Leanna Conley

by War Stories- A Father Talks to His Daughter (epub)

  Mom said you liberated Dachau.

  “Not me, personally. Our division did.”

  Did you see the camp?

  “I stayed in the truck.”

  Dad, what is this thing you have with trucks?

  “I was eating my sandwich!”

  You could eat at a time like that?

  “I was hungry.” After a moment, he added, “Honey, we fed them as much as they could take.” He paused again. “You can’t feed starving people solid food. You have to hold them, at first, and feed them through a bottle with powdered food mixed with water.”

  Oh, Dad.

  “Okay, so I fed a few people.”

  That’s when I learned about a woman named Bertie. She was 62 and was the sole survivor of her family. But Bertie wasn’t eating. Dad took care of Bertie for two weeks. She came from the Vienna theatre circuit as a singer and dancer and had secretly organized shows for the camp with other European artists. Groups of prisoners were entertained in makeshift performance spaces, unless or until detected by the SS or other German guards. Detection meant that performers and audience members alike suffered beatings, unimaginable punishment or death.

  Bertie’s husband, Marcus, had been shot shortly after they first arrived at camp. Bertie’s son and two daughters were transferred to Auschwitz. She never heard from them again.

  The first thing she asked Dad to do was find her wedding ring. It had an amethyst stone set in silver and was inscribed with a small hyacinth and the words: “love springs eternal.”

  “Bill, if it’s not too much trouble, please.”

  “Nonsense, Bertie. It’s no trouble.”

  At daybreak he searched in every building for a holding place, hoping the ring had not yet been melted or destroyed. Everywhere he went he had to step over bodies not yet interred and was overwhelmed by the stench. Finally, he found the Kommandant’s quarters outside the prison, past the barbed wire. A gray vault sat in the corner of the office. Dad thought this could be what he wanted, but also wondered if it held some atrocity inside. So far, behind every cabinet door, in every locker or in every sack or bag throughout the camp, the troops had found human hair, bones used for making soap, gold-filled teeth or other horrors, some beyond human comprehension.

  Dad stepped across the room to the vault. The door was partially open. He opened it wider.

  Cash and jewelry that the guards had not had time to seize spilled into his hands. But he was interested in just one thing. He searched through approximately 300 rings. The moment he was ready to quit, he found it, of all places, on the floor under the vault. A sliver of light from the window blinds caught its slight glimmer in the darkness. It was a small miracle, the significance of which eluded him at the time.

  That morning he gave the ring to Bertie on a stone bench in the Dachau flower gardens—a place they often talked. She said she felt closer to her husband knowing that his ashes from the crematorium were strewn among the flowers and vegetables.

  Bertie cried when Dad put the ring on her finger. They were silent for a long time. Sensing how weak she had become, he then wrapped his jacket around her as he escorted her back to the town hospital. Because it was right next to the camp, the hospital had held the Nazi wounded only days before.

  That afternoon Dad called one of his WAC friends in Paris and, using one of his infamous secret clearance connections, put in a special order for a pretty dress to be sent to the camp: beautiful silk print; with ruffles; in lavender, Bertie’s favorite color; and, he made sure, with long sleeves. No more than a week later, Bertie modeled her new dress for Dad in the hospital, sauntering as best she could around her bedside.

  She hugged him tight. “I feel a lot prettier.” She mustered up a strong voice. “And everything goes down better.”

  “And, the guys had a party for everyone!” Dad shook off a thought and sat up in his chair. “There was dancing.”

  Dancing?

  “Bertie and I danced in the Dachau Town Hall. We had a formal for the ladies…”

  Wow. You danced with Bertie?

  The city of Dachau, with its quaint old buildings, was set amidst rolling hills that led to the countryside. I imagined Dad and Bertie standing at the door of the town hall. The pink baroque façade of the entrance loomed high in the afternoon sky. Ivy, mixed with spring vines covered with small, purple flowers, had made its way up the outside of the wall and provided a lavender hue to the light that streamed through the windows. Once inside, they saw a high cathedral ceiling—church-like. All the GI’s were formally dressed, the men and women who had survived, the very few who could attend, were in their best civilian clothes. Those who were too weak sat and watched the dance, while the younger women and men smiled and paired off as the Viennese Waltz played over and over. The skirt of Bertie’s new dress caught a ray of sun on every turn…

  Dad, you really spun Bertie around on the dance floor, didn’t you?

  “Yeah…well…she moved with the music.” Dad smiled. “She was so happy.”

  A sense of déjà vu came over me. I looked down at my hand where a bright amethyst stone sparkled.

  Dad…this is her ring…. You gave this to me.

  My tear hit the silver band…

  “She would have wanted you to have it.”

  November 7, 1944

  It’s quiet. I just ate lunch on a Percheron that’d been hitched to a supply wagon. He died in battle last night. The ground is frozen. I drew a draft horse in art class at Roger Bacon High around this time 4 years ago. I named him Dante. I figured it sounded good. Mom has it hanging near her picture of Jesus in the living room. The Percheron’s coat is soft.

  December 29, 1944

  This time three years ago I was at Mooshies Szechuan Grille in Cincinnati eating dumplings and fried rice. I just got my first feedback from my U of Cincinnati writing professor, Doc Albright. He said my writing has no depth. I’m now covered knee deep in freezing mud. We’ve been in this forest for days. I can’t feel my feet. I write to keep going. I remember Albright because he seemed too young to be a professor. Too young. I’m looking at a guy just like him. He’s been frozen in the undergrowth of the Ardennes for two days. Men like that, some whole, some not, on the ground. All over. Life sure is different now.

  The Jeep

  “Want to read this?” Dad laughed.

  The only magazine in the Radiology Department at The University of Michigan, and it had a picture of the atomic bomb on the cover.

  “I was there after they dropped it.”

  No way.

  It turns out Dad was on one of two U.S. troop ships sent to invade Japan, so he was there for the aftermath.

  If they hadn’t dropped it…

  “I would have been killed.”

  And, as I looked at him, I realized I wouldn’t be here, telling his story.

  “There were shadows of people on the sidewalks.”

  I don’t get the sidewalk imagery, Dad.

  “The radiation burned a negative of their image into the pavement, around their bodies…”

  Dear God.

  “Yeah.”

  As Dad and I sat for a while, the silence was broken by little feet pounding up the slick hallway floor. A group of children ran by the treatment room.

  “I used to let the kids drive around in the jeep with me.”

  There were survivors? Kids?

  “Yeah, they were playing in the streets. They told me I’d get court-martialed if I drove any more ‘damn Japs’ around. The kids. They loved it.”

  Dad drove them anyway. Every day during his shift, the kids would look for him and start running to the jeep. He’d pick them up and swing them around a bit. They’d be giggling. No more than 10 years old, most of them were only 4 or 5.

  “Some of them weren’t looking good, so I brought them stuff. And chocolate. I was their Santa—they called me Biru San.”

  How long did you do this?

  “Oh, a few months. Yoshi, he was my favorite.

&n
bsp; Yoshi?

  “I gave him my Topps gum cards, the “Wings” set with military planes on it! He loved trucks and planes.”

  Sounds like you, Dad.

  “Yeah. Brightest little guy. Loved to drive the jeep.”

  You let him drive it?

  “Yeah, he was good, too, for a four year old.”

  Dad!

  “Until he bumped into the sergeant’s jeep. I just told the MPs the brakes were bad.

  And they believed you?

  “He couldn’t reach ’em, and that was bad. But the last day, he was just crying and crying. So sorry to see the little guy go.”

  Go?

  “Well, he was pretty sick, sweetheart.”

  Don’t tell me. He went to the hospital, like the water bag guy?

  “Yeah, that’s right, honey. He was like that guy.”

  January 15, 1944

  This Kraut prisoner is the best rat hunter we found. He knows every way to find ’em. We cooked anything we could find in the forest. We cut up a deer with our machine guns ten days ago but most of the game here vanished. Maybe I am delirious. I can see all my bones. My grandmother is German. Rodenkirk. Caspar and Margaret Becker are on Mom’s father’s side. They are brew masters from Berlin. My father, John, works in the brewery cleaning the vats. He is Polish. Grandma Margaret cooked schnitzel and sausage and sauerkraut practically every day. Oh man, so good. And Mitzi, our collie, would feel compelled, after dinner, to hunt squirrels or a rat to bring us later. Just to show her appreciation for the leftovers. Good girl. When you’re dying, you think about the small stuff. Kraut is good eatin’.

  August 26, 1944

  Eve braids her hair in the morning light. It’s 5 a.m. and there are still sailors and soldiers, civilians in the streets, on the Champs-Élysées, dancing. She tells me in French about her missing sister. The one who helped a German officer they both fell in love with. Eve asks me to stay. I can’t.

  The Little Lion

  Football season at Michigan. I picked up some new U of M bumper stickers at the gas station. Dad was sleeping in the back seat on the way home, until I accidentally hit the truck’s CD player.

  Glen Miller’s “In the Mood”began to play.

  “Glad to connect you, General, sir.”

  As base operator at their Army post at the Palace of Versailles in Paris, Dad’s young voice filled the airwaves. Finally, no more striking up rails behind enemy lines, no more deciphering messages and code, no more packing bodies into bags. Dad was relieved to be out of combat. The Allies captured Paris. It was celebration time. The war was slowly coming to a close. On one of their scavenger trips they picked up some French wine, hookers, bread, cheese and two German soldiers because, quite frankly, no one cared about killing them—because, as Dad said, “We needed our laundry done.”

  “The Kraut Brothers,” as they nicknamed them, could have been models for an SS recruitment poster and attracted many of the French women, which was key for our guys. Dad gave them unofficial secret clearance to improve their chances to pick up non-Vichy chicks with a script that went, “Hi, I’m an American. I just came from the European theater. Speaking of movies, wanna catch a flick?” Somehow, though, it always turned into, “Hi, I’m an American. I just came in ze theatre. Vant to go flick?”

  While the Kraut Brothers claimed they could captivate any French woman they set their mind to, according to Dad, all French women loved him. According to Shorty, however, the French women loved Shorty. But one of the French women definitely loved one of the guys because one of the girls got pregnant. This was a fact they discovered one night in the telecommunications room two floors up from where General Larry Gerow, head of the U.S. occupation of Paris, was staying. It happened during Dad’s shift.

  “Eve came in the office sobbing. She looked terrible.”

  Dad, didn’t you know she was pregnant?

  “No.”

  Did the huge belly tip you off?

  “No, we were guys. We didn’t know that stuff.”

  Come on!

  “She’s French. She just drank and smoked.”

  Oh.

  “Well, we didn’t know much about that stuff and babies then. She started wearing big shirts. We thought it was the fashion.”

  Dad.

  “So, she came into the operator’s room. ‘Appel le docteur!’ That’s French for ‘I’m in trouble.’”

  I know what it means, Dad.

  “Right. So I was calling an ambulance when her water broke.”

  Wow.

  “And, I was getting calls from the big wig Allied Commander, General Lenny Gerow himself!”

  No.

  “Serious as a heart attack. She was in labor, and I was on the phone to Gerow’s aide. He heard us guys knew Paris pretty well, so we were starting to shoot the bull a little.”

  Dad, she’s having your baby!

  “Not mine.”

  Then whose?

  “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  Dad, I can’t wait! Who was the Dad?

  “Well, the kid has eight last names.”

  What?

  “All the guys signed the birth certificate.”

  That’s not possible!

  “Anything’s possible in Paris, honey.”

  He has eight legal Dads?

  “Well, let me tell you. All the Dads were there for the birth. She had her baby…right in the office. We got some blankets and whiskey.”

  For the mother?

  “For us! And, all of us were yelling along with her! ‘Come on! You can do it!’”

  Wasn’t that scary for her?

  “No, she was a performer. I got some pliers out of my wiring box and was right there! Pulled the little boy out and snipped the cord!”

  Dad! That was cool!

  “And Eve, she kept pointing to my jacket and saying, ‘Lion. Lion.’”

  She named him Lion?

  “Well, our division was the 106th Infantry, the Golden Lions, and she saw the lion on my jacket, and, well…. We had our baby Leo! He was 13 pounds!”

  But she was so skinny!

  “He was eating all the food! We rushed her and the baby to the hospital because we didn’t know if her downstairs was going to be okay. I had to…you know.”

  No. I’ve never had a baby.

  “Oh, well, only three guys fainted, so we had a good average.”

  Wow.

  “We took her in Gerow’s limo!”

  No way!

  “Yeah, his aide, Hank, arranged it. All nine, I mean ten, of us went down the main strip in Paris.”

  Cool. So, Dad, who was the father?

  “Aww, we all were, honey.”

  Did you keep in touch with Eve?

  “Well, I did with her friend, Annette.”

  Later, I learned that Dad played Uncle Bill for as long as he could to Little Leo, before he went off to Japan. And I, to this day, don’t know whether or not to look for my little—or should I say big?—brother in France. Except to say, I’d love to meet Little Leo. Maybe we could take a walk on the Champs-Élysées, stroll through the gardens of Versailles in the spring, or wander along the beaches of Belgium during a summer uninterrupted by war.

  June 1, 1944

  Reds are doing it! I think we’re going to make the championships! Oh man, I wish I were home to see them. The last time I was with Dad and Mom at a game, Mom actually fell up the steps of the stadium into a big guy and spilled beer all over him. I thought I’d have to deck him. Thank God for my boyish face. I just said, “Hey, you don’t wanna hit a woman, do ya, sir?” He didn’t hear the “fat ass” under my breath, so we were fine.

  July 24, 1945

  Just decoded orders from Truman. We’re going to invade Japan—now it’s back to the Islands. We’ll have to fight our way through to Japan, and when we hit the mainland, fight house by house… I wasn’t planning on making it to this point but there’s just no way out now. I hoped I’d see my Diana. Maybe have a child. A job. A house i
n the suburbs and a jerk neighbor. A dog named Muddy. Little League for my boy. To grow old with a family. Now, forget it. I miss her so much, and we just got hitched right before I left. In a way, after all these years, I don’t know her anymore. But I’ve always loved her and always will. She kept me thinking there is a reason to live while all my friends were dying around me. And now, I’m not even going to be there to know her. And for her to know me as the man I am. I sent her a long letter and my will. She knows what songs to play. Songs to play for a man she will never truly know.

  The Jacket

  Daddy, you had to have gotten medals with all the stuff you’ve seen. Come on….

  “Well, some guys do.”

  Dad situated himself in his hospital bed, the white sheets stark against his flesh tones. His pain level was up today. He had on “that” face, the one that meant trouble when you were a kid. But you never knew how much. I helped him with his pills. He had difficulty getting most of them down.

  Did you, Papa?

  “Well, yeah. They used to be on my jacket.”

  Wow.

  “But I don’t know where they all went. I think Diana threw my army stuff out.”

  Oh, DAD! No!

  “Yeah, we got some honorary stuff. And pictures…of Shorty. That’s it.”

  Only Shorty. Why?

  “Oh, he was a camera hog. He’d find a war photographer and pose next to bodies.”

  Oh, no…

  “He thought he’d be in some documentary.”

  Dad, that’s not true.

  “Okay.”

  Dad shifted in bed. His movements were slow, as if each part of his body was feeling new sensations. He faked a smile.

  So, what did you have on your jacket?

  “A cross, a star, lots of bars and patches and more stuff.”

  That’s good, right?