My Grandfather

For some background information, my grandfather, at the time was 17, made a decision that he wanted to be in the military, and serve his country, and when he told my great-grandfather he thought it was a wonderful idea, but his mother did not this it was. This is expected of a mother, worried her little boy is going to go off and die in the military. But my grandfather stood his ground because he wanted to fight for what’s right. So after a lot of verbal battles, my grandfather finally went and enlisted for the U.S Submarine core. My grandfather is no small man either, at the age of 13 he was 6’1″ and was 230 pounds of pure muscle and so he passed all the physical test. My grandfather told me that as a kid he always had a hot head and had very low patience which surprised me because he has the most patience I have every seen in a man, and he told me “the only reason I am how I am is because of the time I spent in the military” and when he said that it didn’t make much sense to me until he told me this story.

When he was young and freshly in the military it was in the middle of the Vietnam war, and being in the submarine service meant he would travel a lot and be away from home for months at a time. At this point in the war the U.S military was looked down upon by the civilians for the things that were going on in Vietnam. Mostly the hate for the military was looked down on by the peace core and there was a lot of people in California in the peace core and my grandfather had to go to California.

He told me as soon as they left the military base they would get yelled at and get things thrown at them, and this one specific time my grandfather and his buddies were going out to get a drink and they were walking down the street and they saw this group of people with signs that were saying for them to stop the war in Vietnam. That group of people saw my grandfather’s group and they started chasing them down the street yelling at them and throwing things at them. One of these people threw a piece of some sort of food at my grandfather and it hit him right in the back of the head. I would like to say again my grandfather is no small man and he used to be very hot headed. At this point my grandfather could have gone right up to them grabbed them by the collars and yelled in their faces, but he didn’t he kept his composure, and stayed patient knowing they would be at the bar soon. Finally he got to the bar and told me he had a amazing time after that in California.

“Grandfather Healing” by dyniss is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.