![\"\"](\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/912\/41142792514_2c4d3eb041_z.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ah that’s better. I’ll give you an update after I get my hour of french practice in.<\/p>\n
Before we left for Florida a second cousin of mine notified me that his father, the last remaining nephew of my Grandfather had tucked away three shell casings from the three rounds of rifle shots that were fired at my grandfather\u2019s funeral in 1972. He asked if I wanted them and I told him he should feel free to keep one as a keepsake from his father and that I would likely keep one and give one to another cousin.<\/p>\n
There is a tradition<\/a> I had not known about American military funerals. One shell casing from each of the three rounds fired is given to the family along with the American flag that draped the veteran’s casket. The casings stand for Duty, Honor and Country. The two that I have are for the moment placed upright above my computer in front of my Grandfather\u2019s photograph. I don’t know which is missing, duty, honor or country.<\/p>\n For a year or more I\u2019ve contemplated visiting the battlefields of World War One to honor my Grandfather. I\u2019ve also long contemplated writing a book about him and the America he experienced and fought for. In these perilous American splintering days that book is more important to me than ever but in recent weeks as I\u2019ve read about France, the war George Robb<\/a> fought in has been nudged aside as I\u2019ve read and studied about our two nation\u2019s long entangled history. Two hundred years ago the French King made our liberation from England possible and paid for it with his life. American\u2019s have felt a debt to France ever since.<\/p>\n