TRF And The Read for 11/11/08: Veterans' Day Tearjerker

Photo from CNN's Sara Weisfeldt

This story will make most who read this cry. This story is so real, that it had to be placed on TRF as well.

Anthony Acevedo thumbs through the worn, yellowed pages of his diary emblazoned with the words "A Wartime Log" on its cover. It's a catalog of deaths and atrocities he says were carried out on U.S. soldiers held by Nazis at a slave labor camp during World War II -- a largely forgotten legacy of the war.

It gets deeper:

He was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga an der Elster, a satellite camp of the Nazis' notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity and a subsequent death march, he says.

It hits your soul:

His body shakes, and he begins sobbing. "Sorry," he says, tears rolling down his face. "I'm sorry."

And it shows how the American military failed another soldier:

It took more than 50 years, he says, before he received 100 percent disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

With major thanks to "Laughing Vergil" for pointing this out over at the Kos, it is an anecdote that you should share with everyone that you know.