A city that survived its own death

I spotted this image in a video clip of Warsaw soccer fans paying tribute to the courage and valor of their descendants recently. Given what that city endured in World War II, I found it very moving.

The Nazis bombed Warsaw mercilessly in the opening weeks of World War II in September 1939, badly damaging the beautiful city steeped in history. But it didn't end there.

The Nazis decided to eliminate all Jews in Warsaw - first by herding them into a "ghetto," then systematically shipping them to extermination camps. The Jews eventually fought back, however, in what became known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.


The Polish resistance group Zegota worked tirelessly to rescue Jewish children from the ghetto. Irena Sendler recognized that the children would be killed if they weren't smuggled out of the ghetto, so she devised an elaborate system to extricate as many children as she could.

Her remarkable efforts saved 2,500 children until she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943. She endured brutal torture without giving any details of the rescue network and was condemned to death - surviving only because the Zegota bribed a guard to set her free just before her execution.

Her story remained largely unknown because Poland spent decades behind the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union wanted no one who was not Russian or a Communist to be portrayed in heroic fashion. It wasn't until after the Iron Curtain fell that a group of students from a small Kansas high school spotted her name in a magazine article while looking for a project to enter in the National History Day competition.

The rest, as they say, is history. I'll let this documentary tell the rest of the story.



A bit of a disclaimer here: I was assigned to write a story about how Kansas schools fared at the National History Day competition in Washington in 2000. Uniontown didn't win, but as a state historical society official talked to me about "Life in a Jar," I wanted to learn more. I talked my editors into letting me do a story about the students and the project. When I spoke to Elizabeth and Megan and Sabrina, they told me they would do a couple more performances of the play for friends and relatives and then tuck it away, changed forever by that brave woman in Poland.

But my story was picked up by the Associated Press and received wide distribution, prompting numerous requests for performances. Soon, they were doing the play at a synagogue in Kansas City (mentioned in the above documentary).

Their trip to Poland to see Irena became national news there, coming just as the country was wrestling with painful revelations about natives collaborating with Nazi atrocities. Irena became a hero they - and the world - could embrace. Her story of selfless bravery and indomitable courage was timeless and universal.

I would write several more stories about the "Sendler Girls," as I came to call them. This was one of my favorites.

The reporter who normally writes stories touching on history for the Eagle was gone that day in 2000 when my editors wanted a short story about how Kansas schools fared at National History Day, so it was given to me because they knew I love history. I considered it a routine assignment....until I heard about Irena and "Life in a Jar."

It still amazes me when I think about how much happened after that. But Irena and her "girls" deserve all the credit. Heaven knows the world needs the inspiration of their example.

For Love of a Brother

The ESPN documentary series "30 for 30" has presented some wonderful pieces in its fledgling existence. One of its most recent offerings, a short film called "Arthur and Johnnie," touches particularly close to home for me.

The film explores how the Ashe brothers, Arthur and Johnnie, were both serving in the U.S. military in the late 1960s.

After seeing multiple sets of brothers killed in action in World War II, the U.S. Army adopted the Sole Survivor Policy in 1948. Other branches of the military adopted similar codes generally preventing brothers from serving in combat operations at the same time.

Johnnie was sent to Vietnam. In keeping with the policy, Arthur, a blossoming tennis star, was sent to West Point.

Recognizing that his brother had a year of military duty still to serve, and realizing that Arthur could be sent to Vietnam once his own tour of duty there had ended, Johnnie volunteered to serve a second tour in Vietnam.

That spared Arthur Ashe from combat in Vietnam. Johnnie sensed Arthur didn't have the disposition to handle combat and he knew his brother had the chance to become a pioneer in tennis. That's just what Arthur did, becoming the first black man to win the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open. He went on to become a legend as a tennis star and as an international humanitarian. He didn't know of his brother's sacrifice for years. Johnnie told no one except their father.

This story resonates because my father was drafted to serve in World War II. Normally, when a family has multiple eligible sons, the oldest son was the one drafted.

But in the case of the Finger family in Larned, the oldest brother - Leonard - was skipped. Instead, Marvin Finger was tapped by the draft board.

It wasn't until after Marvin returned home to Larned after the war that he learned from the head of the local draft board that his father had told them to pick Marvin instead of Leonard.

As Francis Finger had put it, Leonard was too valuable to the farm to go off to war. In other words, Marvin - who liked to joke and laugh and often drew criticism from his stern family that he didn't take life or work seriously enough - was expendable. Leonard was not.

But my father wasn't crushed by that revelation.

"It's a good thing I was sent overseas instead of Leonard," he would tell me years later. "Leonard wouldn't have been able to handle combat. He wouldn't have made it home."

Dad, like Johnnie Ashe, made it home from combat. They both paid high prices internally for what they endured. Dad also suffered physical injuries that dogged him the rest of his life.

Yet it was a price he was willing to pay for the sake of his brother. Much like Johnnie Ashe would later do for Arthur.

'Memorial Day' on New Year's Eve

Grounded by a bad head cold, I ushered out the final hours of 2012 by watching the movie "Memorial Day" on Netflix.

It featured a World War II vet begrudgingly talking about his wartime experiences with a curious and insistent grandson in the early 1990s. It tugged at me, because in the movie the veteran character actor James Cromwell resembled my father physically and in his speaking patterns.

Not to mention his reluctance to talk about his combat experiences in World War II. I certainly understood it from the standpoint of not wanting to think about or relive the terrors of combat, or have the memories of close friends killed in battle resurrected from the hazy mists of the past.

But, as Cromwell's character noted late in the movie, souvenirs of battle are valuable for the stories that come with them - stories that reflect who we are and how we handled the challenges we faced.

That chat about a few souvenirs on a solitary Memorial Day weekend afternoon was all Cromwell's character shared about his war-time experiences, and it reminded me that so many family members who had loved ones serve in combat never hear about what that experience was like.

Compared to so many of them, I and my family have an encyclopedia of information about where and how Dad fought in France and Germany late in the war. Oh, I wanted more details, and poked and prodded and pleaded with him over the years. He shared in bits and pieces, and on a couple of occasions ricocheted from beginning to end - taxing ordeals that left him exhausted. I wanted more, because I knew the more he shared the more people would appreciate the man he was late in life, how much he accomplished despite the high physical and emotional price he paid while defending and protecting freedom.

In the years since he died in 2006, I have found hand-written notes scrawled in book margins, on notebook paper, on Big Chief tablet sheets...all sorts of places. I'm trying to pull it together into a cohesive narrative, so future generations can be blessed with his stories of what he experienced in combat.

To understand my father, you have to understand what he went through in battle and how it changed him. He once told me he was glad he was in combat, that he wouldn't trade it for anything in the world - but that he also wouldn't want to go through it again for anything in the world.

What he went through was so intense, so difficult, that when he would talk about them to Gulf War veterans struggling with post traumatic stress disorder they wouldn't believe him. "It couldn't have been that bad," they said. But it was that bad, and worse still for countless other veterans.

The stories are vital, for they are vivid tapestries of the human experience and reflections of the human spirit responding to extraordinary circumstances.

Plus, they are reminders of what Confederate general Robert E. Lee meant when he said, "It is good that war is so terrible, or we would come to love it."


Stories of all kinds are vital pieces of family and community history, so I encourage you to share them whenever and however you can. Too often they die with loved ones, and valuable knowledge and inspiration is lost.

"A date which will live in infamy"

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speech asking Congress for a declaration of war against Japan following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

It's one of the most powerful speeches in American history.

Stories I would have loved to hear

I went to four cemeteries this Memorial Day with Mom to decorate the graves of loved ones. While I was there, I photographed the graves of several veterans.

I didn't know any of these men...more than one served in World War I, in fact.

It would have been fascinating to sit down with them in some way to hear their stories. My experience as a reporter is that it is easier for combat veterans to share their stories with strangers than it is to talk to loved ones. Why? They told me they didn't want those close to them to know how much they suffered, because they knew it would be hard on those who love them.

There's really no way to convey in words the horror of war, the helplessness of being pinned down on a beach, the absolute terror in charging an enemy fortification such as the Seigfried Line with machine guns mowing down your buddies or flamethrowers incinerating men so close to you the odor of their burning flesh singes your nostrils.

For those who served in the trenches of World War I, how do you convey the sense of impending doom when you've been ordered to charge well-established, well-armed trenches through No-Man's Land? How do you explain the feeling that sweeps over you when someone yells "Gas!" and your gas mask has been shot to pieces?

My father served in World War II, from January 26, 1945, until late April, when he was hospitalized with pneumonia that he contracted after inhaling poison gas. He was still in the hospital when Germany surrendered, and he rejoined his unit at Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden about a month later.

He told me decades later he wasn't concerned when the buddies in his unit admitted they were scared. It was the ones who never felt fear that worried him. They wouldn't know when to take cover, when to hold back, when to push forward in a coordinated attack that gave the mission its best chance to succeed. Those, he said, were the dangerous ones.

These soldiers are silent now. They stand in the pantheon of Americans who stepped forward when freedom was under fire, when our nation was under attack. The price they paid is a too-often-ignored reminder that freedom isn't free.

Memorial Day is a wonderful opportunity to tell them "thank you," but our gratitude shouldn't need calendars as reminders.

I salute you, gentlemen.

Remembering a snowy day in France

 

 

His first day of combat was in the woods outside Holtzwihr, France. The halftrack Audie Murphy used to singlehandedly repel a German counter-attack - for which he was later awarded the Medal of Honor - was still burning. Soldiers on both sides were still moaning in pain from their wounds. He would suffer his first war injury that very night, and should have been killed more than a half-dozen times. But he fought valiantly and returned home to build a life on the Kansas prairie. He always said the American flag was one of the most beautiful sights in the world, because it symbolized freedom. Rest in peace, Dad --- and thanks for your service to our country.

Thank you, soldier

Letters from the war

As I sort through the dozens of letters Dad wrote home from Europe during World War II, I gather glimpses of different sides of him - sides that I, as a son, never saw once he returned home.

These are the letters of a son to his parents, of a man in love to his sweetheart, of a brother to the siblings back home on the farm. Different voices, but all from the same man.

In the midst of the carnage of war, he spends much time striving to calm the anxious hearts back home.

With death all around him, he talks frequently of life upon his return to Kansas. It can be easy to forget that he turned 21 in combat. Or that he was a classic foot soldier in so many ways, whose letters home reflected how much even the smallest things could matter when you're under fire in a strange land.

He wrote with enthusiasm about such things as a cup of fresh milk, a bottle or keg of beer, a home-cooked meal or a dry place to get some sleep.

This passage, in a letter dated Feb. 20, 1945 and written somewhere in France, made me laugh. He'd already been in the front lines for nearly a month:

I don't give a darn for their whiskey. They call it comish or schnapps. We use it in our cigarette lighters and it works as good as any fluid so you can see how strong it is."

A tribute to an Auschwitz survivor

I came across this story about a man who survived Auschwitz during World War II, and his story was so compeling I just had to share it. Give it a look, and you'll see a vivid refection of courage, toughness, perseverance, and many other virtues.

A Sunday morning in Hawaii

Those old enough to remember anything about that first Sunday
in December in 1941 are well into their 70s now. The number of men and women who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is dwindling rapidly, their eyesight and hearing - and, I fear, our collective memory - fading.

I was captivated by these images - some from captured Japanese military - of that surprise attack that thrust America into World War II. They are from the Boston Globe, and you can see the entire slideshow by clicking on the link below.





Glimpses from a day of infamy


I've interviewed numerous Pearl Harbor survivors, and their eyes tell stories they can never form into words. When the movie "Pearl Harbor" (starring Kate Beckinsale and Ben Affleck, among others) came out several years ago, I helped organize a viewing for local survivors of the attack.

They wanted to see how faithful the movie would be to history. I wanted to hear what they had to say. I was disappointed in the movie, which seemed to take a monumental event in our nation's history and make it the subplot to a soapy romance.

They were surprisingly gracious, I thought. Sure, they had little use for the love story, but they still appreciated the movie.

Maybe, they said, it will inspire young people to go back and take a closer look at what happened on that peaceful Sunday morning in the Pacific. Maybe, they said, it will help them appreciate the sacrifices that have been made to preserve freedom for the generations that have followed.

I hope they're right.

A salute to the Fightin' Fingers

Veterans Day is pretty personal in the Finger family.

Our father, Marvin, saw action in the Battle of the Bulge, was spun around by machine gun fire while storming the Seigfried Line, took part in missions behind enemy lines, suffered a life-altering back injury in Germany and marked V-E Day in a French hospital recovering from pneumonia he always blamed on the poison gas he inhaled while clearing out a building in Bamberg.

By my count, he should have been killed at least a half-dozen times. He made it home to Kansas by the grace of God, he would tell anyone who asked. He went on to have eight children with Helen, the sweetheart he began courting only a few months before he left for basic training.

One of them - the one named after him - join the Army after a brief stint in college. Why? Because his father had been in the military. Ironically, he would serve in Germany, guarding the border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s. It was the height of the Cold War. Though neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union would ever admit to it officially, the American and Soviet forces would shoot at each other - if for no other reason than to let their foes know they were around.

It was no stroll in the forest, though back home we were grateful he hadn't been shipped off to the jungles of Vietnam. Deep down, we feared that was a possibility right up until the time his enlistment ended and he came home. I still rank the Christmas that followed to be the happiest of my childhood, so thrilled was Mom that her boy had returned home safe.

Merf, as we called him to differentiate him from Dad, would join the National Guard upon his return to the states, serving in Kansas, Colorado and Oregon. I've never told him this, but one of the reasons my coverage of Pope John Paul II's visit to Denver in 1993 is one of my favorite all-time assignments is because he happened to be assisting in the medical tents set up to care for anyone who fell ill at the papal Mass at Cherry Creek State Park.

There we were, two Finger boys, up to our elbows in a genuine piece of history: me describing to readers what the closing Mass of World Youth Day '93 was like, with hundreds of thousands of people jammed into the park; and Merf, scrambling to help treat thousands of young adults overcome by dehydration because they didn't take in enough fluids during the long, hot hike from downtown Denver to the park the day before, or at the park the day of the Mass.

So many people were being brought to the medical tents, he told me later, "it was like we were in a war zone."

My twin brother, Steve, has told me that if he had still been single when the war with Iraq broke out he would have joined the military. And I was flattered when the head of recruiting for the U.S. Army wanted to sign me up for officer training school after I'd finished interviewing him several years ago.

When I learned one of my nephews, Joshua Stacey, had joined the Marines, I couldn't help but smile. Another generation of Fingers was serving our country.

Long may it be so.

A visit to Holtzwihr

The woman approached my father and I as we talked on the front steps of the Catholic church after Mass had concluded. They didn’t hear English very often in Holtzwihr, a tiny village nestled between the Rhine River and the Vosges Mountains in eastern France, and she was curious why we were there.

He had been here with the U.S. Army during World War II, Dad told her, and he had returned in search of answers – and healing.

The woman, a teacher, reached out and gave Dad a hug.

“Thank you,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, we would be speaking German.”

Surprised, yet touched, Dad quietly said “Thank you.”

Over the next few weeks, in France and Germany alike, others would approach my father to express their gratitude for what he and his fellow American soldiers had done in freeing Europe from Hitler and Nazism. Some of them had lived through it. Many grew up hearing about it from their parents or teachers, grew up in a free country because of what Dad and so many hundreds of thousands of his compatriots had done.

They understood.

In Germany, particularly, professors and postmen and farmers dropped what they were doing to help an American soldier in the twilight of his life try to make peace with a war that had never really ended inside of him.

They understood.

Dad genuinely appreciated the kind words and the help we were given. But a sense of disappointment clouded his eyes as our journey stretched on.

In his mind’s eye, he could still see the shattered cities, the wrecked railways, the roads ravaged by bombs and tanks. In their place, nearly 60 years later, were regions humming with activity and prosperity.

After a few days in Germany, he said “They live about as well as we do.” In other words, their standard of living was comparable to the U.S. One of his company’s final hard fights was in the Nazi stronghold of Nuremberg in the waning days of the war. Dad missed that battle because he was in a hospital back in Nancy, France, battling pneumonia he had contracted after inhaling poison gas that was rigged to be released when American troops reached the basement of a large building in Bamberg.

But he had heard the stories and seen the photos of the destruction of Nuremberg, and after a day of touring the city, he said, “It’s like we were never here at all.”

I tried to tell him Germany’s recovery was necessary for the long-term stability of Europe so we wouldn’t have a repeat of the economic and social upheaval that had created an environment for a movement as poisonous as Nazism to thrive. But I could tell my words didn’t really reach him.

It was as if he had hoped to see rubble – a tangible reminder of what they had done…what they had had to do to end this second of world wars.

And it was nowhere to be found.

Not long after we returned from that trip, Dad mentioned he was going to meet with a local veteran who had recently returned from serving in Iraq to see how he was doing. In other words, check to see if he had any post-traumatic stress issues from combat.

When I asked him about that several months later, he said he wasn’t doing it any more. That surprised me, so I asked why. He had talked with a couple of Gulf War veterans, he said, and they told him what it had been like. When they asked him what it had been like in World War II, “they wouldn’t believe me. ‘It couldn’t have been that bad,’” one of them said. Well, if they don’t want to believe me, I won’t talk to them.”

Dad rarely spoke about his experiences in World War II. His unit, Company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment, Third Division, suffered the loss of at least 500 men during his three months of front-line duty alone.

He had at least a half-dozen close calls, including being spun around by machine gun bullets on the Seigfried Line, being flattened by the concussion of artillery fire and .88 shells, being briefly paralyzed while on a special mission 35 miles behind enemy lines – so he wasn’t about to tolerate mocking, even from a new generation of soldiers.

They didn’t understand what it was like back then.

Not even members of his own family could believe what Dad shared about what he went through. That really hurt him, Mom said. He didn’t lie, because he knew there were repercussions. Your word was your bond.

When officials organizing the official dedication of the World War II memorial learned Dad’s company commander was Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. military history, they desperately wanted him to be in Washington for the ceremony. They even wanted to make him part of the festivities.

But Dad declined. He didn’t want the spotlight. He didn’t want to deal with the heat or the crowds. He didn’t want accolades he believed should be given to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

And so he didn’t go.

But he wanted to see the memorial one day. It was high on his list of trips to take while his health was still good – along with another trip to Germany to revisit the town where he had been paralyzed behind enemy lines.

He never got to make those trips. He suffered a stroke the day after he returned from a cruise to Alaska with our mother, the love of his life, in September 2006. We lost him a week later.

When I read about the “honor flight” that carried a few dozen World War II veterans from Kansas to the World War II Memorial last month, I couldn’t help but think how much Dad would have enjoyed that.

He would have relished talking to the other veterans, listening to their stories, nodding knowingly. Any of them who fought in Europe wouldn’t have doubted Dad’s account of what he went through. They’d been there, too.

And they would have understood.

The Longest Day

I'm sure it's because my father fought in World War II, but June 6 has first and foremost meant one thing to me: D-Day, the date Allied forces landed on the beaches of northern France, creating a second front that ultimately spelled the end for Nazi Germany.

Its importance can never be overstated. The courage shown by the soldiers of every nation that took part in the invasion force can only be fathomed by those who have faced the same kind of danger.

Of all the movies produced about war, my father said only one - "Saving Private Ryan" - captured the essence of combat, with its opening sequence about the beach landings at Normandy. Dad did not go ashore on D-Day; he landed at Marseille in January of '45.

But he saw enough combat in 3 months to have no illusions of grandeur about what it was like.

As he told me more than once over the years, once you've served your nation in battle, you never look at the Stars and Stripes the same way again.

You never listen to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the same way again.

And you never sing "God Bless America" with anything but heart-felt conviction again.

To all those who stormed ashore on June 6 - especially those who never came home - I salute you.

Change one life, change the world

I wasn't even supposed to write about them.

I was asked to write about Kansas high school students who placed in the 2000 National History Day competition in Washington, D.C. Four girls from Uniontown High School flubbed so many lines that they didn't place in the competition.

But their play, "Life in a Jar," still turned heads. It was about Irena Sendler, a Catholic who led the efforts to save the lives of an estimated 2,500 children in Warsaw before she was captured by the Nazis in World War II. They were interviewed on CNN, and were invited to perform the play in New York for the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

"A Catholic woman being discovered by Protestant kids who saved Jewish children," their history teacher, Norm Conard, would tell me later. "If this is not a story for the ages, I don't know what is."

I wrote a short piece about the schools that placed in the competition, but told my editors, "The real story is these kids from Uniontown." I talked them into letting me do a story on the students, who had discovered Sendler was still alive and based much of their play on her letters to them. The students were gracious to me, happy to tell Irena's story one more time. They admitted they were likely going to perform the play only a couple more times for family and friends, then tuck it away in their scrapbooks.

After my story ran, their phone began to ring with requests to see the play. Stories in the Kansas City Star and elsewhere brought even more requests. A performance of the play in Kansas City so inspired one man that he raised the money to send the cast, their teacher and family members to meet Irena in 2001. Their visit was national news in Poland, where Irena's efforts had been buried by a Communist regime that considered her subversive. When her work during the war became public, she became a national hero.

The original students who put together "Life in a Jar" have all graduated from college and are now married, but the play continues to be performed by Uniontown students. It's been performed more than 270 times in the U.S., Canada and Poland.

On Sunday night, "Life in a Jar" achieves another milestone: "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, will air on CBS. I'll be in Norman for a violent weather conference, so I won't be able to watch it. But I've got my VCR programmed, and I'll be eager to see it upon my return.

I'm so proud of those students and their teacher, and by how deeply Irena's story has touched the tens of thousands of people who have seen "Life in a Jar."

Sadly, Irena didn't live to witness this latest milestone. She died last May 12 in Warsaw at the age of 98.

Only days before her death, she was visited by her beloved Uniontown students one last time. She told them, “You have changed Poland, you have changed the United States, you have changed the world. I love you very, very much."

Anyone who thinks one person can't make a difference in the world needs merely to read about Irena Sendler...and a few students from Uniontown.

Notes that echo through the centuries

On the day before he became president, Barack Obama paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery and laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A bugler played "Taps" --- and my evening came to a standstill.

I thought about all the soldiers buried there....the wars they fought in....the sacrifices that they made......and the price we've paid for freedom.

I thought of my Dad, and that warm September day we laid him to rest more than two years ago now. A color guard from Fort Riley came to salute a World War II veteran who had fought on the front lines of France and Germany.

I was standing next to the coffin and never saw the 21-gun salute or the bugler playing "Taps"....but those sounds pierced my soul. They reflected that he had joined the generations of soldiers, sailors and aviators who had fought to create, preserve or protect our nation and now live on only in memory.

Remembering Joyce

Joyce had already retired by the time I met her several years ago at my parish church.

Even though it had been decades since she left her roots in war-ravaged Holland for a fresh start in America, she never lost strong traces of her native tongue.

She was the essence of hospitality and Old World grace, and had an upbeat outlook on life despite hardships that would have crippled countless others.

I heard about them over time, during prayer group discussions or lunches she prepared for us – which always felt like a trip back to the Holland of her childhood: wonderful homemade soup, sandwiches and other dishes. I felt like a sponge at such moments, just wanting to savor it and soak it all in.


Though they never met, she grew up in the same city and at the same time as Anne Frank. If I remember correctly, they only lived a few blocks apart, though they never met. Joyce had her own heart-rending experiences during the war: She was awakened in the middle of the night by the Nazis storming into her home and arresting her father. When he told her good-bye, she said, she never realized it would be the last time she would ever see him. She was sleepy, wanted to get back to bed and figured he’d come home again soon. Instead, he was shipped to a forced labor camp somewhere in the East. In his last letter, very late in the war, he wrote that the Russians were closing in from the front and the sea was to his back. She never learned how he died.

It’s difficult for people who didn’t live through it to comprehend how evil the Nazis were, she said. I think that’s why I was all the more impressed by her approach to life: she didn’t let the wounds of war – of unimaginable cruelty – or other painful experiences later on steal her ability to experience joy, to marvel at the wonders of life.

She came to America with her husband, Ray, to build a new life some years after the war. They bonded with other “Dutchies” who had made Wichita their home, and it was a treat for me to see them come as a group to our parish’s sausage dinner every March. I’d hear them speak in Dutch or heavily accented English and could sense the strong, deep ties they shared.

One of her children died and another would never walk, doctors told her. But with fierce love and determination, she worked and worked with her son, and together they proved the doctors wrong. He has a wife, family and successful job in another state now.

Joyce was always quick with a smile and a word of support whenever one of us in the prayer group was going through a painful challenge. It wasn’t a form of denial…more a wisdom and belief borne of a strong faith and the conviction that good people outlast hard times. She was one of those select people I particularly enjoyed hearing talk in our prayer groups, because I always came away feeling enriched. I know I’m not the only one who felt that way. Our group enjoyed each other so much we would meet for lunch or tea just for the pleasure of each other’s company. And it wasn’t the same if Joyce wasn’t there.

Joyce suffered a stroke and left us a few days before Christmas. I have tried to console myself with the knowledge that she is able to be with her daughter, parents and other loved ones now. I’ll miss her, but I’m feeling grateful that she was part of my life – even if it now seems for far too short a time.

Thank you, God.

And thank you, Joyce.

Reflecting on a snowy day in France

He marched toward the smoke, his fresh green khakis standing out brightly against the snow-covered ground.

He was one of a half-dozen soldiers dropped off next to a small bridge and ordered to walk toward a French village named Holtzwihr near the German border. There, they would meet up with Company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment, Third Division.

What was left of it, anyway.

It had been one of the harshest winters in decades in western Europe, and heavy snow blanketed the forest and the narrow road. As he walked, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

He was going to war, and he wasn't even 21 yet.

The smoke had been a telltale sign of battle, but he still wasn't prepared for what he saw as he neared the edge of the forest north of Holtzwihr. Shattered tanks were ablaze. Half-tracks had been blown apart. Anti-tank guns lay in pieces.

Yet it was the bodies that he would never forget: Germans in white winter camouflage, Americans in green fatigues that offered scant protection from the bitter cold.

Most of the fallen soldiers were dead. But the moans and agonized cries of the wounded sliced through the crisp January air and sent a shudder down his spine.

He kept walking. He had orders, after all.

But as he passed through the carnage, a thought crept unbidden into his mind: “I’ll never make it home.”

The history books would call this the Battle of Holtzwihr, during which Audie Murphy singlehandedly blunted a German assault -an act of bravery that would earn him the Medal of Honor. Murphy still holds the distinction as the most decorated soldier in U.S. military history.

But for the Finger family, January 26, 1945, has another distinction: it was Dad's first day of combat.

It would not be his last.

In many ways, the war never ended for Marvin S. Finger. The sacrifices he made for this country continued to exact a toll on him until the day he died, more than 60 years later.

The only people who really know the price so many of our veterans paid to protect our nation are those that served alongside them...and the loved ones they came home to --- if they came home at all.

It's all the more reason we owe them our gratitude on this Veterans Day.