Got the details on Grandma's military service, so I am putting them here so I can't lose them again.
She was Army, and volunteered early into WWII. Although she apparently always impressed the boys with how quickly she could assemble a rifle, what they mostly had her do was PR work, traveling and shaking hands and posing prettily in pictures. Late in the war she went to Fort Dix and did x-rays. Grandpa came to Fort Dix after his tour in Germany (which was after his tour in Japan). They met when he asked her to dance.
She said no.
But she changed her mind later, and after dancing, in her words, "they went to town." Their courtship was pretty fast, and she married him after making him convert to Catholicism.
The service was today, and apparently it rained big time. Aside from the Catholic service she received the military honors of "Taps" and a three-gun salute. Mom will be sending me the memorial cards, which have Mary on them. My aunt's business associates drowned the place in so many flowers that there are now lovely arrangements all over the hospital and hospice in their old hometown. The family's memorial fund is going to go to the local Catholic school, and my mother predicts that it will be "the most money they've seen in twenty years." (It's a small town.)
Mom told everyone I wanted to be there and they said
yeah sure they knew, and my aunt Joannie said I could have sung at the service, and Mom told me that and I said GAH, because I so would have. I need to develop some kind of contingency plan for getting myself across the country at a moment's notice so these things don't happen. ._.
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