Jim Kurtz writes this newsletter brief...
As far as weather goes, this July in Massachusetts has been an incredibly unusual one. Record rainfall and oppressive heat and humidity have dampened the spirits of almost everyone. Constant complaining is a given and it is tedious.
It is times like these, when we are all feeling sorry for ourselves, that I question, “do we really know what miserable is?”
I refer back to July of 1944 during WWII, when my father was stationed in southern Italy and flying bombing missions into Germany and France as a co-pilot on a B-24 Liberator. In The Green Box, I published some of his letters back home to my mother and my grandparents. He made light of the fact that nearly every day the temperature hovered near 100 degrees, and it rained almost every afternoon like clockwork. Each crew slept under tents on the soggy ground. Mosquitos swarmed the base. All the men were miserable, but they had a job to do and they did it.
The weather was horrible, but there was one more factor that weighed much heavier on the minds of the men than their living conditions. Every day, as they prepared the bombers for their missions, each and every one of them was well aware that there was a one out of two chance, they would not return to their base, being either killed in action or as a prisoner of the Third Reich.
Thank God for all these women and men who endured horrible conditions overseas in order to ensure our democracy and the freedom we so adamantly embrace. Maybe we can stop complaining about the weather; it could be worse!
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