I am a bit late in posting this, but I want to acknowledge my father's participation in WWII, which was considerable.
My Jewish father was 16 when he fled Nazi-Occupied France and arrived in the US. At 17, he enlisted in the Navy and served in almost every major Naval battlefield, including Normandy, where he fought to liberate France. His last engagement was in Okinawa, where a Kamikaze jet fighter bombed the destroyer and cast him and others into the sea. He floated, holding onto debris for close to 24 hours before being rescued. Like many men of WWII, he was modest and quiet about his service. He lost good friends and brought home to their families the last papers and items from their lives at sea.
Much later, my son enlisted just after 9/11 and, much like his grandfather above, became a soldier, fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other dangerous places. He served for fifteen years until finally, he put down the sword and came home to a wife and new baby. The fox in his arms was a gift from a local man. And though my son accepted the gift (for not to do so would have insulted the man), he released the fox back into the wild, just beyond the wire where his anxious mother was calling for him.
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
