Family Information

Thanks, Mom, that is so very cool. I've often thought I don't know near as much about my family as I would like to and of course the opportunities grow fewer as the years go by. I certainly don't know granddad as well as I wish I had. It would be really interesting to solicit his war record and find out. As far as I know, he was the only one in the family to serve active duty in WWII. I know there are a lot of sites where you can do that like http://www.archives.gov/veterans/evetrecs/index.html I'd even do it but I don't have his date of birth or social security number. (Perhaps one day you'd fill out a family tree at least as far as you know it.)

That series has been fascinating and I'm constantly astounded, surprised and nauseated. The death tolls are almost more than you can get your mind around and it's interesting to me that while so much focus has always been given to the blitz on England and the deaths there, you never heard that much about the amount of civilian deaths Germany suffered. I commented to Kevin last night it's no wonder so few men who served really wanted to talk much about it when they returned. I'm also fascinated about the ways the population at home reacted and how things changed. You have to wonder how different things would be in Iraq and Afghanistan now if the American people had been asked to sacrifice rather than "go out and spend money". 25 million cars manufactured in 1940. Only 26 cars manufactured the entire rest of the war years. Wow!

More later this afternoon on gardening!