War Hero
War Hero
The year is 1944. The young soldier and his best friend from high school are marching across enemy lines from France into Germany. Out of the corner of his eye, the soldier sees his friend fall - a German sniper has hit him. His reflexes tell him to grab his friend and bring him to safety, but his months of military training tell him to wait until the Germans have disappeared, so instead he hides out of sight, comforted by the steady, albeit labored, rise and fall of his friend’s chest. When he is sure the Germans have retreated, the young soldier darts back into the open and, as fast as he possibly can, hoists his bleeding friend onto his back. He crawls more than a mile on his stomach, back to American lines, and collapses with relief and fatigue when he spots the familiar faces. He rolls his friend onto his back and any relief he had been feeling is now gone. The twenty-one-year-old soldier, who enlisted in the military before he even graduated from high school and went to war at nineteen, has just lost his best friend.
* * *
The only memory I have of my grandfather is frozen in time in a photograph taken at my parents’ wedding. He looks happy, healthy, and vibrant, which doesn’t seem fair, as that isn’t how anyone else remembers him. By all other accounts, he was bossy, demanding, and physically and emotionally abusive. He hated Germans, feared homosexuals, and believed women were people to be looked down upon. He quit the military after World War II ended in 1945 and then again after the Korean War in 1956. “If you ever need help quitting smoking,” the saying goes, “you can come to me. I’m great at it - I quit six times!” After he quit the second time, he fell into an intense depression. The army had been his life, and he craved the structure, discipline, and direction it provided. Unable to find a job and unmotivated to train in any other skills, he moved his family into the housing projects of Philadelphia. There he was at his worst, drinking in excess, yelling, and occasionally lashing out and hitting his wife and children.
My father wanted to paint and his sister - my aunt - wanted to go into the military. My grandfather strictly forbade both, saying that real men didn’t paint. “What about Leonardo da Vinci? What about Vincent Van Gogh? What about Matisse and Monet and Picasso and Rockwell?” my father countered. “Real men don’t paint!” was the only reply my grandfather had. “It’ll turn you strange!” Similarly, he refused to let his daughter join the military - despite it being the single greatest experience of his life. “No daughter of mine is going to join the military!” he declared. “Real women from good families don’t join the military!” It was expected that she would find a husband, have children, and become the perfect housewife. The sole purpose of the female existence, in his opinion, was to provide for their men and reproduce.
And yet, despite all of this, and despite my never having met him, I love him. Perhaps I love him because I have never met him, and had I met him even once he might have become one of those relatives I reluctantly hugged at family get-togethers and begrudgingly called every few months. For all I know, if he had gotten to know me as a liberal, a pacifist, a gay-rights activist, and a homosexual person myself, he might have opted to treat me the same way.
But no, this was never the case. He died about two months after I was born, comatose in a sterile hospital room, fighting death just as he had fought everything else in his life. Endocrine cancer always has a grim prognosis, and he had lived nearly a year longer than anyone had expected him to. Still, despite beating the odds and living through combat in two wars, he died younger than he should have, and maybe it is these circumstances surrounding his death that lead me to see him as a martyr. I think of my grandfather as a lost young boy, desperate for the discipline and support he got from the military that he was never able to get from his own family. I love him because I understand him.
My grandfather was a decorated war hero, and I look up to him for it - even though I don’t believe in war myself and, had I been alive when either of the wars he fought were going on, I would have vehemently protested them. But how can I not love someone who liberated concentration camps? How can I not love someone who risked his own life for a friend who ended up dying in his arms?
How can I love someone who hated so much?
I love him because I “remember” him as that man from my parents’ wedding photo, beaming and radiant. I created him to be the grandfather who smelled of pipe smoke, who took me into his lap to tell me stories, who helped me with my math homework because he himself was a math genius with an advanced degree in engineering. He is the man lying in a hospital bed, wife, children, and new baby granddaughter by his side in his final hours. I was born a month early so I could be sure I met him just once before he died. He lived a year longer than expected so he could be sure he was still around when I was born, and he waited until I was old enough to travel before he took his last breath.
I love him because in this way we are connected somehow, because I knew him before I even existed.
I love him because he loved me.
The year is 1944. The young soldier and his best friend from high school are marching across enemy lines from France into Germany. Out of the corner of his eye, the soldier sees his friend fall - a German sniper has hit him. His reflexes tell him to grab his friend and bring him to safety, but his months of military training tell him to wait until the Germans have disappeared, so instead he hides out of sight, comforted by the steady, albeit labored, rise and fall of his friend’s chest. When he is sure the Germans have retreated, the young soldier darts back into the open and, as fast as he possibly can, hoists his bleeding friend onto his back. He crawls more than a mile on his stomach, back to American lines, and collapses with relief and fatigue when he spots the familiar faces. He rolls his friend onto his back and any relief he had been feeling is now gone. The twenty-one-year-old soldier, who enlisted in the military before he even graduated from high school and went to war at nineteen, has just lost his best friend.
* * *
The only memory I have of my grandfather is frozen in time in a photograph taken at my parents’ wedding. He looks happy, healthy, and vibrant, which doesn’t seem fair, as that isn’t how anyone else remembers him. By all other accounts, he was bossy, demanding, and physically and emotionally abusive. He hated Germans, feared homosexuals, and believed women were people to be looked down upon. He quit the military after World War II ended in 1945 and then again after the Korean War in 1956. “If you ever need help quitting smoking,” the saying goes, “you can come to me. I’m great at it - I quit six times!” After he quit the second time, he fell into an intense depression. The army had been his life, and he craved the structure, discipline, and direction it provided. Unable to find a job and unmotivated to train in any other skills, he moved his family into the housing projects of Philadelphia. There he was at his worst, drinking in excess, yelling, and occasionally lashing out and hitting his wife and children.
My father wanted to paint and his sister - my aunt - wanted to go into the military. My grandfather strictly forbade both, saying that real men didn’t paint. “What about Leonardo da Vinci? What about Vincent Van Gogh? What about Matisse and Monet and Picasso and Rockwell?” my father countered. “Real men don’t paint!” was the only reply my grandfather had. “It’ll turn you strange!” Similarly, he refused to let his daughter join the military - despite it being the single greatest experience of his life. “No daughter of mine is going to join the military!” he declared. “Real women from good families don’t join the military!” It was expected that she would find a husband, have children, and become the perfect housewife. The sole purpose of the female existence, in his opinion, was to provide for their men and reproduce.
And yet, despite all of this, and despite my never having met him, I love him. Perhaps I love him because I have never met him, and had I met him even once he might have become one of those relatives I reluctantly hugged at family get-togethers and begrudgingly called every few months. For all I know, if he had gotten to know me as a liberal, a pacifist, a gay-rights activist, and a homosexual person myself, he might have opted to treat me the same way.
But no, this was never the case. He died about two months after I was born, comatose in a sterile hospital room, fighting death just as he had fought everything else in his life. Endocrine cancer always has a grim prognosis, and he had lived nearly a year longer than anyone had expected him to. Still, despite beating the odds and living through combat in two wars, he died younger than he should have, and maybe it is these circumstances surrounding his death that lead me to see him as a martyr. I think of my grandfather as a lost young boy, desperate for the discipline and support he got from the military that he was never able to get from his own family. I love him because I understand him.
My grandfather was a decorated war hero, and I look up to him for it - even though I don’t believe in war myself and, had I been alive when either of the wars he fought were going on, I would have vehemently protested them. But how can I not love someone who liberated concentration camps? How can I not love someone who risked his own life for a friend who ended up dying in his arms?
How can I love someone who hated so much?
I love him because I “remember” him as that man from my parents’ wedding photo, beaming and radiant. I created him to be the grandfather who smelled of pipe smoke, who took me into his lap to tell me stories, who helped me with my math homework because he himself was a math genius with an advanced degree in engineering. He is the man lying in a hospital bed, wife, children, and new baby granddaughter by his side in his final hours. I was born a month early so I could be sure I met him just once before he died. He lived a year longer than expected so he could be sure he was still around when I was born, and he waited until I was old enough to travel before he took his last breath.
I love him because in this way we are connected somehow, because I knew him before I even existed.
I love him because he loved me.