Saving My Dad’s (Private Ryan)

My father was an army doctor in the Pacific in WW2. He was still serving when my parents got married and their first two homes together were on army bases in the US. One uncle was in Europe, as was an aunt who joined the Women’s Army Corp. My mom told stories about being on base. I never heard my father or uncle talk about their experiences. My brothers had a box with their medals, which disappeared when my parents moved from the house where I grew up. At least no one knows anything about it when I’ve asked. Could be one of them snagged them just like I’ve snagged a few old photos of my parents without telling anybody.

 

Late in his life, my late father asked me if there is anything of his I'd like to keep as a memento. I asked for, and received, his Combat Infantry Badge. It is one of my prize possessions. It makes me think of him when I see it every morning.

 

No where near the heroism of any great war, but my Dad piloted a helicopter during the flooding and rain of Hurricane Agnes to deliver tetanus and typhoid serum. Also helicopter rescue missions in that same flood. He was National Guard. He despised discussing it.

 

I come from a long line of chickens, but Gwen's parents were both military. Her mother was an Army nurse and served in Japan and the Phillipines. Her dad was in the Coast Guard and then became a doctor in the U.S. Public Health Servicec.

Her mom outranked her dad, so when they were on base, he had to salute her! (No double entendres intended.)

 

I'm calling bullshit on that.

 

I'm proud of my Dad's service in the Army in WWII. My older brother wasn't educationally inclined. After one year of junior college, he enlisted in the Navy, served 8 years (nuclear subs) and probably would have been career if his eyesight didn't start to deteriorate. He got a medical deferment and worked in the USPS for 30+ years. I am very proud of him and his service.

In 1970, when I turned 18, it was Vietnam. I wanted nothing to do with the military. I was belligerent enough to say that I didn't want to be bossed around by some idiot (DI or CO) with half my IQ. I was very patient about this. I was a good student and knew I was going to college. And we had the draft lottery. The morning of the lottery, I was still asleep, my Mom came in and started hugging me. I got No. 265 in the lottery. They were drafting up to around 100. That night, I had an American Legion baseball game. One of the guys on the team got No. 1. Everybody was talking about it before the game. Somebody came up behind No. 1 and started whistling Taps. Everybody laughed except him.

 

My older brother was in that same lottery, got no. 1 (July 9). He eventually failed three physicals and was declared 4F. My aforementioned father was adamant that he was not sending his oldest to Vietnam, and would have fully supported a move to Canada.

 

My great-uncle was killed at Saint-Lô on or about July 17, 1944. My grandmother had lost a 3-year-old child a year before, but she recovered emotionally from that. She never recovered emotionally from the loss of her brother.

 

When my mother died, the one thing I knew she had that I wanted most was my grandfather's Purple Heart. My older brother was out of work at the time, so he ended up packing up most of her stuff. Of course, being who he was, that meant the truly valuable stuff ended up with him in South Carolina. He kept telling me he'd bring the medal the next time he saw me, but it never happened. That was just part of a much larger issue related to my mother's estate, most of which was never resolved.

Then my brother died last year. He was a disaster by the end of his life. He wasn't speaking to me or our little brother. His children were barely talking to him at all. Without going deeper into that off-topic mess, his three children and my little brother ended up sorting through his belongings. They asked me if there was anything I wanted. I told them about the purple heart. None of them had seen it, but they promised to look. I wasn't hopeful, but a couple of weeks later I received a package from my oldest nephew. It was mostly a jumbled mess of pictures, but the Purple Heart was in there.

When I looked in the box, I discovered that along with the medal was the telegram my grandmother received after my grandfather was wounded during World War II. It begins, "We regret to inform you..." I couldn't help wondering if my grandmother was seized by a moment of terror before reading that he was "mildly wounded." By the way, mildly wounded meant his foot was shredded by shrapnel from a grenade someone had tossed in his fox hole. He managed to scramble out just in time. He had only been overseas for a week or two when it happened. My grandfather was about as gentle a soul as you could have met, so I can't help but think he was damn lucky to get out of the war with nothing more than a permanent limp. Given that my mother was born after WWII, I was also lucky on that one.

Both of my grandfathers served in World War II. My father's father served in the Navy. He was on a ship that sank and spent days in the water before being rescued. He suffered the rest of his life from PTSD, which eventually led to self-medicating with illegal drugs. He died of an overdose when I was six or seven.

 

I sometimes get tired of the "Greatest Generation" narrative. Then I read stories like those assembled here, and feel chastened.

 

Can I just say I took one look at the thread title and thought this was going in a way different direction.

I wish I had a cool story like that. My Great-Grandfather was a colonel in the Army who dealt with investigations into budgets. There is a story that is only spoken of in hushed tones around the family of why he never made it to general, but no one has elaborated.

 

My uncle was in the British Army for the duration of the war in Europe. He was in the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy (also found time to be the Eighth Army middleweight boxing champ) and ended up at Normandy so he hit all the hot spots. Never spoke about it, even my old man, his brother, knew very little about his time in the war other than he walked with a limp because he'd had his left leg shot up. A guy who worked with him and helped look out for him in his later years (my old man and his brother, being two stubborn Scotsmen had a blow up over something nobody could recall) told me he believed he had attended at least one event in the Toronto area with German veterans who had moved to Canada.

My old man was drafted into the British Army in 1953 and was briefly in Korea but said there was little going on. Spent the rest of his time in various European locations doing nothing more strenuous than being captain of the unit soccer team.