BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY MAY 27, 2024) — THE PLANET doesn’t have much to say today as we bring to a conclusion this long weekend.

It’s a day America sets aside to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in war. Ask those who have been through war, and they’ll not want to speak about it. They will tell you they they oppose war and never want to see it again. They will also add that war is futile, particularly the type in which America’s “leadership” has us engaged.

Combat veterans will, however, defer any notion that they were heroes. That’s how they roll. Instead, they’ll say the heroes are the ones who didn’t come back — the lives so tragically cut short.

My dad, Gino, served in the 99th Infantry, 394th Regiment (“The Battlin’ Babes). According to the Army Times, the men of I&R Platoon, 394th Infantry Regiment, 99th Division were the most decorated platoon of that battle and the entire war. They were the Band of Brothers before there was a Band of Brothers.

American dead at Buna beach, New Guinea, in WWII.

His unit saw front-line action in Belgium and Germany during the Battle of the Bulge. Gino came back, but he witnessed enough horror to last the rest of his life. He especially remembered being in the field during one of Europe’s coldest winters on record. It never left him.

He returned to the States, came home to the Berkshires, and settled in Pittsfield. He was one of the Greatest Generation who built this town after the war, making Pittsfield one of the nation’s finest small cities.

Gino was like most combat veterans. He didn’t talk much about it, though later in his life–he lived to be 96 years old–he would answer my questions. Stories included his narrow escape from being captured by a German patrol and his stay in a Paris hospital, what he saw there, and being sent back to the front two weeks later.

WWII made him detest all war.

Try to imagine what goes through a young man’s mind when he realizes he’s going to die in some hostile, foreign land, never to see family, friends, and loved ones again. A life, truncated.

And for what?

That is the question we have often pondered and must continue to ponder still.

Please join THE PLANET in remembrance.

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“No duty is more urgent than that of giving thanks” — James Allen.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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