My Dad fought in WWll as a seaplane pilot with a crew of 7, over the North Atlantic on convoy patrols. He sank a German U-boat and damaged another. I think much of it was long, drawn out periods of routine, punctuated by rare moments of heart-pounding insanity. Mostly he would only talk about the funny stories, like being the newest ranking officer on base (when mom & dad transferred west after they married). The day after he arrived he was walking along the street in town, with a group of about 20 junior officers, when they passed my mom. Dad, being very professional said nothing to her, but, judging from all the pictures Ive ever seen, my mom was a cutie with a great pair of legs. The airmen had never met her (though they wished to make her acquaintance). They started whistling and cat-calling my mom (maybe the world hasnt changed that much). My dad felt embarrassed and for a moment didnt know what to do. Then suddenly he barked out, AT-TEN-tion!! EY-es FRONT! FORM-a-tion!! the young men snapped out of their leering and scrambled into position; rank and file. My dad, bellowed again, FOR-ward MARCH!! Left -, Left -, Left-right-left and marched them all the way back to base. He laughed as he told me he got a reputation as a button down, hard-ass who would not tolerate any disrespect to the civilian women around the base. He explained nothing to the airmen, and let them think what they wanted. Or the time he fired the plane up and took off only to discover a member of the crew still outside the plane on the wing, hanging on for dear life; but thats another story. One day my dad was going through his flight log book, telling old war stories and he came to his account of his U-boat attack. My brother innocently asked him if he ever thought of the German sailors who were on the U-boat he sank. My dads face turned stoney, he clapped his log book shut, said a curt No. I never think about that, and turned and left the room. My dad was the only member of his crew to survive the war. I remember watching the scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan where the old man asked his wife, tell me Im a good man. She looked at him blankly; puzzled. He said again, Tell me Ive lived a good life. She doesnt understand. No one in his family understands what he means. It was in that scene that I found a piece of my father I had never known. He was driven by duty and work. He had always been awkward with expressions of emotion, had difficulty showing affection, and in many ways struggled to have relationships with the ones closest to him. And for too many years he hid inside a bottle. (Im so grateful for the sober decades at the end of his life) Im not saying this was all because of the war. But a piece of it was, I think, and in that film I embraced something in my dad that I had never been able to get before. I guess its not that I got him, but I began to recognize, I will never really get it. I didnt live it and never will, and so will never have the capacity to get it. Maybe I was really embracing my own limitations. I have my own social-political feelings about war in general. But ideas and beliefs come from life experience - which is way more complicated - and more real. War does not exist in the abstract and general - anymore than people do. It is always this particular conflict. This particular soldier, this particular mother, this particular death. this particular day to say I wont drink today. I have had my own awkwardness and discomfort with the way we observe Remembrance Day in this country. So I buy a red poppy every year from the veterans, and then I paint it white. I do it to remember ALL the war dead, civilian and military, on all sides of the conflict; to try to remember the full cost of war. But what am I thinking. It is a pathetically tiny gesture that cannot begin to reach toward something so massive as the total cost of war. I also do it for a break from those who would try to use this day as a recruitment tool, or a way to whip up new fears and get public sentiment on their side, to justify the current war , or the next war. But I recognize my dad did what he believed was right, and what he felt had to be done. Its complicated. The large, grand truths of life are always buried in the particulars of life. And they are always revealed by the actions of individual people and choices. Maybe the world hasnt changed that much.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 17:12:38 +0000
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