Ted Poe: “standing on the beaches of Normandy, he found himself silent. Like a scene ripped from the movie Saving Private Ryan…”

“standing on the beaches of Normandy, he found himself silent. Like a scene ripped from the movie Saving Private Ryan, this American GI was overwhelmed with memories. Memories so vivid, so real that in an instant he was a soldier again in the 7th Army, surviving the Battle of the Bulge, fighting through the Cities of Aachen, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Bonn. The graves before him transcended time, taking him back in history to a time when freedom was on the line. He was born in the 1920s. He grew up in the Depression of the thirties, and he grew up poor like most rural American children. Fresh vegetables were grown in the family garden behind the small frame house. His mother made sandwiches for school out of homemade bread. Store-bought bread was for the rich. He grew up belonging to the Boy Scouts, playing the trumpet in the high school band and going to church almost every Sunday. In 1944, this 18-year-old country boy that had never been more than 50 miles from home finally found himself going through basic training in the United States Army at Camp Walters in Texas. After that, he rode the train with hundreds of other young teenagers to New York City for the hazardous ocean trip on a cramped liberty ship to fight in the great World War II. No amount of training could have prepared him for what he was about to experience. As a teenager, he and thousands like him put life on the line for freedom.…”