Memorial Day

In many ways, my father was an open book.
He was forthright and honest; if you didn't want
the answer don't ask the question. An
honorable man who loved his family. A
dedicated friend who could always be counted
on when times were hard. A humorous
person who could be counted on to serve up
quick wit and a good time. However, it wasn't
until I was in high school that I realized there
was a part of my father's life I never knew. We
all knew that Daddy had fought in World War II.
We all knew he had been injured in the war,
he had a purple heart to prove it. What we
didn't know came to the forefront after
watching a movie on television.

He sat perfectly still, just staring at the credits that rolled by, pain slowly aging his face.
"Daddy, are you OK?" He leaned forward,
putting his elbows on his knees and his head
in his hands. My father never liked to show
what he viewed as weakness to us, so we
worried all the more. "Daddy, are you alright?"
"Yes, baby," he said softly,"it's just hard to see
this." It was then that my father told of us the
only war stories we would ever here from his
lips.

He was just 16 when he had signed up to fight
against the Nazi war machine. It was his duty,
his obligation, his adventure. The country boy
from a place that was more prairie than
settlement, who had never been to the "big
city," found himself on a ship that would carry
him to a world so different than his own that
his senses never were able to comprehend it
and life would never be the same.

He had been seriously injured by the shrapnel
of a mortar shell. Three days, maybe longer,
he laid in the mud covered with a tarp with only
the promise from The Old Man that they'd be
back to get him. He awoke in a field hospital
bandaged and confused. He had heard a
rumor that if you were injured badly enough
they'd send you home. Home to the prairie.
Home to the world he knew. They had
decided he wasn't injured badly enough,
though looking the scars he carried I am
amazed. The Old Man was pushing into
Berlin, he was going to crush the Nazis in their
own backyard. He was bring the game to
them. He put on a uniform of a soldier who
hadn't been as lucky and joined the rest of the
troop.

We sat in wide eyed amazement, trying to
think of my father at my age fighting a war,
injured so far from home, picking up his rifle to
rejoin the fight. The story, however, had not
reached it's most horrid conclusion.

The main objective of his group was to
liberate Belsen-Bergen, a death camp. He
had heard the stories, of course, they had all
heard the stories. However, there is a part of
the brain that works to hide some truths from
destroying the human heart; this was one of
those times. Minor hot spots kept them too
busy to really wrap their minds around the
object of their mission. They were seasoned
veterans of war, they had seen it all, nothing
could shock them any longer. War was not
hell, it was worst. At seventeen, he had seen
it all. None of them were prepared for the
sight of hundreds of starved people running
toward them, stopped by the fence that
deliniated their world. They were people, he
knew this intellectually, but his mind was
having it's own war, because the things that
stood pressing themselves against the wire
were not human. Living skeletons, empty
shells, vacant bodies whose souls had been
safely hidden away. The soldiers came
through the gates cheers, hugs, kisses, tears,
blessings, a cacophony of joyful relief. Still
The Hand That Guides had not finished with
the country boy from the prairie.

He and two others were given the assignment
of searching out the barracks for possible
Nazi soldiers who had not managed to
escape. They entered one of the buildings to
find shaved heads huddled around a bed. It
wasn't until one of the inhabitants spoke that
he realized this was a women's dorm. His
head began to reel from the heat and the
smell of death that permeated the
atmosphere. He then heard the gentle strains
of the Kaddish. He instinctively began to pray
along as he edged closer to the bed where
the lifeless body of a little girl lay.

From behind the strong hands that hid his
face came the soft sounds of my father's
sorrow, "It was her."