From the front, looking back

First,
apologetically (nay thankfully),
these are not my experiences, just randomly uttered insights.
I never had to hear something on the radio that I didn't like the sound of, drop what I was doing and then sign up and climb on a ship to another country and point a gun at someone from another country just because it "needed" to be done.
I am writing this from my younger self, that later signed up because I "thought" I knew what they were thinking, I didn't and I still don't I think I do.
I thought they maybe had a stylised view of war, ends justify the means and all that. HELL NO!
I later learned both their fathers were in WW1. One would never go near horses again, used to be a hussar, and the other just dug ditches, was a bit of a problem being a farmer, not many farmers need ten foot ditches to drain their fields. This sounds like some sort of sitcom by today's standards but as far as they were concerned it was "just what you had to deal with".
That is what those guys and guys like them did, they just got on a boat to France and did what they had to deal with.
There were humorous moments, like when Major General Fortune and the French corps (entourage) demanded the officer on parade salute......on the front line! (guns down, stop shooting at the Germans and stand the @#$% up) Or when, on the 'long march' the German guard asked if 'they' could have some of the chicken soup that my grandfather had just chased down from the random Polish farmer's livestock. George was a striker in soccer, so fast on his feet and had apparently agreed beforehand that his first daughter would be the the Pole's son's wife if he could catch the chicken. (As it turned out one of his daughter's DID marry a Polish man but it wasn't the first daughter, he always thought it was funny)
March half way across Europe with only one pair of shoes, with only one cabbage leaf to make soup for fifty people per day and have your guards steal all the good stuff out of your red cross packages that DO actually land near you, it sounds like a Monty Python Sketch.
We, and I include myself in this, do not know that we are living!
Donald was lucky, he was liberated by the Americans, "chocolate and hugs" as he called it.
George, not so much, he was liberated by the Russians. Siberia is a long way from Poland and even colder, especially without shoes apparently.
When our clips were empty and there were mortar shrapnel's falling on our heads there was one thing going through my head, if they could do it and then laugh about it then I better stop crying and 'MAN THE FUCK UP!'
Thank's granddads, for doing the hard yards, so that the rest of us could....well you know.
Respect to the vets.