 |
| My uncle Dick |
I watched the first part of “The War,” by Ken Burns, tonight. It was remarkable. All I could think
of was my uncle Dick.
That’s him in the photo. It’s inscribed, “To my sweetheart.
Love, Dick.” That would have been Maxine, his drop dead gorgeous wife.
I was way too young to know him well. Some of you have read the brief tale
I can today tell about him. Hopefully I can get my big brother to sit down for an interview
soon and learn the rest of the story. Our family is/was so spread out and I
came along so late that I can’t put together our family fully. But I remember
uncle Dick as incredibly handsome, a large personality, with one of the most
beautiful women as his wife I ever saw. The two of them were dynamite together, good and bad, hot and dangerous, all rolled into one. At least that’s what I remember.
Then something happened. He sort of fell apart. That’s when the “battle
fatigue” set in. But that was long after he played his part in WWII, flying
mission after mission. He was one of the many ordinary heroes of that war. I say “ordinary” because there were so many stories of bravery, cunning and denying death that heroism weaved through that war over and over again in the stories. Ken Burns illustrates this throughout his film.
“The War” on
PBS is one hell of a documentary so far. It’s humbling. It’s also a remembrance
of “a necessary war.”
I’ve run out of expletives to describe what we’re doing in Iraq. But it flashed
through my mind as I listened and watched tonight. The moments when Burns covered the sacrifice and how our country mobilized infuriated me when thinking of our disengagement from Iraq today. Iraq was not “a necessary war” like Afghanistan.
But back to WWII.
Uncle Dick is long gone, but I will never forget what he did for this country.
My father, Dick’s brother, is long gone, too. I didn’t learn the real story
behind why daddy didn’t fight in the war until this past May, believe it or
not. My big brother (the Marine), who got me interested in politics many, many decades ago, read my blog
one day and wrote me an email.
Read your blog and didn’t know if you knew why Dad didn’t serve in the military.
He was working at Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, an essential industry,
during the war and they wouldn’t accept him in the service because he was
needed at Boeing. At least, that’s what I was always told and have no reason
not to believe.
There are so many ways to serve. But around home mom always gave me the impression that for daddy it wasn’t the same as what uncle Dick had done. Maybe to a man in those days, but everyone was needed to pitch in and help and all efforts towards the war were critical. I hope daddy knew that.
So many, many died in WWII. But at least we knew why.
Comments are closed.