Commentary

An old soldier meets a random act of gratitude

By Leslie Martin

"Excuse me, can I talk to you for a minute?"

A tall man in his 40s was speaking to my father, 86, in a retail parking lot. He inquired whether Dad had served in the military.

"I sure did," Dad replied. "Army, and I brought home this souvenir," he said, lifting his knee slightly and pointing to it. You can't tell from a gesture like that how shrapnel had torn up the delicate structures inside his knee. Or why he had never again danced the jitterbug, which had made him famous in high school.

The stranger asked for God's blessing on my father, and asked which battalion he had served in. Dad answered, and I proudly added that it was the Battle of the Bulge. Impressed, the man thanked him for his service and again blessed him and all veterans.

Dad thanked him, and we got into the car.

Would he remember what just transpired, I wondered, if I mentioned it on the short ride home? Would he remember to tell Mom?

What was important, I decided, was that I remember.

When I was a kid, we'd set up Dad's Army tent in the back yard and hang out. I remember seeing a plane one day and asking Mom, "Is that one of ours?"

"Of course," she said, turning from the clothesline to face me. "The war is over, honey."

Dad taught us to count to 10 in German, but also treated us to his favorite wartime tune by Spike Jones: "When der fuehrer says we is der master race, We heil (pffft) heil (pffft) right in der fuehrer's face." Other than that, he never spoke of the war, nor, according to Mom, did he ever answer the question asked by so many: "Did you kill anyone?"

In his later years, even after he had begun asking the same mundane questions over and over, he named the three towns he was near when wounded and described what had happened. During a lull, he and two buddies had been ordered to pick up supplies. They decided to take a shortcut.

The whine of incoming shells broke the quiet of morning. The soldiers hit the ground.

"One shell landed to my right, another to my left and one next to my head," Dad told me for the first time, not long ago.

He spent much time in hospitals, and was browbeaten by an officer because, while so many men had been so seriously injured, Dad had "only a scratch."

No one comes out of war with only a scratch. "What did you do when you heard the war was over, Dad?"

"Well, I went into the bedroom closet, closed the door and cried."

Why?

"Because the killing was over."

Nowadays, Dad speaks of war only when the news is on and he hears something about Iraq, Afghanistan or some other embattled part of the world. He often remarks succinctly on the futility of war. With personal experience and the perspective of age, he puts it plainly:

"War is stupid."

Leslie Martin is an editor. She lives in Mendota Heights.