A HEART WITH CRACKS You have no reason to know my friend Bob, though I wish you did. I’ve admired the guy for years. At 90, he has the kind of agile mind that has someone 35 years his junior racing to keep up. A board meeting in Chicago yesterday gave us the excuse to lunch together. He drove down from his Winnetka, IL, home. We met in the Loop. In the middle of ordinary conversation, Bob said something about D-Day. That’s when I connected his age with our luncheon date. Suddenly the grilled salmon on my plate didn’t mean much any more. I finished it, and I’m sure it was good. But my head was in his eyes. Seventy years earlier, to the day and to the hour(!), Bob was flying over the Atlantic on a bombing mission. His flight squadron of 10 guys was headed for Normandy. Bob was the bombardier on a B-17. Bombardier may be an elegant sounding word, especially when spoken in French, but the assignment was anything but elegant. Bob was in charge of sighting ground targets, opening the doors in the belly of the plane, and releasing the bombs. He ended up dropping hundreds of bombs in the course of 35 separate bombing raids over a five-month period. The worst raid was his last one — the bombing of Dresden. “I have thought about that Dresden bombing ever since. It completely unsettles me. At times, I have struggled to live with myself and what we did.” The Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in February 1945 remains one of the more controversial decisions of the Second World War. More than 1200 bombers from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces blanketed the city with incendiary bombs for three days. An estimated 25,000 people lost their lives. The city was leveled. As he finished chewing on a bread roll, Bob told me about an encounter on the golf course six years ago. He and three other guys had just formed a spontaneous foursome for the day. One of the other three Bob met that day was a man named Ken. A golf cart chat that afternoon revealed a crossing of lives that neither could have anticipated. As it turns out, Ken grew up and was living in Dresden in 1945 when Bob was flying overhead dropping those bombs. Ken has since died, but the two were able to enjoy a couple years of warm friendship before his death. Bob’s reflection on his close friend is what prompts this posting. “I wouldn’t have killed him for anything,” Bob told me, as his eyes got watery. I waited. Then some more came out. “I wouldn’t have killed Ken for our country, I wouldn’t have killed him under orders. I wouldn’t have killed him for anything.” “Ken is my lasting reminder about the ambiguity of war, and the toll it takes on one’s conscience. I still hurt for what we did in that last raid.” You see why I forgot all about my salmon yesterday . . . and why I like Bob so much? Not only is his conscience sterling; Bob’s heart still cracks 70 years later. __________________________ Copyright © 2014 Peter W. Marty. All rights reserved. Any use of this material must be attributed to Peter W. Marty. To reproduce this material in published format, please contact Peter.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 21:30:04 +0000
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