World War II
I have a few vague memories of World War II.
I remember sitting on the floor by the radio listening to reports about D-Day 6 June 1944.
I remember my cousin Donald Olling home on leave from Army Basic Training
before he was shipped off to France, where he was killed a few weeks later in November of 1944.
I remember the town siren going off for a long, long time on VE-Day,
the end of the war in Europe. Donald Olling's older brother Jens Peter Olling, known as Jimmy,
was off in the South Pacific as a tail gunner on a B-25 Bomber.
I don't remember him ever coming back to Ringsted although he survived the war
and lived in California.
There always seemed to be some family secret about where he was and what he was doing.
Many years later, I found out that he had committed suicide in 1958.