Losers and Suckers

I have a lot of losers and suckers in my family. According to my president, my commander-in-chief, the leader of the free world and all around god -on -Earth, anyone who was in the military or dies in war is a loser or a sucker.

My uncle Casey, who I never knew, was a loser. Born to an immigrant mother, Casimir Wagner was the only son in the family. In WW2 he went into the US armed forces to fight the Nazis. Being small in stature and, I am surmising, fairly smart, he was assigned top turret and engineer on a Flying Fortress.

When he was in the war the bombers were regularly attacking the industrial and military sites inside Germany. It was a war of attrition. On average about 20-25% of the bombers would not make it home. Once you strapped yourself into the bomber, you had a 1 in 4 chance of not coming back. Do the math. Still, off they flew, all the suckers.

On his fourth or fifth mission they unloaded their bombs somewhere near Berlin and headed back to England. Attacked by German fighters the plane was severely damaged. The crew bailed out. All these suckers were captured and sent to a POW camp. Except for one. One loser.

The written reports I have read from his comrades tell us that after Casimir Wagner parachuted from the burning plane, he was shot by a fighter pilot and was probably dead before he hit the ground. What a loser.

My late father-in-law , on the other hand, was a sucker. He volunteered as a pilot in WW2 before the US entered the war. He was not good enough (according to him) to fly combat, but served behind the lines flying in supplies, etc. He volunteered. To fight Nazis. Well before Pearl Harbor. But, since he survived the war, I guess he was just a sucker , and not a loser.

Why did he do that? Why did this sucker go to a foreign nation and help in the fight against fascism? Was it any of his business? In his wallet he kept a handwritten line from a poem by John Donne.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…”

My niece is married to a sucker. He has served his entire life in the Marine corps. Working his way up through the ranks. Commanding military bases in Okinawa and Germany. Still alive , so he’s no loser, just a sucker.

And his son is a bigger sucker. His son wanted to be a Marine but the doctors said,”No”. A physical condition, not likely to change, meant he could never join the corps. Instead of looking for an alternative, he would not give up. Eventually, the Marines relented and decided his condition had changed enough so he could join. Some day , maybe, he could put his life on the line for Donald J Trump. Now there’s a real sucker.

I have had other relatives in the military and my wife has cousins, distant, that can trace back to the Revolutionary War. A long history of suckers. and losers, at least according to our commander-in-chief.

I have some relatives who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and will vote for him again in 2020. I wonder what he calls them in the privacy of the White House?