December 4, 1919, Green County, Arkansas

Today, December 4, is my dad's birthday. Had he lived he would be 95 today. He was not an easy man. He gentled as he aged, but as a young father, there were times he was hard. Distant. He never wanted to take our family to fireworks on the 4th of July. As a kid, that made me angry. I couldn’t understand. There’s nothing more awesome than fire in the sky! I hung on relentlessly one summer. We argued in the kitchen. I was intent on wearing him down. Finally, he reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew a pack of matches, lit one and threw it into the sink. “There’s your fireworks,” he said. Of course, I whined and threw a fit which he ignored, having walked into the bedroom. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood him on that night. When he saw fireworks, he didn’t see “fire in the sky.” He saw German 88’s raining down hot shrapnel, sometimes exploding in tree tops, making millions of lethal splinters as well as shrapnel, that sliced into the bodies of his friends. In retrospect, I loved him all the more. He contracted cancer after he retired. He was not doing well. I took a week to spend with him. Most of that week we watched wrestling, which I wordlessly despised. After an hour of this, one afternoon, dad said to me, “I killed a boy.” His eyes never left the TV screen. I was sure I misheard him. But he said it again. “I killed a boy.” His track was stranded, out of gas, in the French countryside. A burning house illuminated them in the night. They were cut off. Stranded. Two Hitler Youth came down the road, pushing a motorcycle that was also out of gas. Schmeiser Machine guns were strapped across their chests. Dad shot them. The next morning they made contact with their unit, got gas, and left. But before they did, dad went to see the boys, lying in the road. A tank had run the bodies over, making them only dimly recognizable as human. He told me that story with zero inflection in his voice. He did not cry, or choke up. He just told me what he did. Then he did look up at me. He said, “Every night, when I go to bed, I ask God to forgive me. And every night I see that dead boy.” No amount of wisdom or counsel could fix him. I’m sure I’m doing dad a disservice. He was an intensely loyal man. I saw him take a swing at a bully neighbor whose bully kid had harmed an innocent. He worked in weather any of us would hurry from, to be sure we were fed, clothed, cared for. I’ve spent a lot of time doing a poor job. I’ll just say that my dad is still my hero. I’ve spent 61 years trying to be something near what he authentically was. I thought he would take pride in me the first (and only) time he saw me in uniform. But it had the opposite effect. He nearly cried. And not out of pride in me. He was afraid (rightly so) that I would become a target. So I never told him about the times his fears came close to being well-founded. I’ve always wanted to match him. But he’s gone now, so that’s pointless. The best I can do is just be the best imitation of him that I can. I miss him so much. He is my hero. Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you.
~ James