My father was born in 1922 in the coal mining country of eastern Pennsylvania. His father, a WWI veteran, was a miner. I remember hearing the stories of how he worried about his father when he went to work every day. The fear that everyone felt when they’d hear the alarm bell at the mine go off because something had happened. When he grew older, my father also worked in the coal mines. When WWII began, my father was a young man. He was eager to enlist in the U.S. Army and he did. For the next four years of his life, he fought for this country that he loved. He saw horrible, unspeakable things, suffered tragedy and was wounded. During the course of WWII, my father was shot, knifed, hit by shrapnel,in a plane crash and ripped a flag off the top of a German tank as it rolled…