Donald Foelker and William Foelker, the oldest commissioned officers who served as brothers with the U.S. Marines in the South Pacific during World War II.
Oh, I love them. The "Uncs". They are great men in the best sense of the word, just as men, but also proud of their service. And my other Uncle, Walter Foelker, now departed from us. A poet, a writer, a painter. His correspondence, so beautiful, has been included in an OPB documentary of WWII . He wrote so profoundly, so sensitively. He saw so much -particularly after the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany. Perhaps I will post about that later. He is missed.
2 comments:
SORELY missed....and for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was his sense of humor, so like Grandma...they even had the same snort-laugh.
He too did not go quietly into the good night. I often wonder about this business of dying and ponder at what it is about the struggle & process that means to edify us.....
I know the letters you speak of....during my senior year in english we studied WWII a bit (it was tied into certain parts of our history class) and I did all this extra work for it. I watched "Schindler's List" and wrote a report. My teacher was so impressed she asked me to do more, one of the things ended up being my reading Uncle Walt's letters in class; the one he wrote right after he helped liberate the concentration camp.
I can still remember reading it and knowing very few of my classmates could really comprehend the words I was speaking!
But they have always stayed with me. Much of everything I learned that year about WWII has stayed with me.
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