He died three years ago this May. He never spoke a single word about his experience on the beach at Normandy or any aspect of his military service during my youth. What little we do know was shared with us after he sustained a massive head injury from falling down stairs in his own home at the age of 80 something.
One day, while sitting in his tiny kitchen, his mind wandered and he began to mention anecdotal details of being in WWII. I asked him what it sounded like as they landed in Normandy. I expected him to say deafening. What he said was, “boys were falling in the water all around us … it sounded like ping, ping, ping…” The sound of bullets hitting the metal boats. His eyes looked through me, through walls, through the years back to that day.
He received a Bronze Star. I tried to get details. Dealing with the military bureaucracy is quite nearly an exercise in futility, and nearly impossible for Dad’s history. All records for his unit were lost in a massive fire of military records somewhere in Oklahoma. We do have his Bronze Star and a few strands of information and that is all.
During his wake, as friends and family milled around the funeral home, a professional colleague of mine was looking at the display of Dad’s military metals. He turned to me and said, “Your father was a hero, Marilou.” My response was one of face saving. I said, “Oh, yes, he was.” But at that moment, I didn’t know, I was not informed, I felt sad and sick by my ignorance. I felt shame.
Dad played his part in WWII as he was supposed to. His work, his efforts, his small but important part were never ever discussed. Not unusual I’m made to understand by people from that era. Yet, tears of pride and sadness mix when I think of what that experience must have been like for him, when I ponder it all today. I placed an arrangement of silk flowers at his grave on Memorial Day weekend. There is a foot marker courtesy of a veteran’s organization noting his Bronze Star status and recently one placed for my Mother as well. I look at those markers and wonder how two people who lived together for 70 years could have been so far apart.
I have a hard time forgiving my Mother for her unmerciful crucifying of my Father. She said on many occasions that he was a coward because he had hidden under his overturned Jeep for days way back when, rather than fight his way out.
His brother told me, before his own death, that Dad had suffered “battle fatigue” when he returned home from the war. The brothers had talked apparently. It relieves my mind to know my Father was at least able to talk to his only sibling about whatever he was going through. His brother, a career Naval officer, would understand and I’m sure that’s what gave my Father the comfort level to reveal himself in this manner. He didn’t do so with anyone else.
What little I understand is that Dad was the driver for a commander of some sort, and the two of them had been attacked while driving away from Normandy and deeper into France on their way to help liberate the country. They became separated from their unit. How his Jeep overturned, I don’t know. They were attacked by the Germans, that much was said. So he and his commander took refuge under the vehicle and protected themselves from harm for several days in the cold and the wet and the uncertainty. I think that every solider in every branch of every military service is charged with the responsibility of taking care of themselves so that they can fight for their country for the cause at hand. To that end, Dad fulfilled his duty. They eventually were able to continue forward.
Very late in his life, as the jigsaw pieces of his memory coupled and uncoupled in our conversations, he told me that story of being alone with his commanding officer trying to re-establish contact with their unit. His job was to get this officer to a specific location, safely. He did that job while stealthily moving through the French countryside trying to avoid the retreating Germans. The rest is my imagination.
I was born in 1951. He would have been home less than six years from that war. He was home and he was struggling. I grew up with a Father whose silent presence marks my own history. The in-home accident he sustained many decades later, akin to a car crash, resulted in permanent frontal lobe injury and personality changes. He was social, friendly, eager for company and to please others, and he longed for love. We spent many hours together in happy companionship. Those last years of his life I cherish for the closeness we shared.
As the country once again remembers its soldiers and their sacrifices both seen and unseen, I remember Dad. I remember a man who kept his personal narrative to himself because to speak of it was tantamount to conceit. He was not a perfect man, husband, or father; he simply put on his yoke each day and took care of business as best he could. He kept his own counsel until the head injury unleashed his tongue and still of WWII he barely spoke at all.
Dad is one of thousands who, with quiet dignity, returned home to blend back into the fabric of American life and pick-up where they left off before the war. Today, with all the publicity given soldiers and veterans we understand just how hard the old guard had it because modern conversation translates that unspoken history – Dad’s history and all the other ‘boys’ and of course, women.
When the Iraq War began, Dad cried. He said war was stupid. He said people shouldn’t kill other people, and he said Bush didn’t know what he was doing. That it was all wrong. He was outraged and saddened. He stopped watching the news on TV. He understood from his own experience what war truly is – a brutal, evil hell on earth.
As I placed that basket of flowers, cleaned the footstones of my parents’ fresh graves, and heard again snatches of bygone conversation, condemnations and confidences, I mourn them, but I don’t miss them. I miss the rare precious laughter, I miss the opportunity to do little special things for them that they enjoyed, and I miss what I never knew – my Father’s story.
My parents’ tempestuous and very long marriage has shadowed my life. They didn’t know any better. As contemporary people, they might have gone into marriage counseling or gotten a divorce. Maybe if Dad had received mental health services in 1945, if, if, if…we the living go on with our hearts and minds full of the ‘what ifs’ and longing to understand the why, and then ultimately accepting and letting go slowly with gratitude and love.
By Marilou Newell
