A Chat With One of the Greatest Generation

Yesterday, I went to Brantley County, Georgia and spent the entire day visiting all my kin- folks.  After visiting a few relatives, I went to see my Uncle Alvin Shuman and Aunt Elizabeth.  He's 88 and still cutting firewood and selling it!  He's about the toughest man I have ever known.  He's not that tall but a little bull.  His hands look like they are two inches thick and all rough and cracked.  He was kicked by a bull two years ago and it fractured his leg but as soon as the cast was off he was back growing a garden and cutting wood.  He said, "I feel as good as I did at 40!  You gotta keep going!"(I don't think he's ever been off that farm from his birth except to go fight the war.)

I have never been around him that much. Not sure why. Anyway, he came out and couldn't see very well so he said, "who is it?"  I told him L. A. Joiner and he laughed and said, "come on in boy!"  We chatted awhile and I said, "tell me about the war".  I knew he had been on a tank over there.  Most folks that I have talked to were there in combat 6-12 months.  Alvin was there and reenlisted and stayed 28 months.  He was a gunner on his tank.  He actually rode the tank ashore coming off an LST (Landing Ship Tank) at Normandy on D-Day!  I never knew that.  He fought all the way through the region including the Battle of the Bulge, considered the fiercest fighting of the war.  He sits and talks about details like it was yesterday.  He told me on one day in the "Bulge" he fired his machine gun over 3,000 rounds and melted down five barrels, which would become white hot! They would take it out under fire and put on another barrel. He said, "I was just trying to tear up somethin!" He said, “even today when I drive my truck down the road I suddenly feel like I'm back there firing that gun again!” He asked a VA doctor how long before it went away and the doctor said it will never go away.  You were just a boy when that happened and it is indelibly printed in your psyche. He has a German helmet, an SS Knife, Two pistols including a Luger that he brought back as spoils of war.  I was fascinated as I sat and listened.  He actually marched in the parade at the liberation of Paris.  

 Aunt Elizabeth said (right in front of him), "one person asked me one time how I lived with him?"  She said, "he's steel, you can't bend steel!" (They celebrated their 65^th anniversary last year.) I was sitting there wishing all my children were there.  Then she said, "the Brantley Co schools ask him to come speak to the kids every year and tell them about the war.  His first year he took all his “stuff” and the administration said, "you can't take guns and knives in there and you can't talk about drinking alcohol."  He said, "what you runnin' here, a cloister for Nuns!"  

Then he said, "I wasn't saved the whole time I was over there."  I said, "it's just the grace and mercy of God that you made it!"  He agreed.  He came home with ulcerative colitis. He was in torment with pain.  My Great Grandmother Brinkley was a Pentecostal.  She brought him an anointed prayer cloth.  While he wasn't accustomed to this sort of thing, he said, " I pinned it to my under shorts and wore it every day to work."He then said, "that's how I got healed!"

I wanted to share my experience with Uncle Alvin with you. He's just one of thousands who paid the same price and many more with their lives.  We owe these tough old warriors  our very lives and prosperity.  May we train our children and grand children to give honor where honor is due.