Conspiracies, Sunday, and World War II

Okay, just so you know it isn't just me. Here.

So K and I are watching episode 4 of The War, which I've seen twice now, although I haven't seen 1 or 2 or most of 3, but it's not as if I can't follow the story, so it doesn't so much matter. It's really an excellent documentary series. Anyway, we just saw a segment that described the weeks following D-Day, and how the Allied troops were having trouble making progress because the countryside of Normandy was cut up into small fields by the hedgerows, which were difficult to get past, and how General Bradley decided that they had to push past the hedgerows and get to Saint-Lo, after which they would have a clearer landscape in which to pursue the German army and push towards Paris, and ultimately, Germany.

And I said to K, "And that's where Grandpa was." He had arrived in Normandy about a week after D-Day, since where he went he was accompanied by the big anti-aircraft guns, and they couldn't move those in until the beach-head was already established, but once he was there, he was part of the push eastward. I'm watching this show, and I see the veterans in their 80's being interviewed, and I think it's frankly a miracle that any of them came out of this alive.

The parts about the war in the Pacific are almost more horrific, as if there's any need to compare. One segment is about a family of American civilians who were living in the Philippines when the war started, and how they were gathered up and quartered in a hotel. Not too bad. I used to work with a man, now retired, who was about 9 and living in the Phillipines in 1941, and who watched the Japanese airfleet as they flew overhead to Pearl Harbor. He and his family were kept in a concentration camp for the duration of the war, a place where guards routinely beat women -- all foreign nationals and civilians, but not all Americans -- for minor infractions. He got out of the camp when he was 12, during which time he had not grown at all, due to the malnutrition.

Anyway, that was quite the tangent. I didn't write yesterday because I just didn't do anything worth writing about. I do feel okay; whatever that lightheadness was on Friday night was gone when I woke up Saturday morning. R came over today to do her laundry, and she and K and I went to Target, because it was Sunday, and that's what one does on a Sunday, and then to a mall near the Target. It was very busy and noisy at the mall, but I got a couple of sweaters at The Gap that were either mis-marked or mis-scanned, because it looked to me like about $52 worth of sweaters and I had a $10 coupon, and somehow it came out to $22.99. So I'm not complaining.

The weather has turned incredibly beautiful here, and is supposed to remain so for the week. Mid to upper 70's, no humidity, no rain. Feels so nice. But I am very tired; I feel like all the juice has been squeezed out of me. I'll be a real hoot to tote around DisneyWorld.

I'll be back.

WATCHING THE WAR :: ENTRY #1594