[Rhodes22-list] Politics: War and Remembrance

[brad haslett]

My dad joined the Army immediately after Pearl Harbor
and landed in France a few days after D-Day.  He drove
a truck, a duece-and a half, in Patton’s Red Ball
Express and later pulled a 105 Howitzer in the
artillery.  His unit lobbed shells at the Germans
while trying to free the “Fighting Bastards of
Bastogne”.  Remember them, they were the guys who got
penned down and surrounded.  When the German commander
asked for their surrender the American commander said
“NUTS” then turned to a junior officer and asked how
he should word his answer.  The officer said “NUTS”
sounds good to me Sir.  When the German commander
received the reply he turned to his aids and asked
“vas es NUTS!”  General Walker told his troops “don’t
worry boys, we’ve got the enemy right where we want
them, any direction we shoot we’re shooting at
Germans.”

As a history buff, I always tried to get Dad to tell
war stories.  He wouldn’t do it unless it was
something funny.  For example, he always got a kick
out of his unit being one of the best fed because he
and a few other farm boys who knew how to butcher
would “liberate” a French cow when they had time and
eat steaks.  I tried to get Dad to watch the movie
Patton with me.  He made it about 10 minutes and left
the room with tears in his eyes, “Son, I don’t need to
watch this, I was there”.  During the Vietnam War he
would watch the TV coverage every night during both of
my older brother’s tours.  He never said much and I
seldom broke the tense silence.

Dad’s 83 now and still won’t talk about the war much. 
The local high school invited him to speak a few times
and he has done so, mostly telling the same “lighter
side of the war” stories.  I recently spoke with him
on the phone about John Kerry’s Purple Hearts.  He
started laughing and told a story.  He and a buddy
were sitting in a Sunday worship service in a
makeshift church at the Battle of Metz.  The Germans
lobbed a shell nearby and a fragment hit his buddy
right above the eye.  His buddy said, “I’m going to
get a Purple Heart out of this!”  When the war ended
his buddy got shipped home immediately because of the
Purple Heart.  Dad had to stay on as part of the
occupation force for several more months.  Almost 60
years later Dad told me, “I would have switched seats
if I knew it would get me home to your mother sooner”.
 They married as soon as he returned and just
celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary.

Dad always used to say when I was a kid, “people won’t
appreciate what war is until bombs start falling on
American cities”.   The boys who went off to fight
WWII are quickly dying off.  I’m glad they finally
constructed a memorial to their service in Washington,
DC.  I’ve been there and it was an emotional
experience.  God Bless the USA.



		
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