Dem
47
GOP
53
We intended to wrap this series up (for now) on Friday of last week. But time did not allow us to run an entry that day, so we're going for one more week.
Today, we hear from R.G.N. in Seattle, WA:
A few weeks ago, while cleaning up some personal effects he retrieved after our mother's death, my brother stumbled upon a box containing a diary my father wrote after discovering he only had a few months to live before dying of colon cancer. My brother waited until I drove out to his house in Montana before reading the diary with me. It helped to clear up a chapter in my dad's life he rarely talked about.
Because the pay was much better than that of an Army private, when war was declared in the 40s, my father enlisted in the Merchant Marine (a job, in many ways, far more dangerous than that of a combat infantryman), but the draft board had other plans. My 5-foot-tall mother took a job as a welder at the Tacoma shipyards and my dad left for basic training in Louisiana and transport to England. My father was pretty much an Errol Flynn lookalike, and probably was quite the item with the English girls. I suspect that I wouldn't have been born after the war if my mother's resemblance to Myrna Loy hadn't provided strong encouragement for my father's return to her. Eventually, D-day arrived and Dad was one of the first to set foot on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified part of the Normandy coast. All my father wrote about that day was a detailed description of all the friends cut down in the invasion, followed by a discussion about his bewilderment and guilt over his survival and inability to prevent the deaths of the bravest men he had ever known.
Other than a brief description of his duties driving supplies to the front lines, there was no further discussion in the diary of his war experiences. He never considered himself a hero; he reserved that for describing his pride over my service as a Fleet Marine Force Reconnaissance Corpman during the Vietnam War and begging me to resolve any guilt over my survival or inability to save everyone in my care.
Dad never cried, but when asked about Omaha Beach, his eyes filled with tears and he found something else to talk about. The only other indication of his war experiences was his method of dealing with road wash-outs and fallen trees blocking progress on forest logging roads when we were on fishing trips. He had this remarkable ability to drive in reverse at full speed for miles back to the next fork in the road. You haven't experienced full terror until you travel several miles backwards in a car on a narrow gravel road at highway speeds. His only explanation was that when under enemy bombardment he never had time to turn the truck around.
I always knew dad was a hero, but his diary confirmed that concern and pride for the service and sacrifices of others is the true measure of a hero.
Thank you, R.G.N. (Z)