He was talking to the woman running the store about visiting the local VA. All the WW2 vets were dying off, he said, and he hardly knew anyone there any more. He shook his head : nothing for it. That was life.

“Excuse me”, I asked him, dozen eggs and half gallon of milk in hand, “but could I be so bold as to ask you what, in your own words, you were fighting for ? I want to hear it from you directly, because you were there.”

He looked at me a bit quizzically but didn’t hesitate :

“Well, the Nazis were trying to take over the World. First, they invaded Poland, then in the summer of 1940 they went into France….we didn’t want to fight, we were forced to fight.”

“For freedom ?”, I asked.

“Well, sure. Of course.”, he said.

“And would you have called the Nazis intolerant ?”, I ventured.

“Oh, I suppose so. And more. More than intolerant. They wouldn’t leave anybody alone. They had to be stopped.”

He walked out the door.