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ATHENS, OH—Responding to their grandfather’s longtime silence on the subject, the family of World War II veteran Thomas Withers told reporters Monday that they figured the reason he never talked about serving was probably because nothing interesting happened to him. “Grandpa never discusses being stationed in Normandy, and he always gets really quiet whenever the subject comes up, so he must have spent the whole time puttering around Europe and just kind of hanging out,” said granddaughter Elise Phippen, who attributed the sad, distant look that appeared in her maternal grandfather’s eye on the anniversary of D-Day to regrets that he didn’t have even a single cool story to share about being a G.I. “I looked up his platoon, and I know they saw a fair amount of action, but I guess Grandpa was just doing clerical work the whole time or maybe he was working as a cook or something, because he’s never so much as mentioned any of it.” Phippen went on to theorize that Withers’ habit of bolting awake in the middle of the night was likely a side effect of the sheer boredom he experienced doing nothing but sitting in a room playing cards for four years.
