06-18-2025, 07:07 AM
(06-18-2025, 06:12 AM)dukealien Wrote: A very thought-provoking story. Brothers in arms, or brothers in the biggest family of all, the dead. Fridalin would have been on the winning side at the time he fell (fourth day of the Battle of France) - irrelevant to brothers of both kinds.Yes duke- I can't imagine what my dad was feeling as he moved through France with the US 87th Infantry, within 40 miles of where his younger brother was killed earlier in the war.
I never even knew my dad had a brother until I was a teenager, when our mom told us kids. My dad refused to talk about him: my father was a proud Austrian, and hated that his country was 'absorbed' by the Nazis. Apparently his brother welcomed it.
ps. I edited losing side to other side, to more accurately reflect the fact you mentioned, duke: that Germany did indeed overrun France in 1940. My dad, and the 87th Infantry didn't arrive in Moircy, Belgium (about 40 miles from Vringe-aux-Bois) until late 1944, four years after my dad's brother was K.I.A.