POST NINE: THE COST OF WAR
WAR
It started one day when I was around 16 years old. At that time we lived in East Boston on the first floor of a nice old triple deckerI on a dead end street. I came across the beat up shoe box tucked away in a cabinet in our little kitchen. It held our family photos. They were all black and white, some faded with deckled edges, others glossy with writing and dates on the back, some were torn in half eliminated memories that would rather be forgotten. The handwriting I knew belonged to my mother. Many of them were taken in the UK during the Second World War where my parents first met and fell in love. My dad’s name was George just like mine, he was a medic in the US Air Force . He was stationed on an airfield around 40 miles outside of London. My mother, Elizabeth, was a cook in the British Army. In our family we had a joke that my mother only knew how to cook for an Army. There were always left overs to feed our friends that were sure to drop in at dinner time.
As I laid the photos out on our kitchen table, I got the idea to put them in order by date. Once they were all organized they covered the table from edge to edge. It was then that I noticed something odd, something that caught my attention. My dad was smiling in every photo from him as early back as a child and all the way up to a point that I could tell was around the middle of the war. In one photo he stood with a dozen of his buddies, his hat tilted back and with the biggest cocky grin plastered on his face. Another picture showed him in the middle of a crowded transport train, playing his guitar with that same beaming smile. Then, all at once, it was lights out, he rarely smiled again in any photos that came from that point onward.
Later that afternoon when he got home from work, I asked him about it.
Now please understand that what came next would stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s still here, it’s why I am writing this. He told me the only story that he ever told me about his time in the war. Since he was a medic, his job was to hold Sick Call for the entire base. That way, the doctors would be free to do surgery and to care for injured troops as they arrived. The other part of his job was to stand watch on the airfield as each flight mission returned from a bombing run. Regulations called for medical personnel to be there in case anything went wrong.
One day, he was on watch when a big bomber came in on fire. The ground crew could see the black smoke for miles. It hit the runway hard and burst fully into flames, killing everyone on board. Once the fire was put out, it was his job to go on board and pronounce the entire crew dead. It turned out that they were all his closest friends. That was it, the life altering event that would haunt him from then on.
He was such a good guy, a hard worker, and I loved him, but he was distant from me as I grew up. I still blame myself for that distance. He carried a burden like a shadow that followed him everywhere. Sometimes I could see it in his eyes when we talked but I just failed to weigh how heavy it was.
I never forgot the story that he told me that day. It taught me about the cost of war. Whenever I see a photo of my dad, I can't help but wonder what he was thinking when it was taken.