My Grandfather: The Bombardier

Boom!! Boom!! Boom!!!!
My grandfather flies high over Nazi Germany watching each bomb drop, fall and explode. Dust clouds the air and although he can't hear the screams above the droning of the planes engine, they still haunt his memory to this day.

Just two months ago Charles, my grandfather, arrived in the "European Theatre" as they called it. What kind of theatre was this??? A dirty theatre playing a non-stop tradegy with millions of characters and victims taking their cue each day. Chuck had no idea what to expect. He joined the air force voluntarily as his one opportunity to better himself and future by taking advantage of the new GI Bill, which paid college tutition for veterns. After his short 2 month basic training, Charles found himself in another world; a world where death was commonplace and mercy non-existent. Chuck flew with the bombs in the dropping bay and it was his job to make sure that everything went according to plan. He controlled the dropping of the bombs, their timing, dispersal and confirmation of detonation. He watched as each and every bomb fell to earth, wreaking havoc on the landscape below.

On an ordinary day flying high over the hills and valleys of Germany the horrors of war found my grandfather and refused to be forgotten. As he was flying back to base, Chuck got the feeling of deja vu. He looked at the land below and saw an image that would remain burned in his memory forever: buildings destroyed, homes ruined, families huddling together for warmth in the corner of a destroyed factory. He saw piles of bodies but when he looked hard he could see that these were not "bodies", but people; a young mother and her infant son, an old man white who's white hair matched his pale dead flesh and a young man no older than himself. As he was observing this horrific scene, the pilot turned to him and said "Doesn't even look like the same town anymore" with a mathed sense of disbelief and repulsion. That was the moment my grandfather realized that this horrific nightmare in front of him was the busy town he had bombed just three days ago.

War is horrible. There is no way to forget it or leave it behind.
I grew up never knowing more about my grandfather's involvement in World War II than, he was a bombadier in the air force and he returned safely to his family. My grandfather never told us about the horrors he saw or the missions he went on. Maybe this was his way of leaving the war behind him, by keeping it's memories in his past and not allowing them to resurface.