Purple Heart

my family went to visit my grandfather's brother recently.  now, my grandfather has three brothers and three half siblings.  i believe that the brother that my family visited with is my grandfather's only living sibling and grandpa has not seen him in roughly ten years.  my great uncle is 86, has two children and a deceased wife.  when my family got home, my sister told me about how my great uncle got his purple heart.

first of all, my sis tells me that apparently most of my grandfather's siblings are war heroes in one way or another.  she said that all weekend she and my dad had been noticing that my great uncle had a purple heart license plate and became very intrigued by how he might have gotten his purple heart.  my dad and sis couldn't remember if the purple heart was given on account of a soldier becoming hurt or because they saved others from becoming hurt, so they were creating several different grand stories about how our uncle could have obtained a purple heart.  finally on their last night visiting and while eating at luby's cafeteria, they found out the story behind our uncle's purple heart.

our uncle explained that one day, during the war, he and his men were in a trench.  he said that they had been there a while and were getting very bored, so they decided to light some cigarettes to help pass the time.  it turns out that the light from the cigarettes alerted the enemy of my uncle's location and began to attack my uncle and his men.  my uncle immediately began to encourage the men to more their location in order to elude their enemies.  he said that he got up and began to run.  the process of doing, he got his gun tangled around him, tripped on the strap of the gun, and fell to the ground.  as he hit the ground, his gun went off and he shot himself in the hand.  my sister said that only someone from her family could be awarded the purple heart for falling and hurting themselves.

my sis went on to tell me about my uncle's ceremony to receive his purple heart.  my uncle said that when he got home his CO told him that he needed to attend a ceremony on this particular day and this time.  he said that at that time there was concert going on that he really wanted to go to, so he choose to go to the concert.  the next time he saw his CO, my uncle asked him about this ceremony that he was supposed to and what it was all about.  the CO then reached into his desk drawer and plopped out the purple heart saying, you got a purple heart, here you go.  my uncle said, that was his purple heart ceremony.