Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 18

After fifty-two years of not hearing from Prasek, my daughter, Kay located his address and telephone number on the Internet.  Doris and I called him and had a long, long talk.  His health was not good.  He called me later and we talked some more.  My plans were to go see him, but as usual we kept putting it off.  When I did try to call him he had already passed away.  I will always regret that I did not take time to go see him.  He was one of the best soldiers that I had ever met.

After I heard about my Dad’s death, it made it so much harder to keep my mind on what was really going on, but I could not give up.  I had a wife and a beautiful daughter, Kay, to protect.  As times passed it began to get easier to forget my troubles.  So it was back on line again with a tank that had been repaired the best our mechanics could with what little parts and time they had.  I think it was the fifth tank I had lost.  Having another tank was not half as bad as having a new crew, most of which may have never been in a tank.  Again, I would tell them and show them what to do, and try to keep their moral in high spirits.  You had to make them think that we were the best soldiers and our equipment was the best.  If you were lucky maybe the enemy contact was not so bad the first time out, and that gave the new man more spirit.  They learned the meaning of “kill or be killed” fast.  After several battles, some of which were hand to hand contact, we pushed on for we knew we could not let the enemy have time to stop and reorganize and get new troops and supplies.