conflicts. Bob Tauber, 96, of La Jolla, was hit by a mortar shell at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and he later witnessed the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. He's since been found safe and sound. © 1998 - 2020 Nexstar Inc. | All Rights Reserved. Dan Sheehan, 46, of Encinitas, flew a Cobra helicopter and did ground missions during the Iraq War. 5 on Military Times' "Best Military Books of 2013" list. It could’ve been you. After the war, Gilby went back to college on the GI Bill in Chicago, where she met Joseph Gilby, a former Army staff sergeant. Enduring the war's horrors have made him grateful for the life he has today. Like us on Facebook to see similar stories, Missing boater is found clinging to his capsized boat off Florida's east coast, Inquest to probe role of air pollution in death of British girl. Since then, Sheehan published a follow-up book in 2015, "Continuing Actions: A Warrior's Guide to Coming Home." "I do feel I’ve gotten better at carrying the burden, as if it has become a pebble versus a boulder," he said. Betty Gilby of Fallbrook, 101, was injured while serving as a combat dietician for the Army near the frontlines in Italy during World War II. In August 1943, she shipped out to North Africa with the personnel of the 70th General Hospital on the USS Edmund B. Alexander, which "zig-zagged across the Atlantic evading torpedoes from the U-boats," Gilby wrote in her 2019 autobiography "Remembering World War II: A Female Officer in the 5th Army in Italy.". During his first combat tour, Sheehan said he began having disturbing visions of buddies and enemies dying in horrible ways and his mind and adrenaline raced constantly. But in that instant Sheehan heard the news, all of the emotions he'd locked down since his last combat tour in 2004 came exploding out. It was so dark that night, he couldn't tell who he was shooting at, except by the shape of the men's helmets. A 20-year-old Jewish man of Chicago birth, he'd heard about the slaughter of Jews in German concentration camps. All three war veterans enlisted by choice to proudly serve their country, and two of them grew up in families with rich military histories.
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