But my Grandfather "Ray H." jumped into France with a Jedburgh team, and I believe those were the mission papers you were referring to. He knew William Donovan personally, in fact, and we have letters written to him by that first Director of OSS.
You cause me to ponder, though... because Jambo and I have had countless conversations where we discussed our perceived impressions of Ray's opinions of FDR and the New Deal. There is little doubt in either of our minds that Ray was, from 1929 to the day he died in 1994, a firm and dedicated opponent of "New Deal" politics. He was no fan of Roosevelt, that is sure.
He joined the Army in 1939 because he was all but broke, and into debt up to his eyeballs. I'm assuming that he felt the "Roosevelt Recession" particularly hard, and that he had been forced to borrow significant amounts of money from his parents. I know that nearly all the letters we still have of his to his parents included his military pay to clear up these debts, and that the extra money promised for the duty was why he signed up for the Airborne Infantry in the first place.
No doubt that Ray would not have been happy with the state of the nation since Obama has been in office... considering his opinions on such Democratic Presidents as Kennedy and Johnson, and every DFL Governor of Minnesota since 1922.
One thing I am sure of, though... Ray would have seen the parallels between what he didn't like in the FDR years to what he didn't like in the Obama years. Ray always had a real and measurable sense of historical perspective and loved to share that perspective (at every opportunity) during Happy Hour over his martini. If memory serves, and I can take his stated position and opinion concerning Carter's policies as any indicator, then I can safely say that Ray H. would not have had much to say in support of Obama.
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