On a Friend’s posting on Facebook regarding the death
of the American Comedian Jonathan Winters at 87, I had to confess that his
humor went over my head as a child. In retrospect, he was an improvisational
comic blazing the path for others and was a somewhat Robin Williams on valium.
That Jonathan spent something like eight months in
what then was termed a “mental hospital” in the early sixties and in my opinion
probably was suffering from PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder decades before
they recognized and dealt with the term or the illness.
These days, the VA
would give Jonathan a prescription and schedule a few months of sessions with a
shrink. Oh the marvels of modern medicine and mental health care.
Jonathan had been in the South Pacific as a Marine for
the last two and one half years of that very bloody theatre of war.
It was for
grunts like Jonathan that Harry Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima rather
than let soldiers and marines like Winters go through one more trial, the expected
bloody battle for the Japanese homeland. Enough said.
RIP Jonathan.
The talk of the theatre of war of the South Pacific
had me merging memory and thinking that Jonathan Winters had been at
Guadalcanal but rereading his bio he probably missed that battle. In my mind I
merged some facts, of two cousins that were also Marines as who were at
Guadalcanal and survived and did not do well after the war.
In fact in terms of
what I heard in whispers from the family gatherings, they probably died of
chronic alcoholism and no doubt related to their war experiences, They died
rather young, in their late thirties, early forties, in the nineteen fifties some two or three years
apart and their death was yet another cross or two to bear for great aunt Rose.
This all before PTSD, diagnosis, treatment etc. in the
modern age. America has had too many wars.
Another thing that the Facebook entry reminded me of
was how that generation went to war during WWII and real men did not talk about
the horrors of war and dealt with them in many instances alone and kept it all
within.
My father had joined the Army, probably could have
gotten a deferment for working in a critical war industry and he was quite old
in his late twenties, much older than the average American draftee. He wanted
to join but after months and months of repeat training in holding camps in the
U.S. waiting to be shipped overseas he got tired of all the marching and opted
to become, assume the glamorous job of Army Cook.
It at least kept you out of the rain most of
the time, food being served in a hopefully dry place under a tent etc.
Which brings me to the trophy thing. My dad’s private
space in the house would have seemed to have been the workbench and place for tools in
the basement in the basement space that once had served as a coal bin before
the switch to gas heat etc.
The obsolete space was where dad began and made
some of his household projects.
It was in one of his small metal toolboxes that he kept
two eagle with swastika armbands that he brought back from war, in the European
theatre of war. The armbands were incomplete and only the face of them with
their machine made embroidery was the real pleasure and texture of this textile
product.
Of course, dad rarely talked about his military
experiences, the horrors of war etc. Though as an army cook 24 hours on, 24
hours off throughout the military campaign in Europe, he was a soldier and
expected to have his weapon within reach, even in a kitchen.
The one story he did tell was of as the mess sergeant,
he and his crew were sent out to forage for fresh vegetables to supplement all
the canned and dehydrated food coming from America non-stop.
He did mention
that all meat in terms of steaks and chops were deboned in America before being
shipped to Europe, that, in order to save space and fuel on boats and trucks.
His favorite story involved his few words of German he
learned while knocking on doors and negotiating with townspeople to trade
potatoes, onions and carrots, hidden in their cellars, for soap and cigarettes.
That he mentioned that many times after they entered Germany, the town where they
were foraging in was many times not officially taken by the Americans and that
gunfire was always present over the next hill or passed the next turn in the road and that snipers were
a very real threat to life and limb.
I don’t know how my father got hold of two Nazi armbands,
similar to the one pictured above. I prefer to think that he did not kill the wearers of such things or even took them off their dead bodies.
I prefer to think that he traded soap or
cigarettes for them as a trophy of war, something to bring home and show his
young nephews and other family members etc.
Somewhere along the timeline, my mother threw out the
armbands, said they were symbols of evil and she did not want them in her house
etc.
I regret not having these trophies around now to
remember my father by and not the Nazi empire.
Whatever.
.
