Dad's World War II diary entry hits home

Another Veterans Day has passed, and again my thoughts were with my dad.

But it was for a different reason this year.

Recently my mother told me that my dad kept a diary of his time in the U.S. Army during World War II, and I was so excited to get to read it.

I poured over every page, and then one evening I came upon an entry that really hit home.

On Aug. 14, 1944, 19-year-old Harold Hoeft, aboard a troop train, wrote, “This noon we entered California through Yuma, Arizona.”

It may not sound like much to most people, but to know that my dad, on the way from Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., passed through Yuma, is just too cool to think about.

There is a ton of other cool stuff that I never knew about my dad's experiences in World War II until now, but this little bit of irony was the absolute best.