It is fair to say that most sons would like to see their fathers as fanciful and storyful heroes. We all love a Spidy, Tarzan, Bumblebee, or whomever. Maybe Dad can teach us how to throw a wicked curveball, drop a row of soup cans with a revolver, or maybe even how to make a truly righteous tackle. Your form of football may vary.
Most Moms would probably prefer that sons mow the lawn, take out the trash, and clean their rooms without a fuss and fight. My wife, who has both a son and grandsons, certainly tends to favor better character. Better character and humility tend to produce better male behavior most of the time. The ole familiar being over doing female to male thing.
None of Us Want to Lose Someone
I never met my father’s father – my grandfather. My grandmother lost a heroic husband to the Second World War on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. At that time her two oldest sons were serving in two separate theatres - the Pacific and my father in Europe. As fate would have it, my father’s older brother was right there in the Pacific to bury his father.
All three men volunteered together on the day that Germany invaded Poland and England entered the war on Sept 1, 1939. All three volunteered to serve in the US Navy. My grandfather had served in the US Army in WWI but was a member of the Navel Reserve in the years between.
Both the US Navy and the US Army rejected my father due to a foot that was damaged by polio when he was a child.
What It Meant to Serve
My father instead joined the American Field Service that day. He was deployed overseas almost immediately. He saw his father last in late Sept 1939.
During the war he served in the AFS with the British Army in North Africa, Italy, and with Patton’s US 3rd Army in France and finally in Germany from 1939-1945.
For most of the war, my father served in the Indian III Army with the Gurkha commando regiments. Think Army Rangers or US Special Forces. For all of my childhood I thought he made up his Gurkha stories to get me to do my chores and work harder.
I have a faded picture of him with a group of happy brown men sitting on the stones of the great pyramid at Giza after the English victory in the second battle at El Alamein Nov 1942. Some of the men in the photo are Indian. Some are Nepalese.
My father always kept this picture stored away all of my childhood. When I asked why, my father simply told me that was a fine day. Sadly, none of his friends in the picture survived the war.
How He Remembered the Fallen
When my father passed away, I inherited my father’s large British regimental tie collection. He was proud that he had earned the official right to wear them. He had an official letter from the Queen of England that recognized and thanked him for his service in more British regiments than anyone else in the British Army in WWII. As a kid I never knew that.
My father never told anyone except my mother that he remembered those he served with in the war by each day wearing these same regimental ties when he went to work. As kids we just thought Pop had a thing for funny, colored striped ties.
When is Enough Enough
To this day I have no knowledge of any other US veteran who actively served longer in WWII or in more historic battles. The list would miss the point.
His only remark about serving in the Battle of the Bulge was the age of the killed German soldiers. “By the end of the war they were children.”
“Anzio in Italy was worse. Each day they would ring the church bells. The fighting would stop. We could go out and pick up the wounded and the dead for an hour.”
Funny thing is the US Government only officially recognized his wartime service in the AFS as that of a US veteran until almost 50 years after the war. He was proud when they finally did.
In the winter of 1943, the AFS sent my father back home to the United States. He had apparently served long enough. He also had what they called battle fatigue. He survived a second crossing of the North Atlantic in a ship. I believe he also had a bad experience in an airplane during that trip. He later managed to cross the North Atlantic a couple of more times.
The US had entered the war. My father arrived back in New York two weeks after his father and brother were sent to the West Coast. My grandmother had his photo taken in his AFS uniform and then she had this painted into a portrait. He kept this painting at the back of a closet all my childhood. Today the painting hangs in my hallway. Pop looks like a haunted kid.
Why He Went Back
I discovered as a young adult that my father came home from the war and then went back. I had to ask, “Why did you go back?”
“Why did I go back?
When I came back to New York after Egypt my brother was already on a destroyer somewhere protecting aircraft carriers off Midway or someplace. Daddy was in charge of the hush hush logistics for island hopping campaigns in the Pacific. I missed his last leave home before he left for the Pacific by only a couple of weeks. I never saw him again after the day I initially left for Europe in 1939 as it turned out.
Mother made me sit for a formal photograph in my AFS inform. After I went back she had that made into a painted portrait. She was probably sure I was going to die. Years later she sent it to us in California. I could never hang it on the wall for anyone else to look at. I kept it in a closet.
For everyone else in New York the war was really just starting. It wasn’t over.
If I went to a party, everyone there talked about how heroic they were going to be in their new uniforms. The big deal in New York was how the US was going to save England from defeat. Maybe. Maybe not. The war certainly wasn’t over.
For me the war began a long time before.
People didn’t know any better.
In retrospect, almost all of those men were much too afraid to ask what war was like. I was like a Martian. “You were in North Africa since 1940?” Me being an ambulance driver in the English Army was some misunderstanding. Was that heroic or simply gruesome?
A real-life lesson in world or military history wasn’t going to help matters. Keeping the Germans out of Egypt and away from the Suez wasn’t something important to them.
By 1945 I ended up serving in every Allied army. The English, the Australians, the Indians, and even the French for a little bit. After Anzio, I was attached to the US Army. We went up Italy and into Germany with Patton.
The Americans were by far the most gung ho about killing people and at being killed. The English and the Germans were appalled by the American causalities. By the end of the war the German soldiers were kids. Some couldn’t grow a beard, but they could still shoot.
Why did I go back? Doing that made more sense to me than listening to the talk.
Honestly, the Gurkha got under my skin. They didn’t kill needlessly. They didn’t die needlessly either. Get the fight over with and go home. If it was worth doing, do it. Do it really well. Go home with honor.
The honor, courage, and duty may seem like noble concepts to people who are not soldiers, but these were practical as hell considering the circumstances we were all in.
The Gurkha were intentionally grateful for and respectful of the smallest things. They had nothing but life, the life of their friends, and their service. They used the same knives to kill their enemies and cook their friend’s dinner. They thought this was funny, no big deal, and important all at the same time.
As to the silence of the Gurkha - At Anzio a Gurkha sergeant told me this – ‘We train our children not to cry in pain. Silence keeps you, your family, and your friends alive. Before the British came we were hunted.’
WWII was not their war. Their homes were never threatened. Their children were never at risk. Their simple way of life was not obviously threatened. At that time the families of those men still lived in caves in a nearly lifeless dessert in Nepal. Most knew they would never go home. Perhaps some would go home with honor, so they volunteered.
I went back a second time because I think I began to vaguely understand why they served – why they volunteered.
Some men deserve to go home to peace.”
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