Sometimes I think I understand. He was very strict but scrupulously fair and actually lots of fun, too. He'd take us to get banana splits for lunch and whisper conspiratorially, "Don't tell your Mom." We'd play with trains on the floor, play dice and card games, but you got punished if you broke the rules. He was a guy who was ready to laugh, but I'd seen him simply glare at people and scare the living shit out of them.

He was a Missouri kid who grew up in the Depression and got drafted about six months out of high school. While he was fighting across Europe, he was writing letters to his folks assuring them he was fine and was keeping his head down, which was bull. And anytime there was any kind of USO show, he'd go and write his folks like he'd been to Broadway.

He was a front-line rifleman and runner and occasional bearer of the BAR. He participated in the liberation of a smaller slave camp and once told me that was the hardest experience of the whole war. He was a big guy and had a scar on his face and he'd laugh in his letters about how scared the German civilians were of him. But all he really wanted to do was go home and get married and have a family.

And that's what he did.