I am a bit late in posting this, but I want to acknowledge my father's participation in WWII, which was considerable.
My Jewish father was 16 when he fled Nazi-Occupied France and arrived in the US. At 17, he enlisted in the Navy and served in almost every major Naval battlefield, including Normandy, where he fought to liberate France. His last engagement was in Okinawa, where a Kamikaze jet fighter bombed the destroyer and cast him and others into the sea. He floated, holding onto debris for close to 24 hours before being rescued. Like many men of WWII, he was modest and quiet about his service. He lost good friends and brought home to their families the last papers and items from their lives at sea.
Much later, my son enlisted just after 9/11 and, much like his grandfather above, became a soldier, fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other dangerous places. He served for fifteen years until finally, he put down the sword and came home to a wife and new baby. The fox in his arms was a gift from a local man. And though my son accepted the gift (for not to do so would have insulted the man), he released the fox back into the wild, just beyond the wire where his anxious mother was calling for him.
How wonderful these old portraits of boy-men warriors are… And how similar they proved in not speaking much about those years of war. (My father was also 17 when he joined up. A tail-gunner on a B-17, he would somersault backwards to get out of his little corner of the plane.)
Wow! My father was a gunner on a war ship — and he was blown off his ship during a kamikaze attack. He drifted in the ocean with a handful of other wounded survivors for two days, just off the coast of Okinawa. He was, compared to most of the other sailors, quite small and short. His duffle bag weighed more than he did! But still, he was determined — and he did serve in virtually every major battle in the war. His return to France and the battle at Normandy remained in his most important — he wanted to free his family in Paris from the Occupation.
What a great post to honor them both. It is amazing that so many carry stories like this and we don’t even know it. We don’t know what they have seen, suffered, given, carried with them for years. We are truly blessed to have men and women who will serve in our armed forces.
That’s true Carl. When my son was returning from a deployment I would pick him up at the airport. He was always quiet and tight lipped. But we would drive to the mountains in Arizona and hike — and on the hike, he in front and me behind — he would relate to me all the terrible events of his deployment as a way of extracting it from his consciousness, his skin, his thoughts, so there might room to talk about other less violent things again. I listened, and it was hard not to freak out myself, thinking of him in those situations, realizing in detail what he had endured. But always, always at the end of our hike in the forests, he would at last relax, as though the natural world around him had offered forgiveness.
That is so great that you have that kind of relationship and could be there for him in that way. I’m sure it has helped in unmeasurable ways for him to be able to unburden himself that way.
It is wonderful that he is out now, finally married a wonderful woman, a beautiful baby daughter, an independent cat rescued in the Congo, a shelter rescue cat who hides behinds books and a cheerful three legged dog, also a rescue.
That is indeed wonderful.