Happy Memorial Day

Here in the States, it's Memorial Day. This is the one day a year that we set aside and thank the men and women who have valiantly set aside their everyday lives and served their country and her citizenship by either protecting her interests home and/or overseas. It's also the "unofficial" start of summer, but here in the South, that happened weeks ago.

Anyway, my personal connection to the military is several pronged: my cousin Chris served in Afghanistan, my uncle Larry served in Viet-Nam and my grandfather Obe served in WWII. I'm not alone in having connections to the military and its veterans. If you're a member of my generation/age group, then you probably had a grandparent or two who served in WWII. I'm sure we've all had classmates and friends who have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. A lot of people have had to endure not having their friends and loved ones come home from their military services; I've been fortunate, and no one in my family has died in the line of duty.

I know very little of any of my family's exploits overseas. I haven't talked to my cousin much since he returned from Afghanistan, and I've never really talked to my uncle about Viet-Nam. My grandfather, also, was rather tight lipped about the tours of duty he pulled in Europe. I guess killing people will make you not want to talk about it. I do know, however, that I had a great-uncle (Clarence, I think it was) who fought in the Battle of the Bulge (or the Battle of the Ardennes), and while he was fighting in it my great-grandfather passed away (on my birthday, no less), and that has been pretty much the most tragic war-story my family has had to endure: Great-grandfather Ivan died without knowing if Uncle Bud (his nickname) had survived the war.

My wife's grandfather was also in WWII, and he served in the infantry. In fact, he was part of the gunnery corps, and (if I remember correctly), they marched up the Italian peninsula, liberating Italy. He eventually made it to Nazi-occupied territory because as he was crossing a battlefield, he came across a German officer and liberated his corpse of the sabre he carried at his side. It's a fucking beautiful sword, with a big, ugly swastika on the pommel stone. When I saw it for the first time (my wife's uncle now has it), it suddenly turned the Nazis into a real enemy, and not just someone who appeared in John Wayne films and history books.

Speaking of John Wayne (my grandfather's favorite actor), he had a role in one of my all-time favorite war films: The Longest Day. I love that movie. It recounts the D-Day offensive from the pre-dawn hours to the fight on the beaches. Whenever I watch it, I think about my grandfather being in one of those planes flying overhead giving aerial support to the troops on the ground.

My grandfather was in the Army Air Corps (a forerunner to the Air Force) and he was (if I remember right) a belly gunner for a B-17 Flying Fortress (like the "Memphis Belle"), and he flew a total of 96 missions over Western Europe. His goal was to get to the 100 missions mark (also called the "Century Club"), but he had been shot down too many times, and so the top brass prevented him from flying anymore. Two missions later, the crew he would have been assigned to was shot down with no survivors. On the return to the States, he was bumped from a flight back home by a ranking officer and had to make the return on a boat. The plane he would have ridden back on went down with no survivors.

Those stories are fairly frightening, but the one story I heard my grandfather tell of his service in Europe really was frightening (there was another story he told, but it was about the first time he had ever seen a transvestite). In one of his bombing runs over the mainland, his plane got shot down. It was over the Benelux countries, and I don't remember which (probably Belgium), but as he and his crew were parachuting to safety, the wind caught him differently and took him into a different area. He immediately ditched his parachute and hid under a bush, where he saw the other members of his crew get captured by the Germans and gunned down on the spot. The Germans than began searching for him, but they went back and forth looking for him for the rest of the afternoon and never found him. Finally, as darkness fell, they abandoned the search and went elsewhere. When he felt it was safe, he began to pick his way through the underbrush. As he was moving along as quietly as possible, a hand reached out from under a bush and grabbed his ankle. He thought he was dead. Turns out, it was a member of the Belgian Underground, and they helped get him back to the lines where he went back to England. I think he might have actually flown a few more raids after that, but I'm not certain. Apparently, the night my grandmother died, he sat up with my mom and told her everything he saw in Europe. Unfortunately, she didn't write them down, and has since forgotten them. He died in January of 1989. Sadly, this is the only story I'll know about his time in the war, but it is one helluva story.So, if you know a veteran of any of our wars, think about them today. If you know someone who lost a loved one in any of our military actions, think about them, too. As I said earlier, I've been lucky that none of my family has ever not returned home from military action. I'm not going to get on a patriotic soapbox here, but whether you're a supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, please think of the people who are out there fighting and remember the bravery and nobility of those people who have offered their lives up as the ultimate sacrifice for our country. I know I'm thankful for all they've done.

A Tale of True Heroism

I've been childless for something like three weeks now. At the beginning of June, on my daughter's last day of school, we took them up to Marietta, OH and met my mother-in-law there for dinner (at the Marietta Brewing Company, by the way) where she took the kids and we headed back down the road to North By God Carolina. Mother-in-law and children went north and west, ending up in South Bend eventually, where they hung out for a couple of weeks. While there, my children had some swimming lessons where my daughter (who will be six on Friday) learned how to swim underwater, without floatation devices, how to dive, all that good stuff. My son, who will be three in July, learned how to not be afraid of the water. I suspect he was easily coaxed into the water by Miss Abby, his swim instructor.

Anyway, for the past few days, my children have been in Oklahoma, visiting their great-grandparents (my wife's grandparents through her mom's side). The great-grandparents have a pool, which is one of the main reasons why the kids went through swim lessons, so that they could swim safely in the pool.

This sets the scene. And now for the action.

I came home on Friday and sat in my chair, and my wife came over and sat near me. If you've ever seen Knute Rockne: All American (and if you haven't, I only ask, why haven't you subjected yourself to this fine piece of American film???) there's a scene at the end where Knute's wife has a chill about the same time that Knute's plane goes down in a Kansas farmer's field. That's kind of the look my wife had as she approached me. She worried that the little boy would fall into the pool and no one would know and then we'd have no more little boy. I told my wife not to worry as our daughter would watch over him, and she asked what she could do, and I told her that she could scream for help.

I think you see where this is going. But I'll finish the story.

We call the kids later that night, and my wife talks to my daughter and nothing big happens. Then she talks to the little boy and he says "Sissy saved me." To which my wife responded "What?" And he follows up with "My life. Sissy saved my life."

At this point, my wife says, "That's nice honey...could you please put Grandmommy on the phone?"

My mother-in-law quickly starts to explain.

Apparently, after dinner, people weren't really paying attention to the little boy and he decided he wanted to go swimming, so he just walked down the steps and into the pool. Without floatation devices. A few seconds later, my mother-in-law hears my daughter yelling "Grandmommy, help me. I need help. Help me." My mother-in-law looks over and sees my daughter in the pool with my son. She has her arm wrapped around her chest and is holding his head above water so that he can breathe, and she is back kicking toward the side so that they can get out.

Well.

The only thing I could take from this was that I could tell my wife that I was right. Fortunately, my daughter was more proactive than just yelling for help. She apparently dove in, went underwater to get him, and dragged him back to the side like a lifeguard. I don't know if she was taught this during her swim classes or not, or if she just acted on instinct alone. Either way, it was pretty fucking amazing for a five-year-old to do. I'm guessing not a lot of twenty-five year olds would do that.

If it seems like I'm bragging, you're damned right I am. This is one of those things that I felt I should write down, lest my memory fail me later in life. Also, my daughter will someday be able to read AND work the internet (she does both now, but not together), and I don't want her to think that her father is just some fat, drunken lout who tries to poison his lab mates with toxic gas and has issues with HR and uses the F-word way too much. I mean, she knows that anyway. This way she can know that I really do pay attention and can be proud of her. Plus, this is another way of reminding my son that he owes his life to his sister, and being a Catholic family, you can bet this will come up time and time again as both children age.

All comments relating to Pamela Anderson and slow-running will result in a healthy ass-kicking from a father who is already a tad overprotective. You've been warned. Punk.