Kevin Cronin

I would have never seen that.

I would have gone to Canada... Was there a reason for that?

You know, my guess is that maybe they had enough guys already through the lottery.

Billy, I don't know.

It doesn't make sense.

My dad's theory was there were some Chicago politicians who had kids.

Yeah, no, my dad was always very reserved.

And as a result, he was supportive and he was, he's a good guy, you know, but I never got to know him that well until late in his life.

And when he started opening up about World War II, the one story that blew my mind is that he, well, there was two.

He said they were rolling through the Black Forest

And Hitler had surrendered, but there were still... It wasn't like all the Nazis said, we're not going to be Nazis anymore.

Right.

So they had a bunch of troop carriers going through the Black Forest, and Russian soldiers were coming out and turning themselves in because they chose to be captured by the Americans rather than be captured by the Germans.

Sure.

But there were still snipers.

My dad was sitting on a troop carrier, just, you know, just hanging out.

All of a sudden you hear, and the guy next to him dropped off the troop carrier.

So he was, you know, one guy away from him.

You know?

Uh, so... But the thing was, what he told me is that they were instructed by their superior officers to not speak of what they were seeing in Germany.