I love listening to those guy's stories. any won't talk about them but some will.
My Father-in-law was in the Pacific theater during WWII & fought at Guadalcanal.
He was the most gentle guy you'd ever meet but I can't imagine the shit he had to go through in the Pacific.
He did tell me once when he was shipping out how as the ship passed under the Golden Gate bridge how the entire vessel was dead silent.
Everyone on board pretty much though 'we're all going off to fight until we either win the war or die'.

I've been blessed to be part of a group who has conducted Honor trips to DC, honoring our Hero's in 2012 and 2017. We raised 70K in 2012 and 90k in to 2017, taking approximately 50 veterans in each trip along with medical staff, chaperon's and veteran's guests.

Aside from my children and grandchildren being born, these trips are the most humbling experiences of my life.

Cherish you time with your friend Kyle he is a great man.... one of the last members of our Greatest Generation. God Bless him for his service and sacrifice.

My father was in an engineering battalion in the Army and built/repaired runways and such before the Navy SeaBee's would come in and take credit I asked many times for stories about it, but it was not anything he could talk about. The best I could get out of him was when he was on leave and seeing the Filipino ladies who would be there to wash your back when you went for a nice hot bath. He said he got some scrubbing in too The glint in his eyes was priceless

When I was in NH over the summer, I was out for a ride and stopped at a roadside burger place in VT for lunch. There was biker group there that had a lot of veterans in it. As I was waiting for my lunch, a older gentleman and his son showed up. He was a WWII Marine that had been through Iwo Jima and a couple of other places. Needless to say that he was treated like royalty.

I don't know how anyone could disrespect the flag or a veteran and say they're American.

I guess my old man was the exception to the rule because I've heard a thousand stories about his time on Guadalcanal. I had a front row seat to everything from hunting down snipers hiding in palms trees to hearing "Washing Machine Charlie" flying overhead at night. His time on the island came to an abrupt end when the tank he was driving flipped over leaving him pinned underneath. The rest of the crew got out just fine and many hours later when they managed to roll the tank back over he was miraculously still alive. There wasn't much of him that wasn't busted or broken after that experience, so they shipped him back to the states. That was one tough Marine right up to the end and I miss him everyday because among other things he was my best friend.

Mike

PS. In a way I'm glad he's not here to see those who refuse to stand for the anthem, so many of his buddies never made it home having given their full measure to keep us free.

Both of my parents (deceased) were in the Army during WWII. They had seven children, of which only two enlisted in the armed forces (we both joined the NAVY, and my sister was eventually commissioned in '96). Both of them were children of the Great Depression. My dad enlisted from Texas A&M in '43?, my mom later. He was in the 363 Special Engineering Battalion(?)which was part of the Persian Gulf Service Command, part of the Lend - Lease pipeline to Russia. He was stationed in the Egypt- Sinai area and only told a very few stories about what it was like over there.
My mom was a member of the WAC, attached to the USAAF, attached to the medical corps. She was mostly stationed in Texas. She had experiences with Nazi officer P.O.Ws. that were hilarious to hear. Her maiden name was German, and I would expect displayed on her uniform, yet, those arrogant Nazis didn't seem to expect her to understand them when they insulted her. Long story short... don't insult the person with the cheek swab or hypodermic needle!
After they were both gone, among the stuff my mom had squirreled away were letters home from my dad and his brother, as well as a photo album and several trays of slides my dad took while he was over there. My brother got the letters (and let me read them) and I got the photos/slides. I later found out that the troop ship my dad rode over there was the SS Hermitage- an Italian liner impounded for the duration.
Since they were both veterans, they got separate gravesites at the DFW National Cemetery. My mom outranked my dad, even though he served longer (I guess promotion was better in the WACs) . An eerie thing happened one time when I went to visit their grave sites. I noticed that groundskeepers had left rubber marks on my dad's headstone while maintaining the lawn. When I went to the obverse side of his headstone to get the plot number so that I could report it, I got chills down my spine. After I had searched the internet to find out what unit my dad had served in, I had finally discovered that unit. The plot number on my dad's gravesite was 363! The same as the unit he had served in during WWII!
Like others, I wish they had told us of their experiences over there and in this country during that great upheaval.

That's pretty cool DK. Not many of them left. My uncle, who passed away at 93 a few years back, was at Iwo Jima; though he never liked to talk about it. He was also involved with the rebuilding of Japan after the war and later Korea; both of which he did like to talk about. My father was the youngest of 4 brothers and served in Korea as well.