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READING CAPTAIN RYAN
A series of letters on his war experiences from Edward Ryan - a combat engineer in the Third Army under General George S. Patton - to his grandson:
The woods seemed to be full of Germans waiting to surrender to someone other than a trigger happy infantry man. At times we had more Germans riding on top of our trailers than we had soldiers in our trucks.
Mr Ryan is currently facing down cancer with the same wry resolve you’ll detect in those letters. His grandson Ivan was just eight years old when they were written; in 2006 Iraq veteran Sgt. Ivan Butzen visited us in Sydney.
UPDATE. A Marine redeemed.
I read about Cpl. Stokes at Blackfive. It was about time the Marines gave him his medal…he more than earned it…
Posted by Old Tanker on 2008 02 18 at 09:40 AM • permalinkBefore someone else catches the mistake - Mr. Ryan (aka my dad) was a captain by the end of the war but I think he was still a lieutenant when the photo was taken - only one bar on the helmet.
And thanks to everyone here for their good wishes. He turns 89 next month (has had good innings as the Brits say) and the cancer is pretty well out of the bag but he is getting chemotherapy. I don’t know how much good it’s doing but at least there are no nasty side effects and he sounds like he’s comfortable.
Someone inform tom brokaw that a member of his “greatest generation” was trigger happy.
LOL! So right. Lots of losers and nutcases running around then too. But they’re mostly dead now, or grown old and harmless, so it’s easy to gloss over the old bad stuff.
And thanks for the link about Cpl. Stokes - a very moving tale. Drug offenses can get you kicked out of the Marines (not just demoted) so I’m glad that he was able to redeem himself.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2008 02 18 at 10:28 AM • permalink#6: And we inherited it, too. (I’m the other daughter of Sonetka’s Mom.) When we were little, we’d visit his house in Long Island, and there were racks of wooden rifles he’d made for us in the garage. We’d throw up barricades made of carts in the back yard and fight over who got to wear the two gas masks and the Nazi helmet.
God bless Pvt. Stokes. He sounds like a good man, and a heckuva Marine.
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2008 02 18 at 12:38 PM • permalinkMy late father was a bit ‘trigger-happy’ during WWII, too. Of course, that might have been the result of seeing lots of action in places like Bouganville, Guadacanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2008 02 18 at 02:49 PM • permalink#13, definitely. But I never got the Nazi helmet, so I was out there doing the commando-crawl in my bike helmet with pink fishes on it. I got a gas mask sometimes, though.
Every kid needs a grandparent with a garage full of stuff like that.
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2008 02 18 at 09:34 PM • permalinkThose letters make fascinating reading. They remind me of a book I used to read when I would visit my grandparents.
It was called C/O Postmaster, and was about a US Army Corporal’s (Thomas St. George, I think his name was) experiences in WWII. It began with his departure from Camp Roberts (near where some of my cousins live in Paso Robles, California), and covered his trip to Australia, and his time there. It ended as his unit was shipped to New Guinea as the Japanese fought their way over the Owen Stanley Mountains towards Port Moresby.
When I was a kid, I only saw the humor in the stories. Looking back on it, though, there was some mention of serious stuff (his description of the culture clash was interesting).
If anyone can find a copy, you might enjoy it.
Posted by Mike Dubost on 2008 02 18 at 10:57 PM • permalinkGrandpa fought in WWI; I remember playing with his helmet in the back yard with the BB gun. Unfortunately, my brother got the Springfield with the bayonet. Dad fought in WWII and had some interesting souvenirs as well.
So yeah, having an older brother, Dad and Grandpa turned me into the trigger-happy person I am today. I just wish I could have thanked them properly.
Elizabeth
Imperial KeeperPosted by Elizabeth Imperial Keeper on 2008 02 19 at 01:32 PM • permalinkAs one who spent several years in Europe during WW2, I found the article very interesting.
Posted by John Waggy on 2008 02 23 at 09:06 PM • permalink
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Great to see it runs in the family.