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The Headstone
My grandfather didn’t talk about fighting in WWI. I know that his unit, the 28th Infantry Division, was involved in fierce combat and more than once suffered heavy casualties. On the last day of the war, Grandfather’s arm was broken by shrapnel, and he got gassed somewhere along the way. Anyway, he made it out of the trenches in one piece.
He came home, married, worked hard, and raised five children. There was an occasional comment, like the time he told my older cousin, “you don’t know exhaustion until you’ve slept in the gutters of Paris,” but that was about it.
But much later, one brief story slipped out. I guess it wasn’t really about my grandfather, and perhaps his guard was down when he told it.
Many years later, when he was middle-aged or older, the family attended a graveside service in the hometown cemetery. When the ceremony ended, everyone walked back to their cars except for Grandfather. He had stopped along the way and was looking at a headstone. Dad walked back to ask him who it was.
I don’t know why it caught his eye. Perhaps it was a veteran’s grave marker. Perhaps there was a flag. But for some reason, his attention was drawn to it and he recognized the name. By chance, it was one of the men he had fought alongside in France. I suppose they had discovered they shared the same hometown and became acquainted.
One night there was a heavy artillery attack, and the other man was seriously wounded. He urgently needed medical treatment, so Grandfather helped carry the man on a stretcher away from the front lines. The artillery bombardment was ongoing and sometimes the shells landed close. The stretcher bearers would drop the stretcher and hit the ground to avoid a blast. They made their way back to an aid station, or perhaps an ambulance, and the wounded man, still alive, was transferred into the care of the medical personnel.
And that was it. They never saw him again. No word of his status came back to the unit. I suppose that wasn’t uncommon back then. None of his comrades ever heard if he had survived. Until he saw the gravestone, Grandfather had no idea whether the man had lived or died.
The man had lived. The stone revealed that his death had been many years after the war. It was something to think about.
My grandfather is the man standing in the center, numbered 89.
Published in General
Thank you for sharing this on Memorial Day.
If they were both back in the hometown, which sounded small, I wonder why they wouldn’t have encountered each other again.
I have no idea. Maybe the other guy lived somewhere else but was buried there. There’s so much I don’t know.
My father is buried there, even though he left that area in 1975 (died 2015) so maybe it was a similar situation.
You meant WW II then, not WW I as written?
Maybe the other man didn’t return to the hometown, but if he had, seems like they would have encountered each other in the intervening 30 years (60 years if WW I was correct), since they already knew they were from the same town.
It sure would have been nice if they had.
My father was just an example of someone who was buried there 40 years after he left. He and mom bought a plot next to his parents around 1970. Mom is still kicking but she will probably get planted there too. Her parents are buried nearby.
My grandfather, the WWI vet, is the one who recognized the headstone.
Thank you.