The best decision my father ever made

When my dad was a boy not yet ten years old, his father had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht and German tanks were heading east through Ukraine. That adventure didn't end well for the German army or for my grandfather, who spent the next five years as a POW. At least he came back alive, which perhaps inspired a maxim my father is still fond of trotting out; things are never so bad that they couldn't be worse. By the end of the war, Germany was a smouldering ruin and Dad was a displaced person (DP) living in a refugee camp in Denmark. That's where he first met my mother. Her father had also been conscripted. He went to the Eastern front and never came home. In the mid 1950's they were married and had a son, me. They had been repatriated to a Germany quite foreign to them, and were considering emigrating to improve their (and my) prospects. At the time, the US Army still had conscription. Canada did not. Having had more than a "Schnauze voll" of all things military, they wisely chose Canada. Thanks, Dad! Happy Father's Day!