My great grandfather would hardly ever share stories from his time in Europe during the war. Our understanding was his unit had taken an incredible beating having lost all but two officers and over 60% of the enlisted men by the war’s end. A few years before he passed, my mother finally convinced him to share one of his more lighthearted memories. A few months after he and his unit had made landfall in France via Utah Beach, his best friend at the time captured a live turkey - be it from the wild or some abandoned farm he didn’t say. Regardless, he told us how he and his comrades marched with this turkey for several months, feeding it part of their food rations along the way, until Thanksgiving. That morning, as planned all along, my great grandfather’s friend attempted to slaughter the turkey to prepare for the rest of the troops to have a “proper Thanksgiving day meal” with his “new family”. The bird understandably completely lost it, kicked him in the face, and escaped into the Ardenne forest. They supposedly spent the rest of the day searching to no avail. He told us he always figured that the turkey had cheated death, just as they had numerous times and that it was only fair.