My dad fought in his generation’s war as a sailor, a Yeoman
3rd Class. The uniform he father wore still hangs in my closet.
Every now and then I revisit his winter dress blues. I lift the clear plastic
cover and gently run my hand across the scratchy wool – the flared trousers
with the thirteen-button front flap and the cuffed jumper with white piping. It
seems so small. How in the world did my dad’s 6’2” frame ever fit into it?
I look at the vacant uniform stationed in the closet and I see
a sensitive, naïve 19-year old – who when he received his deployment notice
said, “I was as excited as a kid going to a picnic.” This was the uniform he
wore to fight the good fight – the fight to save the world. But my father was
only a Yeoman. A Yeoman is not a warrior, or hero. A Yeoman is an administrative
clerk - he types, files reports, and answers phones. How is this courageous?
John Wayne never typed anything … ever.
I always wondered, was my dad afraid to fight? For decades, I
thought of my dad sitting behind a desk while the Marines landed on Iwo Jima
--- or of him making coffee for his superiors while brave men died on Omaha Beach.
I learned many years later … I was so wrong.
My father took his own life in 1964 – eighteen years after
he was honorably discharged from the Navy. I knew and loved him for six years
and then one morning - he was gone. No more sweet bedtime songs or silly Eskimo
kisses. I was no longer his little girl. The years following his death were
filled with sadness and anger.
In my mind he was a coward for leaving his family behind.
Why didn’t he fight to stay alive? I didn’t want to feel this way. I knew it
was wrong. I wanted to feel compassion for my dad, but I couldn’t find it.
Then one day, my older cousin told me something about my dad
I never knew. She said that her mother had
told her that Uncle Fred was never the same after he came back from the war. He
came home broken. I also found out he wasn’t only an administrative clerk – he
was part of a radio group that set up communication stations for General
MacArthur’s return to the Philippines.
He was in the thick of it.
He wrote to my mother, “Two Japs lying in the road being
dragged away by a truck. Another one blown to hell along side the road. Manila is full of
snipers. Being tall is no advantage. Riding in the back of a jeep I stick out
like a sore thumb. The stench of death is over the city – so many dead.”
It took decades, but I finally understood what had happened
to my dad and why he shot himself. He experienced the carnage and chaos of war.
He saw it, smelled it, and tasted it … and never found a way to forget it. I finally
found the compassion I had lacked my entire adult life. The guilt I feel for
not understanding sooner will probably ever leave me. He was a sailor who never
found his way back home. He sacrificed his sanity for his country and in the
end, like so many other casualties of war – it killed him.
With my father’s death - my mother, brothers and I also
became casualties of war, but we survived. I’m thankful my Pop had the strength
and courage to stick it out as long as he did. He left me with some of the most
loving memories a little girl could ever have.
