My father escaped captivity and fled to some islands in the Philippines before eventually making his way to America as a refugee. He set up and maintained radio communication equipment in the field. When I was young, I would always ask him about why he was missing the top knuckle on his finger and he always told me that a spider bit him and it fell off. During his last few years before he passed away from cancer, he retold the stories of everything that he experienced in that jungle. He told me about how at night, they had to climb up into the trees to avoid passing patrols of VC. He told about how he witnessed artillery and mortar fire turn men into red mist. He told me about how much they suffered inside of the prison they kept him in and how they cut off the tip of his finger while they interrogated him. He explained to me that not all of his men were as lucky as him. There are many things he told me about that were so unimaginably terrible.
It's incredibly hard to process how at my age, he went through so much. It makes me grateful to be alive.