“From The Halls of Montezuma…..”

Daddy was tough. He didn’t tolerate laziness, much idle chit-chat or a job semi, halfway, ALMOST done just-right. Me and Leon and David Mark don’t know if he tolerated back-talk……that was a gauge we never tested! I wouldn’t say he was opinionated. But if he had an idea or a belief, he didn’t budge. His formal education, as we think of it, ended when he graduated from the third grade. The farm chores needed him more than the little one room school on Sugar Creek.

He worked hard all of his life. It was the only way he knew. He expected us to bring the change back when he sent us to the store after a loaf of bread or a pack of Camels. He whipped me once because I turned up my nose at the cauliflower supper. He didn’t care a whit whether I ate it or not. He thought I had somehow slighted Mom. He laughed when Lucy and Ethel were stuffing those chocolate drops in their mouths, he’d drive a hundred miles to see one of us play a baseball game and he didn’t make excuses if life didn’t go just as he wanted. I never heard him say a disparaging word about a neighbor, someone up at city hall or this nation.

He was the greatest American I have ever known. 

I can’t remember the exact year David and I ran across that old green jacket in his closet. I’m guessing 1953 or 54. I don’t think Dave had even started to school yet. We had to stand on a hat box to reach the metal pins and multi-colored ribbons that decorated one whole side of that coat. And we had to be extra careful sticking those things on our tee shirts. We drew blood a couple of times before we got the little tips clasped over the sharp ends. We divided up the ribbons and fought over who got the stars and arrowheads.

Daddy had never mentioned World War II. We had no clue as we paraded into the living room adorned with arrowheads, a Philippine Liberation Ribbon, bronze stars, a Presidential Citation, a Victory Medal and I don’t know what all else pinned between the blood stains on our mostly white shirts. Mother looked like a giant snake had just bit her in the left leg! Dad didn’t bat an eye.

We wanted to know the difference between a ribbon and a star. And where did all these things come from? And what was it like to be a real war hero. Mother was shooing us back into the bedroom when Dad spoke. It was the first words on war of any kind that I’d ever heard. “Boys,” he didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t seem to be mad at us and he didn’t even glance at the arrowheads and ribbons, “the real heroes didn’t come back.”

We learned about the war in school. They had pictures of the black smoke billowing up at Pearl Harbor. We read the autobiography of Audie Murphy. We saw “The Sands of Iwo Jima” and “Twelve O’clock High”. And as our appreciation for those men and women who had risen to the occasion in World War II grew so did our appreciation for the quiet man who headed up our household.

Slowly, over a number of years, his “war story” unfolded. Mostly it came from Mom. Dad was drafted in 1942. He practiced amphibious landings on the shores of Lake Michigan, saw his first action in New Guinea and then island hopped with General MacArthur across the South Pacific. He was cut off behind the Japanese line for 17 days and nights on Biak Island. It was also on Biak where the 476th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, Semi-Mobile was awarded a Presidential Citation “For extraordinary heroism…..from 27 May to 3 June, 1944”. He was on Luzon, gearing up to invade Japan when the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

When we finally got Dad around to a war discussion he would talk about the ride across Australia with the English stopping the whole train to have a spot of tea. He talked about the heat and the incessant rain in New Guinea. He would talk about the strange language of the natives. And he smiled when he said that he got to the Philippines “two weeks before MacArthur waded ashore”. He never mentioned Biak Island at all except to say the real heroes didn’t come back.

And let me tell you, to the day he died, he didn’t like the Japanese! He never forgave them. He didn’t buy their transistor radios or their chow mien. He came close to making me leave college because we had a student that looked Japanese. You can say that is horrible or narrow minded or uncivilized……but how many days did you spend hunkered down behind enemy lines on a tiny island ten thousand miles from the house?

You see, we’ve let a few generations pass now and maybe our view is dimmed. Our enemies count on our short memories. War is ancient history. Let’s text someone, jump into hyper space or TiVo it! Memorial Day is about going to the beach, cooking out in the back yard, enjoying the long week-end……

I hope amid the hustle and bustle and “cashing in” on this holiday week-end you take just a minute (gosh, that’s not much to ask) to reflect on where we are…..and who squared their shoulders and stood in the gap to get us here! Let me give you a Memorial Day tip that you need to pin to your heart. And listen, I got this on good authority….. “The real heroes, son, didn’t come back.”

Most Respectfully,

Kes