AussieDavid,

Thanks for sharing this heroic saga with the council. It reminded me of when I was a boy on a camping trip with my father and his friend (his friend was a writer by trade, but he never wrote about the war) who was a Marine during WWII. That night while sitting around the fire after a long day of fishing I could see a visible mood change come over his face in the light of the fire, and then shared some of his experiences in the Pacific with us. For a boy, it was an education on how cruel the world really was in some places (during certain time periods), and how heroism (manifested in many different ways) was a common virtue.

There are millions of untold stories that I wish we could capture somehow, unfortunately that war is now often discussed unemotionally in history classes. The focus is on key dates, battles and causes, but I think our education is remiss in many way when it neglects to tell the human side of war.

Bill