Remembering My Dad on Veterans Day [by Stacey Lehman]

My dad landed on Utah beach, not as part of the first wave, thank god, or I probably wouldn't be here, but later, to clean up. He was a soldier in the 94th Infantry Division that fought in the Battle of the Bulge and liberated a concentration camp. It was in Nennig, Germany, that the Germans gave his division its nickname "Roosevelt's Butchers" for stacking the dead in houses and along roads and refusing prisoners, lacking the means to guard and transport them. Like so many others, he enlisted, a tough street kid from the Bronx, the child of immigrants from Poland and Ukraine.  During boot camp, he was court-martialed for striking an officer who called him a dirty kike. Though he was acquitted, he got shipped out soon after without having completed his training.
    I don't know much about his service, not because he was particularly reticent but because he died suddenly at 50, before I was mature enough to imagine my parents had lives worth learning about. How I regret that I never asked him about those years. Anyone who has tried to get WWII military records knows that a fire destroyed many of them. Thus, all I have are the things he carried: his dog-tags, a French-English dictionary, a guide to Europe, and, oddly, a copy of Don Quixote in Spanish.  Several years ago, I gathered these mementos together and along with a few photographs asked Star Black, the brilliant poet, photographer, and collage artist to make something of them.  A few weeks later she presented me with three collages, one of which is shown here. That's my dad in the middle, looking handsome, and so young! In the upper left is a page from his guidebook in which he wrote a list of the places he fought his way through, ending with "and a funeral in some god-forsaken place."

One of the more moving accounts of life as an infantryman during WWII can be found in Roll Me Over, by Raymond Gantter.  Ganttner was a teacher who decided to turn down his third deferment.  He was unfit for officer status so he joined the infantry as a private.  His service was almost identical to that of my father's.  Here's a passage: 

It is the slow piling up of fear that is so intolerable. Fear moves swiftly in battle, strikes hard with each shell, each new danger, and as long as there's action, you don't have time to be frightened.  But this is a slow fear, heavy and stomach filling.  Slow, slow . . all your movements are careful and slow, and pain is slow and fear is slow and the beat of your heart is the only rapid rhythm of the night . . . a muttering drum easily punctured and stilled.

    Upon completion of his service and return to the US, my dad had difficulty finding work. I recently discovered among my mother's things, a cache of the letters he wrote to potential employers along with a pile of rejections. Over time, my dad's letters became increasingly imaginative (some might say desperate). At around the same time, he and his brothers agreed to change their names from Horowitz to Harwood, the surname of a minor British royal. It was the name I grew up with and that made it possible for me to witness anti-Semitism by those who had no idea that I'm Jewish. I thought of myself as an undercover Jew.

-- sdl

Comments

[Laura Orem]

Lovely post, Stacey, and a fitting way to honor your father and the others who served in WWII. He'd be very proud!

[Marissa Despain]

My father fought in WWII but he didn't talk about it at all. He's still alive but when I ask he always says, "Why do you want to know about that? Forget it." Thanks for the book reference, I'm going to read it.

[Amy Allara]

What a wonderful and meaningful collage.

[Larry Epstein]

Thanks for the very moving post, Stacey. It's interesting how stories overlap. My dad was a medic who fought across France and Germany. He was replaced once and soon after the Nazis captured his replacement. All those ordinary soldiers who acted so extaordinarily.

Larry

[Stacey]

Thanks for these comments. Your father's story is incredible Larry. How does one even make sense of it? They were extraordinary.

[DL]

This is a marvelous post. I have always loved that stellar collage.

[Laura Orem]

Lovely post, and what a gorgeous collage. Your dad would be proud.

[Denise Duhamel]

This is so moving, Stacey! A beautiful post. And wow--Star made a wonderful collage.

[Angela Ball]

Stacey, this is a wonderful post, both to see and to read. Sad in so many ways, but inspiring! Thank you.

[Jacqueline Lapidus]

The "greatest generation" of people who served in World War II, like the survivors of bombings, starvation, illness and the concentration camps, did not want to relive their pain. They did not want to tell their families, either, so as not to lay their own suffering on others who loved them. My college classmate Walter Ford Carter (Swarthmore '62) has published a moving, thoughtful book about his own father, a doctor who enlisted even though he would not have been drafted--he was married and had two very young sons. Sent to England as a medic, he served in the 29th Division during the Normandy invasion. Capt. Norval Carter, M.D. was killed on Omaha Beach by a German sniper 10 days later while trying to save a wounded soldier. His widow never spoke about him to her sons, who didn't know the story until Walter found his letters to her from the front, in a trunk in her attic after her death. You may want to read his beautiful, eloquent book about them, "No Greater Sacrifice, No Greater Love: A Son's Journey to Normandy" (Smithsonian 2004).

[Emily Fragos]

This is a very moving and beautiful post and collage, dear Stacey. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. My late father served in Europe in WW II and never spoke about it. He went to one reunion many years later with his surviving buddies, but that was it. My late uncle was a POW in WW II. He would not talk about it either. My late brother served in Vietnam and everyone knew better than to ask him about 'Nam.

[thevipgentlemensclub]

If you're a gentleman, you're looking for a lady. -- Jane Austen