I Remember. Too Well.
Since it's Remembrance Day, here's a photo of my dad - sans a few parts, well stitched together, taken outside an army hospital in England.
He's chomping on a cigar, his eye patch rakishly positioned covering a socket where his other eye used to be, his torso tilting slightly as he favours his shredded right leg.
This shot, he told me, was taken to send home to my mother. He wanted to let her know that there was still plenty of him left. Not visible are the shrapnel wounds in one arm, the opposite shoulder, his leg and the bit of red-hot iron that absolutely tore up his innards. Actually he looks pretty jaunty for a guy in such awful shape.
More Canadian soldiers died of shrapnel wounds than bullets, bayonets or mines. When he took us swimming the sight of those angry scars was a bit frightening to me anyway.
The massively wounded have a bit of hard slogging when they return to civilian life. Some are too messed up, physically or mentally, that they never make it. My dad had a buddy who took about four machine pistol rounds in his jaw. He seemed to make a terrific recovery until the phone rang, in the mid 60s I think, to bring word that my dad's friend had died, by his own hand.
It seemed that, every four or five years, dad would have some medical emergency that would have him off in an ambulance. Most of these were touch and go situations. He might be in hospital for a few days or a couple of weeks. Wartime plumbing wasn't all that good. Eventually his problems stabilized and he enjoyed nearly 30 years of relative normalcy.
Then those wounds come back when you near 80. That's a time when a lot of people have surgery - gall bladder, hip replacement, that sort of stuff. That was when the surgeons got to see what was what inside. They had their work cut out for them. One procedure that usually takes 90 minutes, open to close, took eight hours on the table as they found some of his damaged organs had fused together, leaving him in danger of bleeding out. Who knew?
I remember. I remember pretty much all of it, 60 years worth anyway. His war, like so many others', didn't end with the fall of Germany. They wore it all their lives.
I think they all came back.. drastically altered
ReplyDeleteMy sister just delivered a memoir re a certain Dr Parker
Close family friend.. think David Niven level exemplar
She was privileged to read his war diary.. whew
I thought the world of him already .. now far far more
My mom was WW2 London Allied Command WAC - comms & codes etc
& survived the Blitz
Dad was a survivor grunt - saw the world war.. right to the bitter end
Uncle Edmund, a pilot, went in off Calais with his Night Sub Hunter crew
I do wish I had met him ..
They met partying & got married in Toronto, both were damaged goods
Each had three families plus children from each.. big sis & I were forerunners
& we keep discovering more 1/2 siblings .. gee wow !
As a toddler I had little say or insight.. & probably still don’t or won’t
but I see & feel little or no ‘glamour’ was involved.. or expect any
It troubles me, Sal, that we don't venerate the dead without also having to celebrate their heroism. Since when was dying heroic. Three guys are sitting on a log eating a ration lunch. A shell explodes. Shrapnel shreds one of them. The other two are untouched. Is the guy who was killed heroic or just plain unlucky?
DeleteWe imbue these deaths with the King & Country bullshit. We know full well that, under fire, a soldier doesn't give a fig about the King or his country of origin. The soldier fights for the guy to his left and the guy on his right and he'll give his life for either of them.
To me, Remembrance Day has become a grotesque celebration that venerates an illusion tailored to our needs.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThere's a footnote to this photo. My dad had a rival for my mother's hand. The other fellow was probably the better choice but she chose dad to marry. The other guy went on to be a pilot in the RCAF.
ReplyDeleteWhen he was in hospital dad received a letter from home. Mom told him the former suitor had been shot down and taken prisoner.
It turns out my mother received one of those airmail letters on the flimsy blue paper from dad's former rival. Someone got word to him that my dad was in a bad way. The guy let mom know how badly he felt for her plight and was there for her if it didn't work out for dad.
Dad wasn't having any of that. He got out of bed, cleaned up and dressed in these clothes and has his picture taken to send home, giving the impression his condition was far better than it actually was.
This sounds like a fanciful tale but it gets better. Before he died, dad gave me two boxes full of family photos and memorabilia. It was my project to get the photos scanned, cleaned up and digitized for distribution to the immediate family.
Among the documents was one of the rival suitor's airmail letters to my mother. It looks like any standard airmail letter of the day but for one thing. The front of it bears the eagle and swastika emblem of the Third Reich. And, yes, the guy really wasn't very subtle about his interest.
We imbue these deaths with the King & Country bullshit........
ReplyDeleteWhat powerful tool for those that dictate our lives !
TB
To reject the spectacle is seen by some as heretical, disgraceful. Wearing a poppy that has, over the years, probably drawn more blood than an artillery shell, evidences that you accept the narrative, King and country, phantom heroism in every death - the guy whose jeep rolled over or the fellow who popped out of his foxhole for a quick pee break and wound up in the path of a white-hot jagged shard of iron.
DeleteThere is heroism aplenty and we award decorations for that. Charge a machine gun nest, DSO, for sure. Two machine gun nests, that's a MM. Most of the dead lost their lives in lesser pursuits. When we go to the cenotaph we have difficulty acknowledging their deaths for what they were - happenstance, mundane. That's not good enough for us. They must be heroes.
I have an uncle recently passed. Shot down three times. Winds up in a Stalag Luft. When the allies break out of Normandy and the kriegies are sent marching east, deeper into Germany, he sprints into a forest. The guards fire a few rounds but go on with the march. Bud makes it through Germany, into France, and finally reaches the allied lines. That sounds heroic.
My dad? Wrong place, wrong time. A shell aimed at no one in particular burst above him. He woke up a few days later having already passed through surgery in a field hospital on his way to a proper hospital in England. Heroic? He never thought so.