The Spoils of War

My dad (the one holding a coat and bag)

My dad and I were sitting together in a waiting room. He had a doctors appointment. He had cancer. At the time we thought he would live forever. The prognosis was good. Besides, he was stubborn as a mule. He was a "mind over matter" kind of guy and "you are what you eat" man. He kept raw carrots and celery in a bowl of ice in the refrigerator. I had never seen him sick a day in his life. I had a writing tablet with me that day. I wanted to do a video about his life, so I must have known deep down where you dare not go that he wouldn't always be with us. But on that day he was talking a mile a minute and I was writing as fast as I could. He was telling me about the war, World War II- how he had arrived on the shores of Scotland to report for duty overseas. It wasn't long before he was in a foxhole in France. I scrawled down his stories from that first day off the plane all the way to the day Paris was liberated.  He road in a big parade and hundreds of Parisians lined the streets crying, dancing, singing and shouting for joy. People were throwing wine bottles in their jeeps and women were crawling in the slow moving vehicles just to get a kiss from their liberators. He talked like he was relieving it all, like I wasn't sitting beside him. "You cannot imagine how crazy it was!" he said. I watched a grin on his face widened, "I have never been kissed so much in my life. We were all covered in red lipstick."

     The wait for the doctor was at least an hour.  After France we proceeded on to Germany. I jotted down the name of the towns as best I could. Daddy's eyes seem to turn a deeper more serious blue as He told me his stories of General Patton's 3rd Army. "I saw him once Lee," he said. "He was a formidable looking man." Finally they called my fathers name in the waiting room and we were jarred into the present. I was trying to imagine General Patton as I hurriedly gathered up all the recorded memories and stuffed the notebook in my pocketbook. My dads face changed expression. It was a private war he would fight now, an internal war. And let me tell you that soldier fought to the very bitter end.

     Later that evening I passed by his room and saw his light still on. I had been thinking about his stories all day. "Dad?" I eased the door open wider. "I was wondering about something." I came and sat on the edge of his bed. "Were you scared during the war?" He lowered the magazine he was holding and didn't say anything for a minute. I could see that he was not sure how to answer such a question. "I think sometimes we all were Lee," he began "But then, you couldn't think about it, you know. You just did your job." I said "Yeah," but I would never understand. How could I? How could any of us that have never fought in a war understand even a seconds worth of what it was really like for a soldier? He kept talking that night which surprised me. "You know I guess the scariest part was not battle but those long nights. You usually couldn't see your hand in front of you and the night sky, the stars, were the only light you had. You lay there real still and if you weren't careful your imagination could get the better of you. Any sound like the snap of a twig, or a muffled cough from another man in a fox hole a couple of yards away, would make your insides jump. For a spit second your hand tightened on your gun cause you never ruled out a sneak attack or a sniper. You tired to sleep but it was next to impossible. Sometimes I would strain my neck up and sniff the air.  We were all convinced that the Germans were going to use the poisonous gases on us the way they had in World War I,mustard gas. It caused blisters on the outside and inside of your body. It was a painful and horrible way to die." He went silent. I went silent.  I felt like I had entered a very private and honest place with my dad, like we had tumbled down a rabbit hole together and I was experiencing another world with him. He would repeat this story, or a bit of it, when I recorded his stories later that year but not with the emotion I had seen that night. I had caught him off guard like the way the enemy might sneak up on you on a moonless night in some foxhole somewhere in the French countryside- except I wasn't the enemy, I was his daughter and for a fews seconds felt like a comrade. 

     A couple of years after my dad died I began devouring books about World War II. I was on a history binge. I regretted not reading those books before our interview sessions. I could have asked him so many more relevant questions, but then perhaps we would have skipped over the very personal ones he told me that night. One I will never forget. 

     My father's mother, Jessie, died in 1918 when my dad was just shy of two years old. She collapsed while bathing my father during the horrible flu epidemic. Her dad, my great-grandfather, came into town with a little wagon and took daddy to their home that day. It was the last time he would see his mother. My aunt said he cried often for both parents that second year of his life. My dads' father ended up being a bit of a wild one and had very little to do with my dad. Jessie's parents raised him. But when Aurthur, his dad, heard  that my daddy had enlisted and was going off to war, he met him at some grand hotel and bought him lunch the very day my father was to leave. Daddy never told me what they talked about on that day and I didn't dare ask, but He did say as they were standing next to the train at the station his dad embraced him for the first time he could remember and had tears in his eyes. "Give em' hell son," he said to my dad. "I knew I would never see him again Lee. I just knew it," he said. "Sure enough when I was in France I got a telegram saying my dad had died. The first thing I did when I got back home was go to his graveside and tell him I had made it home safe and that we had won the war." It was the only time in my life I heard my dads voice crack. The remembrance of war days had driven out deep emotion he shared with his daughter. The same war had caused a father to embrace his son for the only time that son could remember. All were the spoils of war-raw and real. 

My dad in France with little children who wanted their picture taken with him.