“So, You Weren’t a Cook in the Army?” A Memorial Day Story for My Father
The story of discovering some of my father’s actual military service during World War II. Spoiler: As it turns out, he wasn’t, in fact a cook.
As I sit looking out over the water on the Memorial Day with the sun streaming down for the first time this spring, I lulled into a sense of peacefulness. My thoughts wander to those who served and as they always do to my father and brother both of whom did so and thankfully returned home. I can’t help but be reminded to how I learned at least some of the real story of my father’s military service in World War II. A shadow falls over the water and I look up to see a crow flying overhead. I haven’t seen crows around where I live and this is a large one. Looking back out over the water in a few minutes more a second crow joins the first.
What’s that rhyme about crows?
“One for sorrow
Two for luck”
Don’t love the first one, but do like ending on the second one.
Not sure where they came from, I wonder if more are on their way.
I would love to see the third one but the fourth just needs to stay away.
As the third and fourth show up together I reflect that the second one apparently hadn’t done it’s job properly.
“Three for a wedding
Four for death”
Come on, come on. Don’t you all travel in groups? There has to be at least one more of you somewhere. Please, don’t leave me on four!
I wait several minutes, my dread growing. I’m not necessarily superstitious about birds but the way things have been going lately, I don’t need any negative signs. Then, finally, another one wings it’s way into the picture followed by a sixth.
“Five for silver
Six for gold“
Yes, yes YES! I’ve had some major financial hardship lately, wondering how much longer I’ll be able to keep a roof over my head and even if there’s nothing to the birds it’s nice to dream that maybe there is. Silver and gold would both be welcome! Then I notice somehow, another one had snuck into the group without my noticing it.
Ah, yes, I think. That would be appropriate.
“Seven for a secret not to be told”
Family Secrets
I grew up in a family filled with secrets. I knew almost nothing about my Grandparents, and what I thought I did know has turned out not to be true. I thought I knew about my adoption but again those stories were also made up. Looking back, I was not told much of anything in my family, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned what I was told was not the way it was. I’ve had to just accept this as my grandparents are gone, as is my father, and all my Aunts and Uncles. My mother, thank God, is still here but she is the most secretive of them all.
All of this is just to say, my family was one that held everything close to the chest for one reason or another. This is fine when everyone accepts it, but when you have a curious child who wants to know about her parents and ancestors, you better be careful. In the absence of information, new stories may form.
Talking About the Holocaust at School
I went to a Hebrew Day School through 8th grade and every year on Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day we would have various activities and discussions through the school day. One year, I think it was when I was in fifth or sixth grade, the teacher asked if any of us had any relatives that had fought during WWII.
Several of us raised our hands and when the teacher got to me I responded that my father had done so. We went on to discuss what our family members had done during the war, and what we knew of those times from a personal viewpoint.
Two classmates relatives had enlisted right after Pearl Harbor, one classmate had an uncle who lied about his age and a health problem to enlist when word got back about the concentrations camps, and two had relatives who had taken part in liberating the camps. I really had nothing to add even when the teacher asked me about my father.
The truth was I’d asked my father time and time again about his experiences during the war but he just wouldn’t talk about any of it. He said it was over and there was not use. So I gave just one basic fact about what my father had done during the war which garnered laughs and eye rolls. I didn’t say anything else for the remainder of the day.
A Matter of Comic Books and Fill in the Blanks
I waited until Saturday to approach my dad again. On Saturdays I went to synagogue with my father while my mother was getting her hair done. She often went shopping afterwards so I’d have several hours alone with him. After synagogue he was in the bedroom doing something when I hesitantly went in.
I told him about the conversation we’d had during the week about the Holocaust and said the teacher had asked about relatives who had served in the war.
“And what did you say?”he asked.
“I told him you had,” I replied. “He asked if we knew what our relative had done during the war.”
“And?”
“Well, I only knew that you were a cook so . . . “
“I was a what? Where did you get that idea from?”
He seemed upset, but really that was the only thing I could remember. “That’s the only thing you told me.”
“I never told you any such thing! I can’t believe you told your class I was a cook in the army!”
Now to be fair, I genuinely thought that was what he had told me. I even said something about how he’d said his sergeant would make him peel mountains of potatoes every time he got into trouble, that he basically spent the war peeling potatoes. I guess at that point the light bulb went on for him.
I was an avid comic book fan back then, and he was the one who bought them for me. He went into my room and came back with several Beetle Bailey comic books. Turning through them I saw Beetle Bailey peeling potatoes page after page, every time he annoyed the sergeant. Evidently in the absence of any other information, I filled in my own blanks, creating a backstory for my father’s army experience that came straight out of a comic book!
My Father Opens Up
At that point, I think my father realized that while there may be reasons for keeping secrets, when you keep everything private you may prevent your own children from knowing important things about who you are. Fighting in WWII wasn’t just an event that happened to him.
From making the decision to enlist, going through training, and being sent to foreign countries where he was required to go against everything that he’d been taught to believe about right and wrong such as thou shalt not kill turning into kill all of those on the other side despite not knowing them. He dealt with almost being killed himself several times including once when the U.S. fired on on an enemy boat they weren’t aware had captured an one of their units, my father’s unit.
Only he and one other survived. He had part of his chin blown off requiring him to have lower dentures from that point on. Floating in the cold waters for even a brief period of time, while not killing him, set up an autoimmune arthritic condition the pain of which he lived with for the rest of his life. The treatment, experimental at the time, consisted of full body irradiation which I learned much later had made it hard for he and my mother to have children.
The way he dealt with all of these things was based on the man he was and it would go on to influence the man he would become and how he would see the world afterwards. I can’t imagine all he went through.
On that day and on subsequent days he told me only some of what he experienced. At the end he took down his collection of medals two of which are missing. He only told me the reason for one of them, the purple heart associated with the injury when the boat he was on was blown up.
Though I know there was a lot he held back, I don’t blame him. The horrors of a war that wasn’t limited to people brutally killing killing each other and the loss of good friends. For those who were Jewish it was also about the very survival of our people who were being tortured and annihilated. How one copes with this is beyond my ability to comprehend. Not wanting to recount it to one’s child much less remember it himself is understandable. At the same time, I am glad that he told me the parts that he did.
That day I had gone from thinking my father had been the equivalent of Beetle Bailey spending his war years peeling mounds of potatoes in a dirty tank top to realizing my father was a war hero, who’d been injured multiple times, had been a POW not once but twice, who’d fought in at least four countries on two continents that I know of. He’d then returned home to marry and raise a family, all the while coping with the aftermath of the war which none of us knew about and lived a happy, relatively healthy life, passing away naturally and peacefully in his late 80’s
There is so much we can still learn from all of those who have served our country so bravely and afterward were able to return and continue to contribute to this country in a wide variety of ways. On this Memorial Day I want to thank each and every person who has served their country in the military in whatever capacity that may have been. We will always be in your debt.
In a family born of Jewish Russian immigrants, there are often secrets, and I know that there are many things about my father that I will never know. As I look back out over the water again, I realize the crows are gone and with it the secrets. Well, not gone exactly, but I’ve come to terms with why my father’s particular secrets were kept and let them go.
My father wasn’t perfect. He had his faults as we all do. But at the end of the day he loved his family and he loved me. That was never a secret to anyone and it would have to be enough.
I love you, Dad. Happy Memorial Day. I remember you — today, tomorrow, always.
Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. She specializes in Pediatrics and Behavioral Medicine.
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