# 136 Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day! I'm enjoying the day with some snuggling with my sweet Parker (she's basically ignoring me-- I try to snuggle, she walks off. I'm not taking it personally though). I'm headed to Oxford later this afternoon to help my little brother organize his new house and new bedroom (remember the mattress?!) and I'm excited to see him!

Its Memorial Day and I don't really have any traditions. My family is kinda strange with the family traditions-- we don't have that many "normal" ones. We don't cookout for any of the summer holidays, we've spent more Thanksgivings than not headed to see our Rebels play in the Egg Bowl, and Christmas traditions were usually intertwined with our trips to Gatlinburg. Its actually something that makes me a bit sad when I think about it, and, in discussing summer holiday traditions with my mom recently, she pointed out that Memorial Day, for the past few years, the boys (and sometimes me, back when they still invited me) were at the SEC Tournament (no worries about that this year) and Labor Day is usually full with the first of football season. I guess its no surprise that many of our family traditions have to do with Ole Miss sports!

Anyway, I'd really like to start having a huge cookout on Memorial Day or July 4th (a July 4th shindig is already in the works, hopefully!). But this year, its too late to plan anything, so I'm just going to celebrate Memorial Day by blogging. Its an exciting life, people.

Interesting facts about Memorial Day I've discovered today:

-- it was first observed by freed African slaves in 1865

-- it was originally called "Decoration Day", and wasn't known as "Memorial Day" till after WWII

-- it was traditionally May 30, but changed in the late 1960s to a Monday so it would be a three-day weekend

-- the Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye introduced a bill every year to have it changed back to its original date-- every year since 1987!

Today, I'm celebrating Memorial Day by remembering some people very important to me-- my Pop, Albert Carr, and two of his brothers, Richard and Roger Carr, all three of whom were Army veterans, and who fought in World War 2.

Here is a picture of my Pop in 1944-- it didn't scan very well, and I really need to find somewhere that has a better scanner than I do because I have lots of old pictures I want to have scanned.

This is Pop (left) with Uncle Richard (middle) and Uncle Roger (right).

All three of these men are now deceased (Pop lived the longest, and he died nearly two years ago). But they were all three, especially my Pop, some of the bravest men I've ever had the privilege of knowing. I can only imagine what they went through for our country. I've heard Pop tell only a few stories and my Dad has told me other ones, but I wish I could have written down their experiences, so that they could really live on. Regardless, they were heroes to me, and I thank them, and all the other military men and women, for the sacrifices they made for my America. Pop's military service defined him for the rest of his life-- it was something he was very proud of, and rightly so. I'm so proud to call him my grandfather (I actually really lucked out all around in the grandparents category!)

In the book, Veterans of World War II, Newton County, my Pop and his brothers had several pages about them. This is a super neat book, and it has pictures and copies of letters and background information about all the men (and women) from Newton County who served. Its really interesting! The book has the picture of Pop from above (albeit much better quality!) and notes that:

Carr, Albert Benton, inducted 3 Jul 1943 in the United States Army at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, age 18. Civilian occupation: student.

It also notes that he was a member of the 393rd Infantry Regiment of the 100th (Century Division), was involved in the drive on Raen l'Etape, a strategic town on the 7th Army front, and the regiment skillfully out-maneuvered the Nazis at this town.

The neatest thing about this book was that it had excerpts of letters from the soldiers to their families and friends at home-- many of these letters were printed or mentioned in the Newton Record at the time. The newspaper articles state that Pop was awarded the "Combat Infantryman Badge" which is awarded for satisfactory performance of duty in ground combat against the enemy and entitles the soldier to $10 per month additional pay! It also described Pop's soldier's unit as "part of the victorious Seventh United States Army commanded by Lt. General Wade Hairslip", and that this unit was the first to taste combat in WWII by sweeping the enemy out of Sicily in 37 days. It landed on the beaches of the French Riviera and went more than 1000 miles through the heart of Fortress Germany and liberated the largest area of any regiment. They captured more than 650,000 prisoners in combat (and numerous other ones surrendered) and elements of the Seventh Army liberated thousands of Allied prisoners including Leopold, King of Belgium and his family and two former French premiers. I'm sure this regiment was huge and I don't know that Pop was involved in any of these things, but regardless, Pop did some amazing things and was literally a part of history. He also served as an Honor Guard at General Patton's funeral. That's pretty cool!

The book also mentions my great-uncles, Richard and Roger. Uncle Roger wrote to his family a lot, and I actually have some of those letters and a few cables from him. This book has an excerpt from one letter that states that he was in the invasion of Luzon and although his ship sustained no casualties, he can now understand the truthfulness of General Sherman's definition of what war is like.

These men were incredibly brave to leave their homes, their families and their friends to go across the world and fight something that was truly evil and I thank them for it. I hope they knew how proud I was of them.

And now, since you've continued reading through my rather long tribute to them, I will reward you, dear readers, with a couple of my favorite family pictures.

This is my Pop, Mamaw, Dad and Uncle Eddie. Nice turtlenecks.

A lot of people didn't know that Dad and Uncle Eddie were once co-joined twins. We are really glad that experimental surgery worked out.

I just spent like 10 minutes laughing at that picture. Its once of my favorites. There was another picture, taken at the same time, of these two, and it spent my entire life in a place of honor above the television at my grandparents house. Its a good picture too, because it really shows off the octagonal shape of my dad's head. Luckily, he now wears his hair much longer.