I've known

my father-in-law for about 27 years as long as I have known his only daughter.

He's Howard Emerson Blackburn and he's a World War II veteran. Often we

have talked about the mundane matters of life, but seldom about the war

in which he was wounded. Not until I asked him to talk about it. I found

the truth: real heroes don't brag, but take inner, deep satisfaction that

they did their duty.

He was a farm

boy in rural Kentucky. He learned early to drive a tractor, plant tobacco,

and go skinny-dipping in the nearby pond. Soon into manhood, he fell in

love with this knockout of a Kentucky filly, Christine (after whom by

daughter is named). But then the war came and Grant County's muster included

his name. I read the yellowed newspaper account of the boys including

him who were being called to training. It was like little old nowhere

Crittenden, Kentucky was not left out in being one to send its favorite

sons to the battle front.

When you read

about war in history books, you read about the big battles, the major

assaults, the tactical decisions, and the bloody results. The history

pages don't tell the stories of young men being torn from their new brides

or a father left without his strong arm on the family farm or little towns

being deprived of its future doctors and lawyers.

I don't know

but perhaps because he could drive a tractor, my father-in-law trained

to drive an armored personnel carrier, a half-track. With a tractor, you've

got the whole sky to light your path down the rows 'a planting. In an

armored personnel vehicle, you've got a sliver of a window.

While he was

driving, the carrier received an incoming shell and torn it all to pieces.

I saw a photograph taken. Some were killed; he was wounded. He was taken

from the front to a M.A.S.H. unit, then airlifted to a Paris hospital.

After healing,