By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 02:16:11 +0000

My parents are now both in in that compartment at Arlington because my younger brother insisted on not just taking a boat out in the Gulf and spreading the ashes, or just putting them in the landfill. My parents weren’t really fans of the funeral industry. Too many of the people they knew had bought funeral insurance that turned out to be worthless after corporate takeovers of the local companies.

When I was in two of the hardest jobs to get rank in were the cooks and the military police. Your Dad did good. Navy chow was the best of the services. Napoleon was right – an army travels on its stomach.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 03:54:50 +0000

My father is buried in the middle of people he *did* know — my mother’s family, which to a certain extent was the only family he ever had, given that his mother died when he was fairly young and his father was evil. (No, I’m not being harsh. His father was an evil little man). We didn’t send him to a national cemetery because my mother wants to be buried there in the family cemetery beside her father and mother — and beside him, even though she remarried when he died.

He served in the Navy during the Korean War just as his older half-brothers had served in the Navy during WW2 and his terminal rank was CS3, which was cook who was a duty cook (i.e. supervised a shift, basically the equivalent of a corporal in the Army). I had always thought he was a screwup when he was in the military but they didn’t hand out that rank to just anybody, especially not for someone in his first tour. They wanted him to re-up but he declined, he went off to work as a cook in civilian life and my mother was a waitress and then came baby…

Comments on: Memorial Day

By: Bryan

By: Badtux