…for the elevendyth millionth time, I see ka-billion more about Memorial Day Sales of ride-’em lawnmowers, grills and lawn flamingos at retail outlets than I see actual remembering by most, TMV, being an exception in more ways than one with many fine articles here on the front page about what this day, this one day, is actually dedicated to and for whom.
I dont know about ‘greatest generation’ that being a term thought up to sell a concept book and film, for it has devolved into a trope that then undistinguishes every other generation who bled just as red, who prayed just as hard, who fought just as deeply, who endured so much, and who too often died so easily when something hit/cut/drove/tore through the thin envelope we call the body.
Many who have been in the midst of a killing war, swum up through the river of ragged refugees like as if it were your mother, your father, carrying you their child in their arms, carrying their old ones on their backs, begging for something for their starving children, their old people, and the soldiers having nothing left to give, many
who laid in the leech, snake and coli infested waters under relentless fire, many
who literally, as did my son, crawl face down in the mud in the dark for literally miles to try to find refuge with and for the others, many
who knew when they ‘alighted’ from the barge they would be the first in line to be shot, many
medics who lifted the dying soldiers’ hands and helped him make the Sign of the Cross and promised his mother would hear he did not die alone, many
who knew how to say Kaddish by heart, many
who could not, have not, been able to completely bar the door to the room of screaming of animals, horses, birds on fire, people on fire…, many
who turned away for a moment and when they turned back, instead of their buddy alive, was in his place a tree stump of gushing red blood with no head, many
who ate the skin from their blisters as frail nourishment on the march into territory not theirs, many
who pooled their hair in a tshirt, so their dying bud could have a pillow to die on, many
who came across little families all slain, the men’s trousers pulled down, the women’s dresses pulled up, and the girls running with blood coursing down their thighs, many
who saw the village men with their penises dismembered and stuffed in their mouths, the sound of friends’ boot camped with, high schooled with, screaming from being burned, many
would agree on two things, those who have been to deadly war, in the midst of it: there is no such thing as greatest anything about a war that destroys, routs and kills innocents, there is no such thing as me, me, me the hero. There are those fine souls, however, who tell the truth to others, who carry those truths like a precious diary handwrit in blood with bones, regarding the wages and foibles and talents of humanity, the whole of it wrapped with the sinew that holds your heart… the stories, the real ones, not the glorified ones, of war.
The stories that make you want to hold the world and comfort the weeping stars. The kinds of stories lost on men and women who want a hero to tout, rather than the real deal: our young. OUR precious precious young in a living hell.
I’m a military wife/ USAF, 21 years, and I’ve been a post-trauma specialist for many decades, working with many of the many who have been caught in war as well as those sent to war. I’ve listened to and held the stories of soldiers who told no one, not their fathers, not their friends, not their mothers, not their priests or ministers or their children. They told instead, people like us. Strangers in one way, and yet strangers who understood from similar experiences, what was what. Not out of books. Out of shared experiences at various levels.
I come from a family of refugees who were ethnically cleansed by Stalin at the behest of other of the Allies. When I was a child my tiny house in the woods in the US was filled with the raped, the wounded, the lame and the halt and the staring and the weeping, as my father, soul by soul, found the few who were left alive of his relations in slave labor camps across war torn Europe. No little child of his immediate family members survived. Born in the US, for a long time, I was the only living child of my father’s Schwabian tribal village family.
So here, rather than a rant about how little people remember or care to recall Memorial Day’s meaning, I’d just like to tell you ever so briefly just one more story, just a little about Benny. Benny deserves a book, a film, a museum. Benjamin of the unpronouncable Italiano last names. Benjamin the beefy, Benny the strongman. Benjamin the long-lashed, black haired, beautiful Roman-nosed ‘guy.’ A true “guy.’
I met him at my first internship, Hines Hospital VA, 1965. We shot the bull. Yeah, dem Bears. Yeah a kegger would be gone round about now. Yeah, didja hear who caught that big walleye that ate Wisconsin up around Navy Pier? And cold man, that cold off the Lake of Michigan, why like a bad bad woman, she’d freeze da balls right offa yas. And Father Vitale came by. Yeah, I tol’ him I got no more sins. I used them all up, ya know, before dis happened. I used a lifetime in 20 years. But… I ain’t got no complaints. I gots my memories of sinnin’.
We laughed. Benny was married before he deployed. Had a son when he came back, planted before he left. His boy came to visit now too. Along with his little boy. Benny WWII vet 42 years old, son 20, little grandson, 1. Benny, decorated for his service as a soldier, we used to laugh, “like a cake” … “Yanno like one of dem ten tier Italian wedding cakes; yeah dat was me, all decorated up.”
I’d bring ice cream cones to the ward in summer, this one particular ward. I’d come with friends I’d commandeered, to help me bring ice cream a rare treat, to the men. The cardboard box with the holes holding the cones was sopping wet as the ice cream melted. Didnt matter, “Gimme dat Strabble-berry ice creams!” the men shouted. “Hey you got choco-latte girlie?!! It was a joke. Half the ward was black men. Yes, I have great ice cream for you all, but you have to ‘be good’, I’d say. Oh yes, ma’am, we are being mighty mighty good … and they would all try to throw their shoulders back a bit to show how they were straightening up. That made me laugh with them, and be all the sadder in a whole other way.
Sometimes I look back and wonder how … how anything. I was 19 at the time. Fresh out of heartbreak and loss myself, grieving so unrelievedly as perhaps only the suddenly stunned young do, looking ever to make things better or right for others. And there we all were, in the midst of the true Emperors of Ice Cream, me with my clean bath towel [for sopping up spills and ice-creamy lips], strong young arms, and beyond glad to bring gladness to what any who had the eyes to see, was an entire ward of young boy-children in mens’ bodies. Boys who still loved trucks and beautiful cars, and pretty girls and crooners and rock and roll… and ice cream.
Benny might be gone now. He’d be 90 this year. I’m no longer 19 either of course. It’s now 47 years later. Back in the late 1960s, Benny and I both wept when I had to move on… another ‘angel assignment’ he called my leave-taking. I knew there were several in addition to his son and grandson who were tight bonded to him. And loved him. Truly, I thought HE was the angel. For how could a man of such stature, such strength, such embodiment of body, so mindful, so hale, so humor filled, so decent, have gone on…. living, each day, as though each day were one more tiny jewel on a necklace, each jewel, a person, a bird, a nice food, a blue sky, a soft word… and yet
Benny had been one of several men running through occupied territory on way to rendezvous under fire. WWII. Land mines. Everywhere under the ground left by a retreating army. Benny said it was like suddenly seeing bright and huge red poppies exploding in the air… except those were the bodies of young men exploding. His cohort. Benny’s body exploded too.
They used to call it quadraplegia, and then it got several new names. And Benny would say, F, dont give a S whatchamacallit, there’s no word for this.
He was right. To have ice cream, I’d pick Benny up, embrace him with my arms around him on my lap, slow, cause he got dizzy easily sitting up for most of the time he was on his back… for near twenty years since he was hit, he’d been mostly on his back. I’d hold Benny and often he would just burst out laughing. “What I had to do to get held by a pretty girl, I’m tellin’ ya.” Hush now, eat your ice cream, I’d say. And I would hold the ice cream to Benny’s mouth and he would eat ice cream and sigh, and then eat some more, and I would pat his lips with the soft towel, and then again, another bite, and then more patting, and then more ice cream… stopping now and then to gently soothe and pat down Benny’s spine to help him swallow.
I cannot tell you as I held Benny from behind, how many times I’d just look at the old green ceiling trying to let my tears resorb back into my eyeballs. You know how you do sometimes. It wasnt because I pitied Benny. It was because I loved Benny like he was my brother from another mother. I loved him with everything in me, with everything I could still hold in my young broken heart– his deep spirit that was the height and breadth of ser humano, a true human being… and his acceptance, somehow, J Blue C, his acceptance of having no arms, no legs, no genitalia, his dear body so destroyed thusly in the blasts… and him being one of the greatest, strongest hearts that ever lived. Ever, ever, ever. A man without legs who walked so tall. A man without arms who held the hearts of so many. A man who no one in their right mind would be able to say was not proud, fine, sexy and fully male.
How do I tell the shoppers who are seemingly locustlike at the local Ace hardware place, about Memorial day, the real Memorial day, how do I tell them… about the many, the many many, like Benny?
With love.