>>For those who care about my cousin's story, the short form is
>>that he was a US Army Sargent stationed in Germany, and his father
>>told him to go visit my grandfather his next leave and get the family
>>to the US. So he showed up at the US embassy in Brussels in his full
>>dress uniform (including the various medals he got from hitting the
>>beaches at Normandy (and losing a leg in the process)) and was
>>escorted right in to the ambassador (past the line of people waiting
>>outside) who asked "what can I do for you?"
>
>I like this a lot, but I'm a little confused - was your cousin a
>Belgian serving in the US forces, or had his branch of the family
>already emigrated at some earlier point? Just trying to pin down the
>connection to Belgium.
>
Yeah, I think I made the short form a little too short...

My father was born in occupied Belgium during the war, to a couple of Polish Jews. Needless to say, that all 3 of them survived the war was a miracle in itself (and there's a whole other story there). My cousin was an American (I think he was born here, but I'm pretty sure both of his parents weren't) who served in the US Army and lost the lower half of a leg storming the beaches at Normandy; he was stationed in Germany after the war for a number of years though I don't know how many. My cousin's father told him to use his influence (since US servicemen were mostly well-respected in post-war Europe still) to help my grandfather and his family come to America. My father and his family arrived here in 1950 when he was 7 (and no, they didn't go through Ellis Island for some reason, which escapes me at the moment).

And now you know... the rest of the story. (With apologies to Paul Harvey.)

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>