My 86 year old Dad came to live with me and my son over the Thanksgiving weekend. I asked him today about what he was doing back on that day and what he thought about Pearl Harbor being bombed. He said he was living at home with his 5 brothers and 3 sisters and parents, on a farm in Ill. and was working as a brakeman on the railroad. He and everyone especially the farmers were outraged and thought the US should go after Hitler and the Japanese. All 5 brothers were drafted and fortunately all 5 came back home. My Dad was stationed in Germany and because of an accounting background in college worked in an office during the war. He said the only action he saw was being shot at by a sniper when returning to his apartment from the base.

One intersting story that he told me was that at the end of the war there were RR flatbeds full of equipment returning to the states. He said he and his 2 buddies were eyeing a car full of MP motorcycles that had been sitting there a while. He and his friends unloaded 3 of the MC's and used them 4 or 5 months. He said his rational was that they were going to give them back and the Army was just going to scrap them anyway. He said he did not remember what brand they were but they had a hand shifter on the left. He also remembered there was an Autobahn near the base. I asked him if they opened them up and he just smiled. He asked me not to tell anyone about this and I told him I thought the statute of limitations was probably up on it and I was just telling my friends on this site and they would probably understand.

"Catching a yellow jacket in your shirt at seventy miles per hour can double your vocabulary" Author unknown