MEMOIR
Forgive Me, Stepfather, For I Have Sinned…AgainPRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC 01 February 2010 |
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He would not have liked this. I have spent much of my life trying to live up to his example of not being trampled under the hoofbeat of emotion. Yet I cannot always ride firmly in the mind’s saddle. And so the gait is a sloppy, sentimental one at times. Or maybe a headlong gallop into a windmill. I still fancy myself with a lance or a saber after all these years, even though I can barely handle a trot. Maybe that’s why he was always tugging at the reins, trying to get me to go in a different direction.
One thing is for sure: He would certainly not have liked such a metaphor smacking of the horsey set. Perhaps I’m feeling like an ass for writing about him today, on this day, when any other day would do just as well, and I’m dressing things up in an equine theme to compensate.
Could it be that I’m riding a donkey now, or braying like one, and I just don’t want to admit that I was never really able to get up onto that rather high horse of a mind he intended for me? There are times when I feel as though I’m still holding those reins only so I can flagellate myself with them like some Shi’a on the Day of Ashura. I long ago gave up any notion of actually riding somewhere.
But this is his story. That’s the point of this. I’ve told it before, of course; but today it seems different. Only he would know why that is. Didn’t he always know why things were the way they were? Where had he learned to do that? In the forest?
It was bitter cold in the Ardennes that winter. Men were pissing on the bolts of their rifles to keep the metal from freezing. The already rigid corpses of the dead froze even stiffer, and the burial detail was heaving them onto the back of a truck when the tall infantry sergeant from Louisiana leveled his weapon and swore calmly and convincingly that he’d shoot the next man who threw a body around like a piece of cordwood. Weeks later, the sergeant went off toward a nearby farmhouse to exchange some used coffee grounds for fresh eggs. He never came back.
There were other tales: about blowing open the safe underneath the portrait of Göring at the Luftwaffe air base; concerning the dumping of a large quantity of condoms into a river on the orders of a self-righteous colonel; or relating the details of that afternoon on R&R in Marseilles when the German “potato masher” hand grenade thrown by an Algerian landed right next to his table in the café…but didn’t explode.
Years later as a soldier myself, I had many suitable occasions to think back on his story about the major from headquarters who, just after the war ended, came to inspect his unit as they were being attached to the 7th Army and commencing postwar garrison life.
His platoon leader had been an enlisted man and received a battlefield commission when the lieutenant in charge was killed. He and his buddies stood there in formation looking like the ragged and rumpled combat veterans that they were.
The major, with the company commander (himself an old hand from D-Day) looking on, remarked to the platoon leader, “Lieutenant, your men look pretty slack. I don’t know if they’re good enough to wear the 7th Army patch.”
“Well,” replied the lieutenant, “you’re probably right about that, sir, so I guess the best thing would be for you to take that 7th Army patch and shove it up your ass!“
The major was apoplectic, but the company commander just shrugged, and later he would swear that the major had somehow misunderstood what was actually said.
These were some of the stories he told me. He was an eighteen-year-old private in the infantry at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. He had aged quite a bit more than usual by the time he left Germany just a year later at the end of 1945.
He only spoke of these few incidents and a handful of others once or twice; but nothing more, and never anything about combat itself. I once asked him if he had ever taken aim at a particular enemy soldier and pulled the trigger. He sat reflecting for a long moment, then he said, “You know, there were times when I used to wonder if someone was out there aiming at me — and then I stopped thinking about it, because I had too damn many other things to worry about.”
I eventually came to realize just how honest an answer that really was, and I would like to have had the chance to tell him that I finally understood at least that much.
There are many other things I’ve wanted to discuss with him in these years past, stories of my own life that I wish I could tell him. Something occasionally seems to be missing without the opportunity to do that.
Then again, I know that I wouldn’t be able to pick and choose the facts of what I’ve done, or failed to do, and I also know I’ve spent much more of my life being something closer to that major with his pretty patch than the lieutenant telling him to go to hell. Would it matter?
Only he would know, I guess; but he’s gone. I think of him always, and today I hope he doesn’t mind that I tugged on the reins, just a little.
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Hey Darian,
Sitting there, playing with the dog… he looks like a nice guy.
“Didn’t he always know why things were the way they were?”
That’s a line that’s going to stay with me, I think.
Simon,
I always had a hard time trying to imagine what he was like when he was holding a rifle instead of a dog.
In truth, he wasn’t a “nice” guy in the way I suppose one would normally apply the label, because he really didn’t like most people, and he had a way of not hiding it too much, though more like the effect of a rapier rather than a club.
There were times growing up that I hated him, though what’s unusual about that, eh?
I’m not sure how I would describe him as a “fill-in-the blank guy”. He was smart. Very smart. He was funny, albeit usually in a cynical way.
I should have asked him how he saw himself in a word.
Darian,
This is a touching tribute to a man you obviously cared for deeply and for good reason.
I’d venture to say that he would be quietly pleased with your words.
Irene,
I wish I shared your optimism. I’m pretty sure he would have been more inclined toward not-so-quiet scorn for anything that wasn’t written on paper, and especially for needless dwelling on the past. In fact, it hit me just now that this would probably have gotten a response along the lines of, “Is this your ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ shtick, Sunny Jim?”
But thanks very much for speculating otherwise…
At least you acquired his penchant for storytelling? My dad was in the Navy. No action, though he was in the gulf on a carrier, poised to attack during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
“Poised to attack,” meaning, “ready to make sure the jet blast deflectors continued to function during any attack.”
He was a deflector technician. His stories, though mostly about drinking, fascinate me. He’s another person. Somebody young and adventurous and not just boring old dad.
He was the guy standing at attention when an over-eager captain crashed an aircraft carrier (yes, a whole aircraft carrier) into a pier and a building in New Orleans because he wanted to go on shore leave and there was a tugboat captain strike or something.
I’m never going to have stories like that.
You will, though. You do. If your stepdad wouldn’t appreciate them, I do.
I’ve never been on a carrier deck, but I’ve been up on the deck of an amphibious assault ship (the USS Kearsarge) during flight ops and just knew for sure that I’d be the guy who would wander into a prop in the thick of it all. I can imagine a job like that on the beehive of a real flattop leading to a few belts on shore leave. And, yeah, I’ll bet that was one helluva “Oh, shit!” moment when the ship driver hit the pier.
You’ve got great stories, by the way. Not everything has to be about commando women with big boobs, right?
I think he was actually a below-decks guy, mostly. A mechanic, for all intents and purposes. Worked on the hydraulics and the guts you can see underneath when the things are up, deflecting jet blasts.
Though that doesn’t mean he was never up top. I think he told me he once saw (or at least was on board when it happened and witnessed the aftermath), a guy’s head get snatched off when one of those catapult/braking cables snapped and went whipping around the deck.
Eugh.
On the lighter side, he also has a story about stumbling back to the ship drunk, with an even drunker buddy over his shoulder, and running into an officer of some sort on his way down to their bunks. According to his story, I believe he dropped his buddy on the ground (who then sort of rolled down a flight of stairs) to talk to the officer. Managed to convince the officer he was not drunk, but the buddy was (obviously). Next day told the buddy he had taken a spill in the street and oh by the way, officer so-and-so wants to talk to you…
Maybe that isn’t funny. Maybe it’s mean.
I think it’s funny.
No jets without the jet blast deflectors.
It is funny. A classic military tale that immediately brings to mind a few tales of my own. Of course, I’m betting you’d hear far fewer such stories in the military these days. People have lost their sense of humor.
What’s great about these pieces (yours and everyone’s here) is when they give us a window onto another person. We sometimes like to say so-and-so was a great person, a nice person, inspiring, or whatever. But much more importantly (and more accurately), they are human beings who are not *us.* And every time we get a glimpse of one of them, it’s a great moment in my opinion.
I have the feeling that my oversized ego always crowds out whatever and whomever I’m allegedly offering a glimpse of in favor of making the story about me. I’m like the stripper who is “showing” you the pole.
I, like Mary, love to get these glimpses of people who I will never know, so I thank you for sharing this with me.
I love all the horse metaphors – so even if your stepfather wouldn’t approve of them, they get my nod.
Lovely piece, Darian.
I’m still carefully crafting some glimpses of myself, though they’re almost certainly designed to keep anyone from knowing who I really am.
Thanks for the thumbs up on the horses. That was one of my mane concerns with this one…
I’m always amazed by soldiers who fought in the two world wars. How awful it must have been. And yet, curiously, my grandfather, who was in the army for the duration of WWII, cherished his experiences.
I know in the Great War soldiers on both sides didn’t fire on each other from the trenches. They gave plenty of warning before going through the motions. Sort of restores one’s faith in humanity.
I liked this piece, and I’m sure, somewhere, so did he.
I just saw a story the other day about the last surviving WWI vet celebrating his 109th birthday. It’s hard to imagine that a world in which no one has any personal memories of WWII isn’t far off. I suppose, in a hundred years of so, our national sense of connection with that era will seem as distant as the War with Mexico seems to us today.
Or does the global dimension of the modern conflicts guarantee them a place in human consciousness for a longer time? After all, while the War with Mexico probably doesn’t register in the minds of, say, Egyptians — or, frankly, probably not much even in the minds of Texans these days — the concept of a “first” and “second” world war is shared linguistically by people around the world who, indeed, may conjure up in their heads any number of culturally shared images when the names are spoken.
But then look how much that doesn’t hold true for WWI today — something that would have been hard to imagine in 1939 when speaking about public memories of the Great War. So maybe WWII can be forgotten in half a century, and that notion only seems strange to me because I lived my life in direct contact with the war’s participants, and experienced its direct effects as a big part of the reality of my own life during the Cold War and beyond.
Maybe any story is always about some part of you or me, anyone who writes might say that they are in what they write. I enjoy reading your words as you somehow always manage to create a very visual pattern with your verbal thoughts. I especially thank you for this story. You know, if he were still around he just might not be as critical of your words or actions as you are. I know that he was extremely proud of you and loved you very much.
I thought we are what we eat!
I’d give anything to have him read something I’ve written and tell me what he thinks. If I could “send” him just one thing to read, I wonder what it would be. (I think I’d rather pick out a good book for him…)