The Man Within the Veteran

As a young girl, I didn't view my father as a veteran. He never joined The American Legion or marched in front of an audience on the Fourth of July. I never saw his army uniform or his World War II photos. The few stories that he shared held the gloss of legends.

During one late-night family discussion, I heard about the unusually calm day in far-off Europe when an unidentified voice prompted my father to leave the protection of his foxhole. Against the grain of battlefield logic, he obeyed. Moments later, morter shells were fired from the German lines. One exploded inside the trench.

Lost in a sleepy haze, I vaguely rejoiced that my father had lived to tell the tale. Yet I missed the tragic fact that his buddy died in the blast.

When my father reminisced about the winter he spent in a German prison camp, I shivered with imagined cold. Yes, I felt troubled as I learned how he and other POWs were forced to sleep naked after guards collected their ragged clothes each night. Yet his voice seemed almost jovial as he described nocturnal air raids when everyone was rousted from the barracks and compelled to wait outside in snowy trenches until the planes departed. He joked about eating nothing but black bread and watery stock beet soup. I cleaned my plate at mealtimes, never considering the possibility that he might have endured even more.

Veteran's Day came and went each year without parades or school assemblies. Sometimes one of my older siblings bought small red tissue poppies from former servicemen in our small town.

I grew up feeling proud of my father and deeply patriotic. But I didn't give much thought to the fact that he was someone besides my dad and a friendly postmaster who could find the right mailbox for letters addressed to "Grandma Hunt" in a first-grade scrawl.

Thanks to my husband, this myopic perspective began to change. An avid student of World War II, he sometimes drew my father into conversations about his experiences as a soldier on the front lines in Europe. I then realized that my dad was assigned to the Fourth Armored Spearhead Division of General George S. Patton's famous Third Army which turned the tide of Germany's last major offensive in the Battle of the Bulge.

Since then, my mother has recorded his detailed accounts that breathe life into history and portray a resolute yet vulnerable young man who maintained hope and faith in the midst of circumstances that were usually beyond his control.

Saying good-bye to his youth in southern Utah, he watched the Statue of Liberty recede into the horizon as the Equitania carried him and 4,000 troops to war-torn Europe in 1944. He walked through the wreckage of Omaha Beach where a life-long friend had been killed during the D-Day invasion only a few weeks before. He assisted in capturing a machine-gun "nest", only to discover that it was manned by twelve-year-old German boys who cried for their mothers as they surrendered. A short time later, he too was compelled to raise both hands in the air as enemy captors declared, "The war is over for you."

A few years ago, my mother asked my dad about the three weeks of interrogation he endured while being held in a German castle during the Christmas season in 1944. Like the rest of us, she had always assumed that he was spared the harsh treatment that other POWs endured.

My heart breaks even as I respect his answer: "No one will ever know what happened there."

We'll never know all the horrors he witnessed or the full extent of deprivation that he suffered in Stalag 4-B. Yet we do know that, when he walked through open prison gates in May of 1945, he had gained not only physical freedom but also forgiveness and compassion towards ordinary people who had been subjected to the power of an evil minority.

My father is quick to acknowledge the dignity and refinement of the German people even as he recalls how their children laughed and sang as they dragged Christmas trees home on their sleds. He'll never forget the prison guards who showed photos of family members and sweethearts to the POWs when their superiors weren't watching. One of them occasionally gave him a few extra rations. And he's still grateful for a Czech family who chose to feed him and his newly-liberated companions their first decent meal as they traveled south to the American lines.

Sixty-five years later, my parents visited places in Germany that evoked memories and deep emotion. They also walked through the Saar Valley in France where my father had been captured at age nineteen.

People in the nearby village remember who made their liberation possible so long ago. They lay flowers on the graves of the dead. They also thanked my father--one of the dwindling number of World War II soldiers who still lives.

Last summer he wore his uniform and joined other hometown veterans who were honored by cheering crowds in the Fourth of July parade. For the first time, our younger sons saw him as someone besides their grandpa who prefers western shirts.

Every Veteran's Day, I picture him leaning on his cane as he and my mother make their way to the local schools for patriotic assemblies. He's grown thin and tired and late-autumn sun highlights the silver in his hair. Still, he's there to listen as his grandchildren and other students sing about how freedom isn't free.

Later, he'll call his buddy from Patton's Fourth Armored Division.

They paid the price.


Copyright Nov. 15, 2011 by Nani Lii S. Furse