In Loving Memory
My dad died May 25, 1999. By now, 13 years later, most of his fellow surviving WWII veterans have had the volley fired over their coffins. It seems a fitting time to recall the men of that generation, as they really were.
In my experience, they were not a romantic group, given to sentimentalizing about their experiences of war. In fact, I don't recall many of them talking much about the war or combat at all. In affect, they were more Bogart than John Wayne; given more to worldly observations delivered out of the side of the mouth than bravado. (My dad knew which Hollywood actors had gone to war, who hadn't, and he held grudges against the shirkers.) To take a real world character, Bob Dole reminds me a lot of my dad, and the veterans I grew up around.
Another thing I remember, most of them had pretty short fuses. They didn't put up with any guff, from their own kids or anyone else's. You learned to walk and talk respectfully around them, well into your late teens. We (at least boys born in the 40s) knew which ones had actually been in combat and in which service and theatre. Marines who'd fought in the Pacific you particularly didn't want to get crosswise with, even by the time I started drinking legally in bars.
I worked for a year during college as a janitor with a guy named Dom, a short wiry Italian, who had served in the Pacific. It was hard to understand him, because he'd been shot in the jaw on his third island landing; reconstructive surgery after WWII was nowhere near the art we've come to expect now, and he was left to a life of jobs not requiring much in the way of communication skills. He didn't want to talk about fighting on the first 2 islands or how he got his wound; but he was adamant (after 25 years) that if he ever ran into his sergeant on the street he wouldn't hesitate to try to kill him.
My dad, and most of the other vets I knew could swear a blue streak when mad or on hitting a thumb with the hammer; but I don't recall ever hearing an F-bomb. (That came into common parlance when guys my age got back from Viet Nam). Not all were as regular a church-goer as dad (a devout Catholic), but they were a generation of men that prided themselves on being well-mannered in public. Nixon's foul mouth revealed in the Watergate tapes was the exception; even the WWII era foremen I worked for on construction sites in the late 60s didn't curse that routinely on the job. But I do remember learning my first dirty song from the kid across the street, whose dad had served in the European theatre: "Hitler has only one left ball..."
My dad was listening to the radio on Sunday December 7, 1941, when they interrupted the music to announce the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor; the song was the Ink Spots' "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire." He started his service in 1942 in New Caledonia, helping to create the Army in the South Pacific. After contracting yellow fever, he finished the war in California as a master sergeant at a POW camp, denazifying German soldiers.
I remember him, red poppy in lapel, taking us to Memorial Day parades in the 50s, which included a sizable number of older guys in WWI helmets and uniforms still able to march proudly. Now, I can't imagine that there are many of the WWII veterans able to march, even if there were a parade in my old home town.
Tom Brokaw has called them the "Greatest Generation." It's not the kind of term they would self-apply. I increasingly miss that generation's quiet contempt for self-promotion, almost as much as their toughness and dignity. They were men.
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Comments:
Jul '11
Re: In Loving Memory
Amen.
Jul '10
Re: In Loving Memory
Damn right they were.
R.I.P.
Mar '11
Re: In Loving Memory
My dad was the baby of the family and wasn't old enough to go. His brother went, and the men who became his brothers-in-law went too. They never bragged, and you never asked them about the war. I was under instructions not to, but to listen and listen hard if they ever started to talk about it on their own. That happened rarely, but it did happen.
God bless and keep them and all who serve.
Sep '11
Re: In Loving Memory
My Dad fought in the Pacific during WWII. Thankfully, he is still with us; he will turn 88 in July. Thank You for a beautiful tribute to the men who served in WWII.
Sep '11
Re: In Loving Memory
My Dad was captured by the Germans just before the Battle of the Bulge. An early Boomer, I grew up hearing his war stories, but he was always laughing when he told them. It wasn't until I was grown that I realized it mustn't have been fun to be locked in a boxcar for a week with no food (or water? don't know) and no blankets. He made it sound like a sort of adventure, and the punch line was that, in the course of conversation on Christmas Day, he discovered one of his fellow prisoners had once stayed at the small-town hotel where Dad worked his way through college, and had in fact borrowed his tuxedo. He did not talk about the cold, the hunger, the lack of sanitation, or the uncertainty. (Cont’d.)
Sep '11
Re: In Loving Memory
When he talked about the months he spent in German prison camps, it sounded like Hogan's Heroes, which was in fact one of his favorite TV shows. It was Mom who told us he weighed 120 pounds and had lice when he came out .
He was a man of vision and talents who shaped the church-related college where he spent his career and the community where he lived.
And I never heard him swear until the day in 1969 when I graduated from college and the class speaker (now, I believe, a Congressman from New Jersey) gave an anti-Nixon rant. Dad was silent for the first two hours of the drive home and then he said words I had never heard him use.
He died months before the Berlin Wall came down. He would have been very happy.
Thank you Robert, for your wonderful post. Here’s to both our heroes and all the others: Clink!
Edited on May 27, 2012 at 8:17pmMay '10
Re: In Loving Memory
The particulars differ slightly, but the general observations are spot on. Dad was a US Army combat engineer in Europe who fought through the Battle of the Bulge. His brother, Uncle John, was a US Army combat infantryman with a cavalry unit in Europe. Mom's younger brother, Uncle Ken, was a Marine who fought across the islands of the Pacific. His experience was so hellish that, to my knowledge, he only spoke of his experiences once in the more than 60 years since the wars end. Mom's youngest brother, Uncle Keith, enlisted at 17 in the Navy and served in the Pacific. Dad and John are both gone now. This generations passing leaves us poorer as a nation.
Apr '11
Re: In Loving Memory
This post really resonated with me. My dad served in the CBI during WW II. I don't think he actually had to kill any Japs, but it's difficult to know, since he rarely talked about it, and would then deflect the conversation into "harmless" topics like man-eating tigers.
I'm unsure exactly what you're saying re: Bogart and Wayne. The Selective Service decided cases, and the military decided employment of draftees.
As best I know, the SSA decided Wayne was medically unfit to serve (flat feet, maybe?). Bogart served in the Navy in The Great War. I don't know his role during WW II. I don't know as either was a shirker.
Consider Joe DiMaggio: he was drafted, and the Army figured his best use was playing baseball on a variety of base teams, so that's where he was assigned throughout the war. Does that make him a shirker?
Understand, I'm basically in agreement with you. I'm just picking around the edges as is my wont.
Jun '10
Re: In Loving Memory
I think the main reason that WWII veterans (like my uncles) didn't talk about their service is that they didn't want to remember the parts that would make them cry. Not in front of me anyway.
Re: In Loving Memory
Robert, your observations ring true in my experience as well. One of my grandfathers served in Europe, the other in the Pacific. While neither was given to saying much about their service, they both returned home with a copious amount of photographs. The photographs tell the story that these brave men would rather not have to relive. One of my uncles was there when the concentration camps were liberated. He doesn't speak a word of it to this day.
May '10
Re: In Loving Memory
My old man was in S.F. working at a sulfur plant for Stauffer Chemical. After Pearl Harbor, the surviving ships were towed back and moored at S.F., their shot-up superstructures clearly visible. Dad tried to enlist; but he was in an industry that supplied a strategic material and couldn't get released: "I was the only guy in San Francisco in a suit." Finally he got in to the army. Couldn't fly because of a cataract so he was sent to Louisiana for jungle training as a dog-faced G.I. Fought in a forestry company in New Guinea and the Philippines. Sidelined for awhile with malaria. Was in Bataan after the Rangers liberated the Death March survivors. Survived the Japs, mud, pythons, malaria, and piss-call Charlie. Home alive in '45 and UC Berkeley on the G.I. Bill. HIs two brothers served in the Navy and came home, too. Didn't talk much about it, to my consternation. R.I.P.
Feb '11
Re: In Loving Memory
My father was in the Navy -- not in a combat role -- but he had plenty going on here in the States. Like a lot of guys my age, I didn't start to appreciate him until much later. But he was of that generation -- kept his opinions to himself, mostly. One time, in his final few years, when somehow WWII in Europe came up as a topic he blurted out that that the Third Reich/Nazi regime were "some of the evilest people in history", and a case can certainly be made for that.
But this group is leaving us every day. Something changed after that generation. My generation grew up in post-war prosperity -- I guess that had some effect... and at a certain age we didn't pay much attention to things. Then we got older, and by the time we had to listen to certain Pres having a 'thin resume coupled with an enormous ego' (as one writer put it) go on about 'remaking America' - we (or at least me-- will speak only for myself) began to identify with the values and personality traits of this earlier generation and found our own to be somewhat lacking.
Edited on May 30, 2012 at 1:17amMar '11
Re: In Loving Memory
Late last summer I was in Palo Alto at a friend's summer let. She had an older couple she was friend's with come over. Can't quite recall the connection or what prompted it but it was welcome end to the day.
We put together simple meal and over some wine got to talking. The gentleman mentioned that he was in the merchant marine during the war. Was one of 6 ships coming into San Francisco. 5 of them went to Port Chicago and his was directed to the ports in Oakland or San Francisco.
My eyes got wide when he said that and I blurted out something like "Oh my God." (Hopefully without an expletive in there.) It was almost out of the scene from Jaws when Robert Shaw shows his USS Indianapolis tattoo. The two women didn't understand for a while what prompted the change in conversation. It took him a bit to tell more of the story, not because he was broken up over it but I don't think he was intending to talk about it much. I was gently prodding some aspects out of him and (cont.)
Mar '11
Re: In Loving Memory
... occasionally providing some backstory to the others. His ship and the others carried munitions -- bombs, shells, bullets, flares. They were loading up for another run, going back to the fighting in the Pacific.
On July 17, 1994, the other ships were at the piers in Port Chicago. Munitions detonated while being loaded into one of the ships and the Port blew up. All 5 ships and the piers and port blew up. No one from those ships lived. 320 were killed, 390 were injured.
He said his ship was in the middle of loading. They saw, heard, and felt the explosion. A load was in midstream and the crane/the cable/the netting got caught up, dropping the munitions into the hold. There was panic among all onboard. But enough did the right thing and fortune was with them. There was more to the story but it was almost too much to take in.
I don't think the others at the table quite grasped the poignancy. (His partner had obviously never heard it before.) His matter of fact telling and easy fatalism masked much. It was a rare evening. One that still doesn't seem quite real.