Faith

[patrice]

As you can see, this is also about Religion. Daddy was a Catholic. I don't know what that meant in his younger years, but I can clearly recall how, though our household was ruled by The Church, Daddy did not experience his religion as some kind of paliative. As a little kid, I didn't understand why Daddy's head hung so low during Mass or why, later after Vatican II, his responses to liturgy were rarely loud enough to hear, but I could always see pretty clearly the anxiety in his big hands clenched in prayer. It was not until I was an adolescent trying to make sense of these and other things, that my older sister told me about the cigar-box full of pictures in Mom and Dad's big chest-of-drawers.

I suppose most of us kids snooped around in that chest-of-drawers now and then, when Mom and Dad were out of the house, I know I did. I don't know what I was looking for, but I would just go into their bedroom, pull open the lower drawers in the chest, and look at whatever was in there. As I got taller and progressed from lower to higher drawers, the contents changed from shirts and sweaters and underwear to Mom's few pieces of costume jewelry, old family pictures and birth certificates, various pocket knives and rosaries, and some pieces of metal with words stamped into them. I later learned these were called dog-tags.

Apparently, in the back of the top drawer was a cigar box full of WWII pictures. I remember the box, but when I opened it there were just some musty smelling old military ribbons in it. Years later, my big sister told me about the pictures she had found in that box before our parents discovered our investigations and took them away.

Daddy had always been fascinated by cameras as a young man. He took many pictures of his handsome family, during and after the Great Depression, and they took pictures of him when he was accepted by the Coast Guard. He had gone to the Coast Guard as a substitute for being rejected by the Army, because his teeth were bad. While in the Coast Guard he had his teeth fixed, went back to the regular military and finally made it into the Air Force. The Air Force trained him as an airplane engine mechanic and he took a camera with him when he went to Europe. He rode a Harley Davidson all over Europe and had attained the rank of Master Sgt. when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated. Airplane mechanics were amongst some of the first to be sent into those parts of Germany, so as a young man of 20-something Daddy arrived on those truly horrific scenes with his camera.

Daddy almost never talked about the War, certainly not while his children were young. When certain ones of us got older and the need presented itself, he had a couple of cautionary tales about the dangers of alcohol. One story in particular left an impression. It had to do with drinking bouts on leave in Europe that culminated in an incident of excess with "delicious" British stout that nearly cost him his life. If it had it not been for a friend who recognized the paralysis of alcohol poisoning and got him to purge his system, I wouldn't be telling you about my Dad. It wasn't until I had some experience with alcohol myself that I wondered why anyone would do that to themselves. Which brings us back to The Church.

[papau]

1. that parallels my Dad and my early life - and well written :-)

Spot on right down to the war pictures in the sock drawer with the dog tags.


:-)

[patrice]

2. Thanks very much.

I'm trying to keep what was/is real. I don't want to *depend* upon agreement with other descriptions of the Great Generation (I have definite personal reasons for avoiding that), but neither do I reject what we can and DO really share.

[Lowell]

3. This article had me go to my sock drawer

I wasn't a member of the greatest generation, but I fought in the war of my peers. Vietnam. I too have a cigar box stashed away in my sock drawer, it has been there for nearly 40 years.

I hung my medals and ribbons in a display case years ago. When my kids asked me about them I told them what they stood for and why I was awarded them. I never hid the fact that I was a combat veteran, but then I never talked about my experiences in country.

What remains in my cigar box are some old photos and letters. Now I look at those pictures and study the young faces staring back at me. So many of them are long dead and buried. I understand the need to hold on to some things like this. I also have a stack of letters in there. After I read your entry I opened one of the letters. It was from the father of a friend I lost in Vietnam. He thanked me for telling him how his son died. The awful thing is I don't remember writing him. I wrote so many of those letters in 1968 they all became a blur. So I looked at the signature and then searched through the pictures I kept. There was his son, beer in one hand, M-14 in the other, drunk as a lord. It all came back.

I know what is like to serve honorably in a dishonorable war. It does not diminish in one bit the courage and sacrifice of our young soldiers. Now I've carefully returned the letters and photos to their place in my sock drawer. I don't have to worry anymore. The kids are all grown and left home. The grandchildren can't reach that drawer yet.

[patrice]

4. I owe you and those like you a special debt.

In 1968 I was 19 and pregnant with my first child, my son. His Dad, my husband of less than one year, was newly out of the Air Force and hired by IBM. We were in the process of learning age old lessons: how to be married to one another and how to be parents to this little baby, and how to live in the cradle-to-grave corporate world, while others, you and those like you, were in the process of learning a brand new lesson for our generation: how to be expendable government resources.

My initial motivation, in response to the build-up and Invasion of Iraq, was mostly about innocent Iraqis in their homes experiencing sudden Death and Destruction from an arbitrary war. Now I think more and more about troops at this time of war, partly because so many of our family have had service in Iraq, but partly also because I am concerned about victims of power in general. That is, in fact, why I feel bad for Iraqis and now I have come to understand how the Iraqis are not the only victims of power in this and other situaitons.

Of course, if you respect Life, you can't say one form of Death and Destruction is less or more than another, but one can think about the difference between immediate physical Death and Destruction and a type of Death and Destruction that one lives with one's entire life, buried in one's mind and heart, every second of every day in every experience. An ultimate depersonalization, being turned into an expendable object by lies and ir-responsible mistakes, but not just as an in-animate depersonalized object, but one that depersonalizes others in order to survive. I think of the things that hurt me to remember about myself and imagine multiplying that pain thousands of times over and over again.

The Ugly necessity of killing all of your dreams (patriotic and otherwise) in order to become what you hate, so that you can survive against what you hate is something that happened to part of my generation in a place called Viet Nam. It's happening again to my Delta Force nephew, Aaron, and a whole lot of other people who didn't have lots of options in their lives.

I cannot say thank you for something I so strongly did not want. I most especially will not say thank you for a lie. But I can say how, similar to the poor who work for less than a Just wage and, thus, make it possible for our economic system to function and, hopefully also **because** of the special place that they occupy in that system, may teach it how to become a Just economic system, ALL of us owe you and all Veterans a special debt.

You didn't make it possible for us to survive. The Invasion of Iraq is not making it possible for us to survive. But because Veterans are what they are, they have unique lessons to teach the rest of us about Justice.

I hope to see our debts to others recognized for what they Really are, and for my Dad who was always concerned about "the little guy", I hope to be a part of bringing that about in any small way that I can.