My father died four years ago on May 27th, 2005. It seemed fitting that he passed away on a Memorial Day weekend. It was as though he had chosen this time to return to his buddies from the war who had already passed on.Throughout my childhood I were reminded of his war experience. Never by words or stories, but by a multitude of artifacts lining the walls of our basement. There were also framed photographs and old scrapbooks of soldiers and foreign places. He kept a trunk full of uniforms in mothballs. It was quietly tucked away in the basement, but it spoke volumes in its unassuming way. Curiosity would draw me to rummage through that trunk and marvel at the construction of the uniforms and one particular piece of slippery, camouflage fabric. I later learned that piece was parachute silk. When I was a teenager he let me have one of his jackets to wear. It was all the fad to wear army clothes and I was surprised when he let me wear it. There was an imposing Nazi flag on the basement wall, surrounded by guns mounted on wood. My favorite object was a wooden owl, hand carved by a German soldier. When I asked my father about the owl, he said it sat atop a flag pole. My third grade teacher was known for collecting owl objects and I recall being allowed to take my father's owl to school for show and tell. I never asked and he never told how he would have come about to have that owl. I suppose this basement room was a shrine of sorts. We treated it with respect, but never asked too much about it and never heard my father speak a single story of the war. I had always assumed it was because he had three daughters and he assumed we wouldn't be interested in such things. My mother was proud of him that he didn't speak of it. War was too big, too personal, certainly too painful to put into words and good men didn't brag on things of war. Outwardly, my father wore the insignia of the 82nd Airborne division on his belt buckle. He also had a cap with the insignia patch sewn onto it and a small tag on his license plate with this same insignia. I noticed when we were out in public, men would come up to him and shake his hand and my dad would get this look of pride and humility mixed together. And all of those years went by and I never really knew...
I was recently given a book that my father owned titled, "The Left Corner of My Heart" by Dan Morgan. My brother-in-law, who has an interest in the history of war, had borrowed the book from my father. He told me it chronicled the 551st Paratroop Battalion* and that it was an unbelievable story about my Dad's battalion. I was supposed to pass it along to my husband who wanted to read it. Instead, I read it myself. At the same time, I found an old scrapbook of my father's that I had never seen before. The scrapbook and Dan Morgan's book together have given me a glimpse into my father's world during the years of 1942-1945. A time well before I was born, and yet a story that would once and for all show me who my father really was.
I knew my father to be very quiet man. He was different from most of the Italian men I knew in our large family and circle of friends. He was a musician and played rhythm guitar in a band. He worked as a forklift driver by day, supporting my stay-at-home mom and we three daughters. We lived in a little 3 bedroom ranch in upstate New York, out in the country where my father could garden. He was very proud of his garden and loved to leave vegetables on the neighbor's door steps. My father was also health conscious before it was fashionable to be so. He ate yogurt, fresh vegetables and drank milk. He rarely drank alcohol except for a shot of anisette when he shoveled snow. He jogged up the road from work and lifted weights in the basement. If you wanted to snap his picture, he would first push up his sleeve and nonchalantly flex his arm muscles. (Maybe this was a little true-to-Italian form.) He didn't like to travel and would scowl during an entire road trip. He was happiest staying home, eating my mom's good cooking, gardening and playing his guitar. He left us daughters to my mother's hand and never, ever got involved in anyone else's business. Oh...and he was very handsome.
I realize now that my father was also a soldier. He was a soldier for life. His experiences in the war shaped and formed the man he would always be. In reading the accounts of his company I realize that no one can experience what these men went through and not be changed for life. Of course, their personalities remain intact, but their view is filtered through the experience of war. I'm sure this remains true for any soldier, then and now. The fact that my father lived through this experience, to go on and marry and raise a family is close to a miracle.
Even in paratrooper training there was much danger. From an account written by news reporter Jeff Holland, "On a cold, misty, moonless night in February 1944, several companies of paratroopers jumped from two dozen or more planes outside camp Mackall near Hoffman, N.C. as part of a training exercise to prepare them for assignments during WWII. But pilots had misjudged their location, and the paratroopers were released over Lake Kinney Cameron instead of over an open field. Forty-three men landed in the lake; eight men drowned." Their parachutes dragged them down and they each wore 120 pounds of equipment! The men spent all night searching for the eight missing men, finding seven within 24 hours and the eighth man, 4 days later. Some jumps were experimental, dropping with a different type of boot maybe, or at different altitudes. Two months after the tragic drownings, the battalion set sail for Africa and then on to Italy. On August 15, 1944, the 551st was dropped out over the French Riviera, part of the force spearheading the invasion of southern France. The battalion was next dropped five miles south of Draguignan, marching on to take the city. Of this my father has a photograph and I had always wondered what that word, Draguignan, meant. Now I learn that it was a place in France. The 551st paratroopers became the first Americans to enter Cannes and Nice, France. After reading this, I see the calling card in my father's scrapbook is from a Frenchman thanking my father for liberating them. The battalion then moved to the Maritime Alps, where it held a 45 mile front along the Franco-Italian border for two months. Winter moved in and the men were cold in only their jumpsuits. From this position, the battalion kept the German army off the flank of the U.S. army. Then the 551st returned to northern France for another jump. This time they were called to the town of Rochlinval, which they took, and fought in the "Battle of the Bulge". In this battle, within five days time, the battalion was reduced from 800 men to around 100 men. My father survived. The army deactivated the battalion and incorporated the remaining men into the 82nd Airborne Division where they served for the remainder of the war.
It's easy to ignore dates and places, rattled off as in any history book. I've heard of the Battle of the Bulge dozens of times and never gave it a thought. But in reading "The Left Corner of My Heart" I see men's names, photographs, what they ate, who was wounded or killed. They write of bartering cigarettes or parachute silk with the locals for food, drinking wine and sleeping, as my dad once told me, on top of a piano. I touch the calling card, the owl, the parachute silk and it all becomes so real to me. On more than one occasion I am reduced to tears when I realize just what these brave men were doing. And even more so, to realize this was my dad! How could I have been such a crappy teenager to him?! How selfish I was, too blinded by myself to truly see through the generational gap; to see my parents as people.
I have not finished reading this volume of Dan Morgan's book. It is 548 pages long. I know more tears will flow as I get to know my dad through his experiences before I was born. The horrors of war, the bravery of the soldiers...I know I will love him more, appreciate him more. I wish I could reach across the chasm of death to tell him I understand now. I am consoled to know that he is laid to rest among thousands of fellow veterans at the Saratoga National Cemetery. The gun salute and the the honor bestowed on him would make him proud.
* After researching my father's service in the war, I found that he began in the 82nd Airborne division and was later transferred to the 551st Airborne Battalion. I am not sure why he wore the 82nd Airborne patches and not the 551st, but he owned more of those and the 551st memorabilia are extremely scarce.
** Several years after writing this, we sold my parents' house. The new owner (one of my cousins) discovered murals that my father had painted on the basement walls. They are murals of paratroopers and bombs dropping on the European countryside. Photos of these murals can be seen here: images-from-the-mind-of-a-paratrooper
