When it came to my parents, there was never a shortage of things for me to criticize, especially when to came to my father. Why did he have to wear those ugly plaid shorts? Why did he wear black socks with white sneakers? When was he ever going to finish painting the house? My mother's answer was always, "Your father can do whatever he wants. That's why he fought in the war."
The war was World War II. My father was drafted before the end of his senior year in high school. He was determined to finish school, so he appealed to the draft board. He was allowed to graduate and was drafted soon after.
His military service took him first to Ft. Dix for basic training. It was there that the guy, who never let his kids get away with anything, went AWOL every Sunday. He scaled a fence and walked to his aunt's house in Juliustown. After a home cooked meal, he slipped back on base.
From basic training, Dad went to cook and baker's school. The army marches on it's stomach, they say. The way it worked out, Dad never did much cooking in the army. He found out that the army marched on c-rations - powered eggs, spam, beans, chocolate, and cigarettes.
Dad received his orders to go to Europe. He said he was sea sick every day of the week long trip aboard an ocean liner. Oddly enough, he never had a hiccup of sea sickness on the ride home. He landed in England. During his time there, he boarded with an English family. He and his landlady exchanged Christmas cards and wrote an occasional letter until her death many years after the war.
Dad learned a lot from all this training. First and foremost,
never volunteer. The second cardinal rule seemed to be, "Don't be a show off." The crack shot Depression era kid who brought home rabbits and birds for the dinner table, suddenly didn't hit the center of the target quite so consistently. The star marksmen were the boys from the Ozarks. According to dad, they could barely read and write, but they never missed the bull's eye. Dad shot just well enough to qualify. Well, playing down his shooting ability didn't win him a spot in front of a stove. He landed in the infantry with the kids from the Ozarks.
Dad was being trained for the D-day invasion. He didn't land in Normandy on June 6, 1944, but followed on the second day of the invasion. As a kid, we saw films of the landing craft delivering the soldiers. When the craft was wading distance from shore, the back dropped down, and the soldiers headed for shore, rifles held above their heads.
I asked, "Was the water cold?"
The answer, "I didn't feel it."
Dad said that by the second day, dead soldiers bobbed on the surface of the water. The dead bumped into the reinforcements as they made their way to the beach. Corpses were piled high on the sand, "stacked like cord wood," was how my father described it. Things kept exploding. At night, the glow of tracer bullets streamed through the air.
Normandy was the beginning of a long march through Europe.
"Where did you sleep?" I asked. They slept in French farmer's houses, in barns, or in holes in the ground. In winter, they might wake to find themselves covered with snow.
"How did you bathe?"
"We didn't." But they had to be clean shaven. They filled their helmets with water, lathered up, and shaved. It might be weeks before they could wash from the neck down.
"What if the farmers didn't want you in their houses, eating their eggs and chickens?"
"They didn't have a choice. We just took things." War was war. The French farmers didn't fear Americans. The eggs and chickens were usually paid for with the cigarettes and candy from the c-ration packets.
The ugliest part of the war for my father might have been they way some soldiers defiled the dead. Dad helped himself to a pistol that a dead German officer would no longer need. He said others committed barbarous acts like cutting off fingers to take rings. The kid who could skin and gut a rabbit for dinner, didn't want any parts of chopping off fingers.
Wars end, soldiers return home, and life goes on. My sister, the only one of the three of us to have children, made Mom and Dad grandparents. I heard one of my nephews ask, "Grandmom, is this a free country?"
Her response, "Yes, that's why your grandfather fought in the war."
It's a free country for me and those grandkids, now grown, and the great-grandchildren that Dad never met.
On Memorial Day we should honor the sacrifices made by the members of our military. Whether it was a gift of a couple of years time or the offering up of a life, we thank you for your service.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGGSjCalLB0
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| Private First Class Clarence E. Stackhouse, Jr. |
