"War is hell!" - General William Tecumseh Sherman
"To hell with war!" - Major General Smedley Butler
My great-uncle Hank had a direct line to the freshest smoked fish in the city. A couple of times a month, he would show up at our house early Sunday mornings, with a big box of plump, juicy, delicious, smoked chubs.
We kids learned early-on how to gently peel away the skin, and remove the succulent meat, leaving only the head, bones, and tail, just like in the cartoons.
Uncle Hank was stationed in the radio shack of the Naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." He lost most of his hearing in the raid. He adored my mother and doted on us kids, but when we talked to him, he would scrunch up his craggy face and say, "Heeeh!"
Prior to the attack, Uncle Hank had sent his wife, my great-aunt Freda, a necklace and bracelet made of small matching seashells from Hawaii. When Aunt Freda passed away a few years ago, my mom and sister went to clean out her home. My sister gave me the set to present to my wife on Mother’s Day as a keepsake, along with a vintage 1940s photograph of my great-aunt wearing the jewelry. Many families have such cherished heirlooms.
Of course, I knew my great-aunt and uncle many years after the war. Uncle Hank didn't talk about the war much, but I have never forgotten one story in particular. I was about nine, and my brother Bunce must have been about seven. I don't remember how we got on the subject, but I vividly recall what he said.
“When you kill a man with a knife, you slide the blade in till your hand digs into his belly. Then you give the knife a quarter twist (he demonstrated with a quick flick of his wrist), and jerk it out.”
He passed away long before I reached my adult years, and could relate to him on that level. As an adult, I can now picture my great-aunt as a young wife, gathered around the radio with her friends and relatives, listening to the war reports in horror and disbelief, not knowing if her husband was alive or dead.
Aunt Freda Steinberg Budman
In the larger context, as history repeatedly shows, mankind somehow rises phoenix-like from the blackest ashes. Although the sneak attack was a tragedy, and many men, women, and children were injured or lost their lives, if Japan had not attacked when it did, it would have delayed the United States from entering WWII, possibly allowing Nazi Germany to develop the atomic bomb before we did.
If the Nazis had won the war we could be living in a state where our communications were monitored, our movements tracked, our civil liberties curtailed, where the police controlled the population with brutality and impunity, where the military-industrial corporate barons pulled the strings of politicians, and used the armed forces to exert their will around the globe.
Hmm, wait a minute . . .
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
A powerful book, well worth reading, is To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy. The book is a gritty narrative from the perspective of a private infantryman, who became a front line combat officer. In eloquent and insightful prose, at times almost poetic, he recounts the day to day struggle of men in trenches, slogging through muddy fields, and over the frozen terrain of WWII Europe. The stench of death permeates the work, the reek of rotting corpses, burnt flesh, and black powder in the nostrils. But it is also a book about life, the hopes of the soldiers in the hopelessness of war.
Murphy introduces us to a cast of characters, and through their eyes we see the intimate reality of the foot soldiers: the inedible rations, the exhaustion beyond endurance, the bravery and collapse of the human spirit. Of men willing themselves to fight amid the chaos of action, and leaving their blood and broken bodies beneath the soil of foreign lands. Of having to hold their bowels as they are about to meet the enemy, and losing them when they do.
Murphy returned home, the most decorated soldier of the United States Army, and took Hollywood by storm with his boyish good looks, which belied the battle-hardened steel just below the skin. Yes, war is hell, and To Hell and Back makes that abundantly clear.
I happen to be from the specific age group that was born during the late 1950s, making me too young to serve during the Vietnam War, and too old to fight in the Gulf. Quite often, when I am out in my wheelchair, I am mistaken for a veteran, but I would never claim that distinction, and I explain that my condition is due to illness not injury.
My wife would think me remiss, however, if I did not mention that my father-in-law served in the Pacific during WWII, my brother-in-law was stationed in Turkey during Vietnam, and her nephew is on active duty in the Navy.
In April of 2015, after a long decline, my wife's father, George DeYoung, passed away peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 91, at the North Carolina State Veterans Home in Fayetteville, NC.
When she was growing up, my wife and her dad worked on cars together, went fishing, and traveled extensively with an RV club, including the time they spent an evening around the campfire with Carroll O'Connor, a down to earth gentleman, who starred as Archie Bunker on TV's All in the Family.
George was an avid sailor, and held a Coast Guard Captain's License. My wife loved sailing with him on Lake Michigan. Her father was also a past National Archery Champion, and hand-crafted his own bows.
I knew my father-in-law as an inveterate tinkerer, always puttering around the house - that he built. I spent many Easters, Christmases, birthdays, weddings, and family gatherings there. Devoutly Catholic, and a liturgical minister in his church, George welcomed me into his home, and was always curious about the differences and the similarities between the holidays. He encouraged my marriage to his daughter.
A year ago I got to witness the interment of my father-in-law at Arlington National Cemetery. My wife and I were staying in Georgetown, and we took a limo across the Potomac via the Arlington Memorial Bridge into Virginia. The family gathered at the elegantly appointed Administration Building. A personal director formed us into a motorcade with the decorum befitting the situation.
My wife's niece Dawn, all five-foot-two and one-hundred-and-ten pounds of her, is an EMT, and she immediately took charge of me. She lifted me with ease from my wheelchair into and out of SUVs, and maneuvered me around, so my wife could grieve.
A white-gloved honor guard carried the casket, as the director escorted us to a canopied area on a grassy knoll. Seats were arranged in three rows. My wife sat with her sister and brother-in-law in the front row, but because of my wheelchair, the director asked if I would mind sitting behind the three rows, so as not to disrupt the proceedings. I had no objection.
Over the course of the service, we witnessed a complete flag ceremony, which began with a tri-folded flag being crisply snapped open with precise hand movements from one seaman to the next. The open flag was then held horizontally over the casket, which rested on a covered table. The navy chaplain led us in hymns and readings, and blessed with holy water, the remains of George and his beloved wife Marian, whose ashes lay in the casket beside her husband for all time.
Off to our left, a drill team smartly executed a twenty-one gun salute. From far off seemingly, a bugler played Taps, the plaintive restrains rolling across the former plantation fields.
My wife had the wherewithal to record the event on her phone, and you can hear the family members crying in the background. The solemnity of the moment was not lost on me, but from my position in the back, all I could think was, How cool is this?
The honor guard refolded the flag into the all too familiar triangle shape and presented it to my wife's sister, the oldest sibling, with these words:
"Ma'am, on behalf of the President of the United States and the Chief of Naval Operations, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's service to this Country and a grateful Navy."
We made our way across a small road to the Columbarium, row after row of beautifully grained marble walls. The chaplain gave the benediction and the casket was placed within its niche.
My father-in-law was salt-of-the-earth enough to season every steak that ever moseyed up the Chisholm Trail, just like his hero, John Wayne.
A Chicago Democrat early in life, George gradually became Republican, but I never heard him utter a bigoted word or prejudiced thought. As a husband, a father of three daughters, with numerous granddaughters and great-granddaughters, I believe he would not condone the offensive language and vileness of the current president.
I do not believe many of his generation, who fought and died to keep Europe free, would be pleased that the United States is about to hand over the continent to a criminal and expansionist Russia.
George and Marian on their wedding day
(Photographer unknown)
Memorial Service of George and Marian DeYoung,
Arlington National Cemetery:
