remember

at the “Y” I am in the exercise machine room, and see an elderly gentleman with a Coast Guard sweatshirt on and a ship’s baseball cap. moving into his sphere, I introduce myself and ask when he served in the Coast Guard (as a family friend was a commander in the Guard). he replies, nodding his head, oh, ’41 to ’45. we go on to talk for some time. he tells me about his experiences in the Pacific Theater, how there were never pictures of the Marine LST’s (landing ship transport) that he skippered when they returned from the beaches of the Pacific campaign. only the photos of the Marines spilling out into the waves when the doors opened, not when they were full of the dead and injured being ferried back to the mother ship. he says he still wakes up at night with that image in his head.