Memory loss—my father’s last battle

September 7 | 2020

Dr. Archie Kirsch, my father, volunteered for Medical Corps in the Second World War and was commended for his bravery during the D-Day landing. Here he’s pictured in the London field hospital where he served as a doctor after having sustained a shrapnel injury while tending to wounded soldiers on Juno Beach, Normandy. In the 40 years I knew my father, he only once expressed fear—as a man in his eighties when his memory began to fail. “It’s frightening,” he told me. In my new memoir, The Smallest Objective, I recall my father’s words as he prepared to fight his last battle. This September, World Alzheimer’s Month matters more than ever as people with dementia have suffered disproportionately from Covid-19. 

https://www.worldalzmonth.org

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