Leanna Conley

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

  “Yup.”

  His eyes closed. I heard my voice lilt up, as if to lure him away from whatever he was thinking.

  Did a lot of guys have medals? Like a Purple Heart?

  “Only the boys who saw a lot of stuff happen.”

  How’s that?

  “I was visiting Tony in the hospital and…”

  Tony?

  “Yeah, he used to love to kill prisoners. He’d set them up in foxholes and shoot ’em. You get a lot of medals that way.”

  DAD!

  “Ha. I don’t know. Just kidding. Anyway, he had his leg blown up…a bit…and I was talking to him, sitting on the bed next to him with my hand bandaged. See, I reached up my hand outta the foxhole trying to get some cognac I had forgotten to bring down with me…for medicinal purposes.”

  Right.

  “And my hand got hit by some shrapnel.”

  Oh, no, Dad.

  “No big deal. Anyway, the general comes by.

  “Ten HUT!” Dad stood up and saluted. “What’s your name, soldier?

  “Bill Taylor, sir.”

  “Fine job, son.”

  “But…”

  “Hey, no buts.”

  “And he pinned the Purple Heart on me and Tony.”

  No way!

  “Yup.”

  “Well, actually I had a lot of medals on my jacket. Sometimes we’d take trains to move around in France.”

  That’s where you had Leo!

  “Right… Anyway, this one train was packed, and a lot of new guys showed up from the States. And, of course, the fattest guy had to pick me to sit next to.”

  But you’re skinny, Pop. You could handle it.

  “Yeah, but this guy was loud. He didn’t have more than two patches on his whole get up and thought he was the shit. I mean, ‘special.’”

  Right, Papa.

  On an overcast fall day, the train made a stop in Reims, France. Troops used this rail line to transport men and supplies since it remained one of the few corridors of track undamaged by the Allies’ bombs or the explosions set off by the Germans as they retreated. Most supplies after the Bulge were delivered by the Red Ball Express—trucks manned mainly by African American troops and driven right to the front lines.

  Far away, but visible from the station, the historic Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims stood in its square. Somewhat damaged by heavy bombardments, it remained intact, adding a small sense of comfort and normalcy when the soldiers gazed at the skyline.

  A few of the men whom Dad had served with boarded. As he talked to his buddies, a large man, who resembled a pig at a luau and who was sweating profusely, worked his way past every empty seat and landed, with a thump, right next to Dad.

  “Hey, kid, where ya going?”

  The train started moving forward as the big man pushed his body further into the seat.

  “Well, I’m…” Dad started to reply.

  “Boy, it’s hot in here. Lots of scared SOBs….Christ, they have no idea what the hell they’re getting into. Like that guy over there. He must be 14. And that kid. You think he could take on the Waffen-SS? Ha.”

  “That kid,”Dad said, as he rolled his eyes, “has the Silver Star….”

  “Oh? Hey, what’s your name, boy?”

  “Bill.”

  “Bill…my Boy Bill. Ain’t that a trip?”

  “Sure, Mac.”

  “Mac! Did you read my tags or something? I am Mac.”

  “Naw….”

  “Yeah, right outta Chi-town. I’ve seen a lot, kid. Just got back from the Bulge.”

  “Oh, really? I….”

  “It was hell—10,000 in one day, son. I’ve never seen anything like it! War is hell.”

  “Uh, yeah, I was….”

  “Scared, aren’t ya?”

  “Of?”

  “Shit, son. Be a shame to lose ya. The Krauts know everything about us. I shot two men dressed in our uniforms when they messed up the Babe’s stats. Can’t mess with a Chicago boy! HA! And that slut, Rose. Them Jap SOBs….”

  “Right, um… and you were there when?”

  “So, what kind of hardware you got?”

  “My rifle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got…”

  “Bet it’s nothing on my piece. Check this out.”

  “Nice pistol.”

  “It was my great-grandfather’s, Union side. Thought I’d bring it along for luck.”

  “Oh, that’ll do it.”

  “You sassin’ me?”

  “Oh, I’d never.”

  “See these medals?”

  “Um…”

  “Right here…”

  “Oh, right!”

  “Took a shot in the arm! Only a flesh wound. Had all the nurses eatin’ outta my hand! HA!”

  “Ha! Yeah…”

  “Didn’t see MacArthur yet, eh, boy?”

  “No, just bamboo cages.”

  “Bamboo cages?”

  He gave Dad a blank stare.

  “ALL STOP!” cried the conductor.

  “Hey, Mac, this is where I get off. Nice talking….”

  “You never seen combat, kid, I know it. It’s rough out there. Keep your eyes peeled. Bet you can’t even shoot straight. Hey, watch that duffle….”

  Dad smiled. He reached into the overhead compartment into his duffle bag and pulled down a worn olive green army jacket. The garment was covered in bars and medals that glinted in the afternoon sun. They practically blinded Mac’s eyes. Red-faced and fuming, he nearly passed out with rage.

  “Oh, I guess this wasn’t my stop after all,” said Dad as he put on his jacket and sat back down.

  Mac jumped up to change seats and nearly toppled over Dad, his potbelly leading the way. Livid, he threatened to give Dad a punch. “Why didn’t you tell me, you son of a bitch?!”

  Dad shrugged. “You never asked.”

  May 3, 1944

  The sea is terrifying. I’m shooting my brains out before I get into that ocean again. So many men torn apart by sharks in Pearl Harbor and the Pacific when their ships were destroyed by the Japs. And I was decoding in the message center today—800 guys died in the burning oil and frigid water practicing for D-Day off Devonshire. Most of the men don’t know this. The Jerry E-boats attacked during practice and were too fast for us…I’m afraid Ike doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’ll be a slaughterhouse.

  December 23, 1944

  I’m in the French countryside, in this family’s parlor. The rest of the house has just been demolished by a Tiger tank. The neighborhood is in ruins. We led a boy and his mother to safety early this a.m. but they can’t be the only people around. Shrapnel took off a good bit of the boy’s arm. As we drove by, dead bodies lined the road. Got me thinking. Just about every house on our block in Cinci has lost a son. The Rosens, Jimmy and Pete, are both gone. Al Malone, Kip Greenfield, Eddie Amonte, Erin Fitzpatrick, John Rice. If I had to go back home right now, what would it be like? How would I face the mothers, still being alive when their sons are not? Or maybe, before it’s all over, I won’t make it, either. And my mother, Helen, will be just like the other women whose world has ended in the flash of an election year. They used to worry about us crossing the street. Today I buried about, I’d guess…eight guys…from counting the parts. I did the best I could, for their mothers and wives. I hope I got it right.

  The Orange

  So, how did it start? I mean, I guess most people flew over to the war, right?

  “Kind of.” Dad smiled. “I started out by train from Cincinnati to my boot camp in Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey—and then code school at Camp Crowder, Missouri.”

  I knew Ft. Monmouth—it’s a huge concrete building. I pass by it on my way down the Jersey Shore from Manhattan. I wondered if it looked the same then as it does now, lined with its chain fences, flags, statues and clusters of dark green trees.

  Dad! I know that place. It’s down the Shore! And then?

  “After finishing cryptography school I embarked
from San Francisco to the Pacific.”

  I sat with an expectant face, waiting to hear more about his first sea voyage. Dad took a long pause. I knew he was mulling something over—the old sit-up-slowly-while-I-think trick. He kicked the blanket.

  “And I knocked around in the Pacific for a while and then went back to the States. After serving for a month or so on the East Coast, we took off from New York Harbor to England.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Did you know your Uncle Tom was one of the British crew of the ship that brought me over to England?”

  Tom Baker?

  “Yeah, we didn’t know each other at the time.”

  Of course you didn’t!

  He smiled again.

  That’s wild. I mean, you were on the boat with him and didn’t know it. You could have talked to him and not known it.

  “I probably did know of him. He was the purser. They lived like kings on those British P&O ships! He had servants, mainly Indian, great food. Gin and bitters…”

  And cribbage….

  “He had an Indian manservant named Adi. I bumped into your uncle during high tea, pretty sure.”

  I love it. His own manservant. Boy, the Brits had it made in those days! So, wait. I mean, they weren’t soldiers at all?

  “Yes, some were. Royal Navy. But lots of civilian ships took us over, or helped out.”

  Dad hesitated. He drank slowly.

  I looked it up later that day. Fifty-two million civilians died in WWII. Including soldiers and other war-related deaths, an estimated total of 72 million people died. In the civilian transport ships alone, 63,000 were killed—just over the total number of soldiers killed during the Vietnam War.

  “So, boats, trains and planes—took all of ’em. Then I hopped a boat that took me from Britain and on to France.”

  That was after the Pacific? France? That’s D-Day…. So, Pop, were you in that first wave? Or when did you get there?

  “Okay, on D-Day itself, I woke up from my bunk in England at daybreak. I remember looking up toward my window. The sky was black. And I heard a tremendous roar.”

  They attacked you?

  “No. Over 12,000 wing-to-wing planes loomed in the sky overhead. It was massive. They were our planes, on their way from England to the French front.”

  Did you go by plane?

  “No, honey, we weren’t so classy. Six days later, we hit Omaha Beach by boat.”

  Right, big boats…

  “And smaller ones.”

  Like PT boats.

  “Higgins boats.”

  Like Henry Higgins.

  “Yeah, those carried us.”

  Omaha Beach. Why did they call it that? It was in France.

  “Hey, they liked Omaha, I guess. It was our code name for it. Sword, Juno, Gold and Utah were other beaches. They chose the names to be different enough from each other so we wouldn’t confuse them in radio traffic. It was called Operation Overlord.”

  So…Papa, what actually happened in the boats? I mean, what happened on the way there?

  “Not much. I ate an orange.”

  An orange?

  “Yeah. It was June, and we got some not-so-fresh Seville oranges. I was sitting on the boat, packed in with the others. We were all quiet. No one spoke a word. They handed out oranges.”

  Okay…

  “I didn’t know any of the guys then. My friends were in the Pacific, or I’d meet them later. I’d just transferred.”

  No Shorty?

  “Nope. If I know him, he would have been hogging all the oranges. His last meal…”

  Dad laughed and looked quickly at the liquid meal replacement in his glass on the nightstand.

  “So, anyway, I began to cut it apart. Threw a slice out of the boat and watched it sink into the black water. And I started to think, that’s where I’m going.”

  We were quiet for a while. A breeze from the hall rolled over my shoulder.

  And when you landed?

  “There wasn’t much there, on the shore. We cryptographers had our secret clearance, so we were able to avoid the heavy fighting. Until the Bulge, of course. We were D-Day + 6. The 1st Army and a lot of other guys weren’t so lucky. They had it all bad that first day…

  Dad turned around and touched my face.

  “You know, I like oranges.”

  Ha, yeah, Dad. But you made it. See, you didn’t sink like the orange.

  He sat up straighter in his bed, and looked out the window of our white brick house. Dusk was falling, but the sunset beamed strong through the purple clouds, through the rows of suburban roofs winding into the night.

  The hands of the clock on Dad’s dresser began their fluorescent glow. I could hear the click of the antiquated gears.

  “No, we didn’t see many people around—alive. There were those welded beams and the barbed wire on the shore to stop our advancing troops and tanks. And don’t forget those hedgerows….”

  Right! You told me about that. And the water bag guy who went to the hospital. So what happened to the other guys in your boat?

  “We could not get one tank through those hedges, and that slowed us down more than anything.”

  Later I found out that a battle-tried German infantry division transferred from the Eastern Front to Normandy to rest and regroup. Fate, therefore, placed the 352nd, one of the toughest divisions in the German army, on Omaha Beach. The Allies were almost stopped.

  Yes…and the bunkers?

  “Most of those were blasted out, eventually. Time went fast. We made our way to the canals and down the beach where we camped.”

  Did you lose anyone on your boat?

  “Only 15 out of 36.”

  Only 15? Dad….

  “Yes. That’s not bad numbers. Not bad at all.”

  Daddy, did you bag‘n’ tag them? Or bury them? I mean, what do you do with your friends when they die?

  He looked down. “You don’t have time to get them in the middle of it. You go back, if you can.”

  It turns out they recovered very few of the bodies from his boat. And they found only a trace of a man named Spence Walker. He had handed Dad the orange on the long journey to the front. My father recognized the white cross on his charred helmet.

  You didn’t go back for them? You had to leave your friends?

  The room had already lost its golden light. My father laid his head back into the pillow. His eyes closed.

  We’ll talk later, Daddy.

  July 21, 1944

  Will somebody get rid of the goddamn goats? French people really don’t give a rat’s ass about smell.

  September 1, 1944

  We rolled into Belgium today and these folks went ape. Little kids ran out to our road column in Nazi uniforms, jumping up and down and handing us apples. A few kids were pitching fruit to us out of the trees. All of them were cheering. One of the council members of the city of Tournai, Marcel Bertrand, welcomed us with the best Belgium cheese, chocolate and delicacies on the planet. I will stay with the Bertrand’s for some time. His whole family adopted me. The two young girls, Lisle and Antoinette, took turns this evening teaching us the latest American dances—the Cobra Dance and the Wiggle Wobble! Plus they knew Gene Kelly’s tap number, The Thumbs Up, from the movie Cover Girl, down cold! They were dreamy. Ha. I didn’t think such joy could radiate these days. Many French resistance fighters came back home to their families a few days ago. We are doing our best to help them. We exchange goods. We pray. We talk Reds, Yankees, cognac! Anything to cheer up these young boys and old guys who have no business fighting. So many kids have died trying to support the Allies. Average age, 13.

  The USO Show

  So, Pop, by now I take it you were on a first-name basis with General Patton, right?

  “Yeah, right. We talked every day. In actuality, we did see lots of celebs. We worked the USO shows.”

  In the spring of ’45, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby performed for the troops in Italy, France, and England and successfully boosted morale
all over Europe. The USO became known for its live performances called “Camp Shows.”Dad, who could act and sing, fancied himself an undiscovered star and made sure he worked on every USO show he could get himself attached to. Hoping this was one of his last stops before home, he worked the stage at a base in Croughton, England–as a tech guy.

  One day, Dad and his buddy Marty were high in the rafters stringing lights and checking sound for a show scheduled with Bing and Bob that night. General “Rotgut,” a well-known alcoholic, who was also a tad star struck, briefed the boys from the wings, as he shook his riding crop at them. “Now keep to yourself, boys. No mingling with the talent.”

  As if on cue, the famous duo came in to rehearse.

  “Hello, Bob! Hey, Bing!” yelled Dad and Marty.

  “Hey, boys. Whenever you’re ready—key of G!” Bing yelled back.

  “Right!” The boys hopped behind the sound board and started working the controls while the base band tuned up with a somewhat challenging “A.”

  “Make that an A flat!”laughed Bob.

  The rehearsal began with a song from their 1942 hit On the Road to Morocco, followed by a 1940’s hit from On the Road to Singapore. They then practiced some one-liners and shtick and finished with On the Road to Home!

  Marty, Dad and the band applauded, with plenty of hoots and “hollers.”

  A few moments later, Bing gestured in Dad’s direction. “You boys, you do great sound.”

  “Thanks,” Dad yelled from the back.

  “How would you like to come to our little party tonight?” said Bob.

  “That’d be swell, but the General said ‘absolutely not,’” replied Marty, as the boys climbed through the seats to the stage. “Ike’s gonna be there, and we’re just the peons.”

  “Nonsense!” said Bob. “Hey, I’m a general.”

  “You’re a general?” asked Bing.

  “Yeah.” said Bob.

  “In your own mind.” said Bing.

  “The best place on earth.” said Bob.

  “So, you guys got any sweethearts to bring?” asked Bing.

  “No. Mine’s at home,” Dad answered.

  “Ah, well, I’m sure she won’t mind if you grab a dance with someone special?” smiled Bob.