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OT: Dying History - 7/8/2010 4:10:47 PM   
carnifex


Posts: 1295
Joined: 7/1/2002
From: Latitude 40° 48' 43N Longtitude 74° 7' 29W
Status: offline 		This is a post from a guy who frequents another forum I'm a member of and he posted a story last night that I wanted to share:

quote:

So today I wake up and go to the hospital. I get sign out from the night team about a guy coming onto our service. 93 year old with coronary artery disease post 4 vessel bypass, heart failure with EF <20%(normal around 55%), prostate cancer, high blood pressure, now presenting with abdominal pain for the past 10 hours. Turns out he clotted off one of the arteries that fed his bowel.

So I head over his room to talk to the guy who is surprisingly coherent and interactive. After talking to him for a bit, I started to examine him and I see a navy tattoo on his arm. Since he was 93 and I always had a thing for WW2 I asked him about his tattoo and the navy. "Oh that's nothing...that's a long time ago." I touch his belly and he goes rigid with pain. His bowel is most likely dead and the question now is if we should take him to surgery or not. (we did, stuck a scope in saw grossly necrotic bowel, and aborted the surgery)

I leave to go talk to his family and find my attending to talk about operative versus palliative care. As I talked to his family they all go around and just start telling stories about this man. The ones that stuck out to me, maybe because I was a ww2 nerd in undergrad were these.

He watched the Arizona sink while manning the guns of a cruiser that was on fire in pearl harbor.
He received the silver star and a purple hearts in WW2.
He was in the battle of midway.

Tonight I signed him out to the night team with palliative care. I just couldn't shake the feeling that a piece of history was dying tonight.


We play WITP and give orders to sink carriers, invade atolls, bomb factories, etc. Sometimes we forget that there were real men on those ships and planes and that these men are now passing into history just like the battles they fought in.

My grandmother passed away two years ago. Right before, I sat down with her and turned on my camcorder. She told me stories of running messages for the Polish Home Army, of sprinting through muddy fields while the Germans were shooting at her, at having to live in the forest, of being questioned by the Gestapo, of seeing her friends captured and taken away for extermination. None of my family were ever interested in that, and I was the first person who ever documented her experiences.

She was just a regular woman, leading a regular life, probably just like the Navy veteran in the quoted post above. It's sad that sometimes only on the deathbed that we find out or take the time to care about their life experiences.
Post #: 1
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/8/2010 5:05:27 PM   
Speedysteve

 

Posts: 15998
Joined: 9/11/2001
From: Reading, England
Status: offline 		Too true

_____________________________

WitE 2 Tester
WitE Tester
BTR/BoB Tester

(in reply to carnifex)
Post #: 2
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/8/2010 5:29:49 PM   
mg62


Posts: 91
Joined: 7/22/2008
From: New Hampshire
Status: offline 		Too true as well.

My neighbor at our cottage (lake house near Parry Sound, ON) emigrated to Canada from Germany after WW2.  She lived in Danzig as a young girl and was there when WW2 started.  She is ~80 now, still getting around but not as much as the past. 

She wrote a book about her early life and feels very fortunate to have gotten out of Germany intact physically & emotionally.  She was into music and she was able to use music lessons to keep her out of the Nazi youth classes.  She is very religious and she feels that she was guided out of eastern Germany ahead of the Soviets to the west. 

It is hard to imagine some of these life experiences.

(in reply to Speedysteve)
Post #: 3
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/8/2010 11:18:24 PM   
Titanwarrior89


Posts: 3283
Joined: 8/28/2003
From: arkansas
Status: offline 		A great post....but Sad.
quote:

ORIGINAL: carnifex

This is a post from a guy who frequents another forum I'm a member of and he posted a story last night that I wanted to share:

quote:

So today I wake up and go to the hospital. I get sign out from the night team about a guy coming onto our service. 93 year old with coronary artery disease post 4 vessel bypass, heart failure with EF <20%(normal around 55%), prostate cancer, high blood pressure, now presenting with abdominal pain for the past 10 hours. Turns out he clotted off one of the arteries that fed his bowel.

So I head over his room to talk to the guy who is surprisingly coherent and interactive. After talking to him for a bit, I started to examine him and I see a navy tattoo on his arm. Since he was 93 and I always had a thing for WW2 I asked him about his tattoo and the navy. "Oh that's nothing...that's a long time ago." I touch his belly and he goes rigid with pain. His bowel is most likely dead and the question now is if we should take him to surgery or not. (we did, stuck a scope in saw grossly necrotic bowel, and aborted the surgery)

I leave to go talk to his family and find my attending to talk about operative versus palliative care. As I talked to his family they all go around and just start telling stories about this man. The ones that stuck out to me, maybe because I was a ww2 nerd in undergrad were these.

He watched the Arizona sink while manning the guns of a cruiser that was on fire in pearl harbor.
He received the silver star and a purple hearts in WW2.
He was in the battle of midway.

Tonight I signed him out to the night team with palliative care. I just couldn't shake the feeling that a piece of history was dying tonight.


We play WITP and give orders to sink carriers, invade atolls, bomb factories, etc. Sometimes we forget that there were real men on those ships and planes and that these men are now passing into history just like the battles they fought in.

My grandmother passed away two years ago. Right before, I sat down with her and turned on my camcorder. She told me stories of running messages for the Polish Home Army, of sprinting through muddy fields while the Germans were shooting at her, at having to live in the forest, of being questioned by the Gestapo, of seeing her friends captured and taken away for extermination. None of my family were ever interested in that, and I was the first person who ever documented her experiences.

She was just a regular woman, leading a regular life, probably just like the Navy veteran in the quoted post above. It's sad that sometimes only on the deathbed that we find out or take the time to care about their life experiences.



_____________________________

"Before Guadalcanal the enemy advanced at his pleasure. After Guadalcanal, he retreated at ours".

"Mama, There's Rabbits in the Garden"

(in reply to carnifex)
Post #: 4
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/9/2010 1:30:58 AM   
AcePylut


Posts: 1494
Joined: 3/19/2004
Status: offline 		Here's a story of a personal nature...

My ex-wife's grandfather was a swabbie on the DD-Blue. The DD-Blue was at Pearl Harbor, and he was one of the guys that fished dead bodies out of the water.

The Blue fought in a number of engagements in the South Pacific... including the disasterous battle of Savo Island. From wiki....

"The destroyer USS Ralph Talbot patrolled the northern passage and the destroyer USS Blue patrolled the southern passage, with a gap of 12–30 kilometres (8–20 mi) between their uncoordinated patrol patterns...
Mikawa's force approached in a single 3 kilometre (2 mi) column led by Chōkai, with Aoba, Kako, Kinugasa, Furutaka, Tenryū, Yubari, and Yunagi following. Sometime between 00:44 and 00:54 on August 9, lookouts in Mikawa's ships spotted Blue about 9 kilometres (5.5 mi) ahead of the Japanese column.

To avoid Blue, Mikawa changed course to pass north of Savo Island.[33] He also ordered his ships to slow to 22 knots (41 km/h), to reduce wakes that might make his ships more visible.[34] Four minutes later, Mikawa's lookouts spied either Ralph Talbot about 16 kilometres (10 mi) away or a small schooner of unknown nationality.[35][36] The Japanese ships held their course while pointing more than 50 guns at Blue, ready to open fire at the first indication that Blue had sighted them.[33] When Blue was less than 2 kilometres (1 mi) away from Mikawa's force, she suddenly reversed course, having reached the end of her patrol track, and steamed away, apparently oblivious to the long column of large Japanese ships sailing by her."


"While pointing more than 50 guns at DD-blue"

It makes me believe that my ex and her whole family was "one weary sailor that didn't spot the Japs" away from existing.

He passed away a number of years ago... but he was da man!

_____________________________


(in reply to Titanwarrior89)
Post #: 5
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/9/2010 6:23:52 AM   
rockmedic109

 

Posts: 2390
Joined: 5/17/2005
From: Citrus Heights, CA
Status: offline 		I've been a paramedic for over 20 years.  When I started I still {rarely} saw patients that were WWI vets.  Now it is rare to see a WWII vet.  Sad.  Like the passing of an era.

(in reply to AcePylut)
Post #: 6
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/9/2010 9:07:40 PM   
geiramk

 

Posts: 20
Joined: 7/28/2009
Status: offline 		Another one of personal nature:

One of my grandfathers was a mine-clearing sapper in the Royal Scots 1939-45, receiving an MBE for his service (and also an iron cross as a personal gift from a German he rescued in France), but due to his reluctance to talk about the topic of the war (and his premature death) I know extremely little about his experiences, and his memories have largely gone to the grave with him. His brother was a tank commander in the 8th army, and also survived the war, but I also know little about him apart from that in France he made good use of his tank as a useful transport for goods 'requisitioned' from German commanders' residences and such...

My grandparents on the other side of the family were with the resistance movement in Norway, harbouring a wireless set in their house, though at no point during the war were they directly placed in any danger.

(in reply to rockmedic109)
Post #: 7
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/10/2010 5:32:48 AM   
scott64


Posts: 4019
Joined: 9/12/2004
From: Colorado
Status: offline 		My grandfather would tell us about his crawling on the front lines in France during WWI in the last part of the war.

_____________________________

Lucky for you, tonight it's just me


Any ship can be a minesweeper..once !! :)

http://suspenseandmystery.blogspot.com/

(in reply to geiramk)
Post #: 8
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/10/2010 9:08:47 AM   
Apollo11


Posts: 24082
Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline 		Hi all,

My grandfather was captured by Russians in 1915 on Eastern front. He was wounded in arm (bullets passed through just above his right hand wrist) and he got another bullet in his groin - luckily for him, instead of carrying his dog-tag around neck he had it in his pocket (in his pants) and bullet stopped when it hit it (I still have his dog tags!)...

Please note that we were then (for centuries BTW) part of Austrian-Hungarian empire.

He was transferred deep into Russia (almost close to Siberia) and come home in 1921/1922 (with WWI and after Russian civil war he was unable to travel).

Luckily for him he was forest engineer and he almost immediately found himself great post as a foreman on one big estate there (all Russian men, of course, were fighting in war and thus there was no one to take care of huge estate).

In the meantime my grandmother never lost faith that he would return (she waited as his fiancée for 8 years) and they got married in 1923.

Strangely enough when he and my grandmother got children (4 in all) he insisted that their first daughter would called Olga and second one Myra (my mother was their third daughter and my uncle their only son)... God knows why...

BTW, I still remember sitting in his lap as a child (he died in 1977 as almost 100 years old) listening to him talking about his military and post WWI adventures!


Leo "Apollo11"


P.S.
I will never forget what he said: "Communism is nice thing in theory but in practice it would require people to be angles - which they are not and thus this whole thing is one grand illusion and utopia!"

P.P.S.
When he returned the only big thing he carried with him (apart from clothes on his back) was aluminum pot he used to cook all his meals - I still have that pot at home!

_____________________________



Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to carnifex)
Post #: 9
RE: OT: Dying History - 7/10/2010 2:53:47 PM   
frank1970


Posts: 1678
Joined: 9/1/2000
From: Bayern
Status: offline 		My grandfather is becoming 95 in a few weeks. He is rarely telling stories about his fights in Russia, but is more eloquent about his times in Norway anf Finland. As a saddler first in a mountain artillery Regiment, then in a mountain engeneer regiment (he is a good catholic and denied joining the SS, when asked), he never fired his rifle, but knows a lot about horses, Norway, Finland and Ukraine.

_____________________________

If you like what I said love me,if you dislike what I say ignore me!

"Extra Bavaria non est vita! Et sic est vita non est ita!"


(in reply to Apollo11)
Post #: 10
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