Thanks for the memories...

I've been trying, off and on, to watch the PBS series on WW II by Ken Burns.  Each time I flip over to it, I get too depressed after a few minutes and quit.  Mountains of pain and bungling and malice and waste.

I knew those people.  Father-in-law is a navy vet from The War, we threw out Elder Sister's ration-books when cleaning out Mom's house, I grew up down the street from a survivor of the Bataan Death March and just about every childhood friend had a veteran in the family.  Some were older brothers rather than fathers or uncles.  Military portraits framed in black.  Anti-tank shells and grenades (deactivated, I hope, but ...) for paperweights in a lot of home offices and dens.  Japs and Huns were demons.

Waste.  Pain.  Hate.  Death.

ADDENDUM

Our history courses in school were always paced so we didn't get any further than WW I -- if that.  Cynical me, I suspected that the main reason was so that teachers didn't have to deal with parents who lived through the period and knew an alternate reality to the official one.  After all, we had Spanish-American War vets in the family...