Veterans! We truly owe it ALL to them. Without our revolutionary veterans, America never would have come into existence in the first place. By a strange coincidence I happened to start reading the memoir, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. (She also wrote Seabiscuit, another fabulous book.) Tons of people have recommend Unbroken over the past few years. Knowing the subject matter, though, I hesitated, thinking it would be too depressing.
So I finally got around to picking it up. Now that I have picked it up, I literally can’t seem to put it down. (That is not out of character for me!) When I did get to sleep last night at o’dark-thirty, I had all sorts of horrendous WWII nightmares. Lucky for me I got to wake up and realize they weren’t real. It was not so for Louie Zamperini. He lived the nightmare of nightmares for years on end and surprisingly lived to tell about it.
Unbroken tells the horrific WWII story of Louie who was shot down over the Pacific Ocean. He then floated for 2,000 miles with no food or water, only to end up as a Japanese POW, one of the lowest forms of life on the planet. It’s right down there with Nazi Germany. His suffering is beyond description. It was so horrendous that at one point he missed his tiny plastic raft surrounded by hungry sharks. Now that’s what I call a Veteran. Whew, he sure earned a capital “V” on veteran and then some!
It makes me feel absolutely ridiculous to get any kind of mention for being a veteran. (I served in the Army JAG Corps for 5 1/2 years.) I don’t deserve to be even be in the same category as this true hero, the same anything at all. I couldn’t handle his sacrifices, starvation, or emotional and physical suffering for 10 minutes, let alone years on end.
Surprisingly the book is not depressing at all, just really inspiring. It makes me realize just how soft we have become as a society, myself very much included. Now I have a tiny inkling of an inkling why the people who lived through those times are known today as our “Greatest Generation.” Wow, were they ever. I wish we all knew more so we could better appreciate what they endured to keep America and the world safe. I don’t remember learning anything about this era in high school history class, but maybe I was too busy passing notes and looking for “hunks” to notice.
Hail to our mighty veterans!
LibbY