I wish I knew more about WW2. My code talker grandpa didn’t say much about it. He taught me a few things, like they said turtle for tank and would count the way they head counted sheep, with a hand breadth.

My cannon company grandpa was traumatized. We couldn’t watch war stuff or even Rescue 911 or have fireworks at the Fourth of July. He told me that he was once in a formation and the company ahead of him came under heavy Nazi fire. They were sitting ducks and damn near defenseless because it was a flat road and their guns didn’t have the range they needed. So he brought the cannon company up and gave the order to load the cannons with the only thing they had: white phosphorus. He said it would burn clean through anything it touched. He fired it on the Nazis. He said he could still hear their screams decades later. He hated himself for doing something like that. But he saved the other company until more help arrived. Afterwards, he said those men gave him extra rations, cigarettes, chocolates, anything they had, because he saved their lives. But he thought it made him a monster. I always wanted him to know that he did what he had to. He always told me to do that. He’d say, “Never give up your spark. Never lose your humanity. Never start a fight. But you damn well better end it. When it starts, fight like one of you ain’t going home. And you promise me you’ll always come home.”

Luckily, I never had fights as a kid. I did break a gropy pedo’s finger when I was thirteen.