Memorial Day Musings

To many, Memorial Day is more about the first days of summer, about pools opening and the traffic on the Bay Bridge. For most of my life, that's what it meant to me, too.

As a child, I knew that my father had been a soldier. His left hand was missing the index finger and the middle finger bore the signs of having been repaired with a skin graft. On his stomach, there was a square scar where the skin for that graft had been removed. I have a vague memory of my father telling me that he'd lost his finger, "in the war." So, I took for granted that all fathers had been to war and I didn't see any reason why that fact was special.

That is, until my father died.

At the memorial service, one of his army buddies remembered him as a "good soldier." Afterwards, he sent me a newspaper article that he'd written about his own wartime experiences. It described the firefight in which my father had been shot in the hand while manning a machine gun. I read the paragraph over and over. I think it was the first time that I truly considered the magnitude of my father's experience. Too late, I realized how awful it must have been for the young man who would later become my father.

Recently, I watched Ken Burns' film about WWII. It made me so sad. I saw my father in every battle--one of many, many young men who had answered a call to defend their country from an enemy they'd never seen. The veterans who were interviewed spoke candidly about the war. They described the horror of seeing their friends die and about the fear that they too, would soon be killed. One wept as he talked about how different he felt when he returned home.

So my feelings about Memorial Day are now very different. Perhaps it is the one day that I think about my father the most. There is sadness because he is gone and some questions will never be answered but there is also a certain pride in knowing that he played an important part in history. He was a good soldier.