Can't let an old Vet down

I watched this video and it brought back some memories.

I watched this video and it brought back some memories.

See how the Army Marksmanship Unit guys react to the old sniper. You can see the deep respect they have for him. Notice too how he sees the AMU guys. You can feel the respect he has for them. It’s clear to me that he sees them not as a couple of guys in uniform, but as the modern, living, breathing successors to the guys that fought with him against the Axis in WWII. You can see how that shakes them. I know just how they feel.

I spent 4 years in the 82^nd Airborne, from 1990 to 1994. (I was also in the Navy, 1996-2001, but that’s another story) I took leave for a month in Michigan City, Indiana in ’92 or ‘93, to hang out with a buddy that was getting out of the Army. We would ride out motorcycles from his house to his girlfriend’s house, and along the way there was a house that always had an 82^nd Airborne flag flying.

And it wasn’t on a little flagpole, either. It was on an enormous flagpole, much bigger than you usually see in front of a house. It took me almost 3 weeks before I decided to knock on the door. The lady that opened the door didn’t seem all that surprised to see me. I told her that I saw the flag, I was in the 82^nd Airborne, and I wondered why it was there. She seemed more worried that I might escape. Her husband, you see, was a WWII veteran of the 82^nd, and he would like to meet me. In a serious voice she warned me “He’s blind.”

She ushered me in to his room, which was a sort of “man-cave,” but much cleaner. He had a tasteful shadow box on the wall with his decorations, but I don’t remember thinking that anything about the room would have warned me that this guy had been through hell and come back covered in glory. And his own blood, too. He told me about joining the Division as a replacement in Normandy. “I didn’t jump into Normandy, but I jumped everywhere else until I got wounded.” He told war stories about how the Army screwed this or that silly thing up. Same type of stuff they’ve done to every vet! He was tested in mortars, rifles, machine guns, and it was machine guns that he was worst at. Guess which unit he ended up in? Machine guns.  He told me about his last jump, into Holland I think. It was delayed, and for reasons that still aren’t clear to him, they made him jump out in broad daylight. He said it made everyone sitting ducks. You can shoot at Paratroopers while they are under canopy. The Germans did.

He said that he got shot in the head during that battle. He should have died, but his Company Commander got him into a jeep and back to an aid station. They managed to save his life, but not his vision. He’s lived in the dark since 1944, when my dad was 2 years old.

He told me all about the things he did, and then he told me all about the things I could do. He just knew, in his heart, that had I been faced with the dangers he had faced, I’d do just as well as he and his buddies did. I was a Paratrooper, you see, and an American soldier. It didn’t matter that he’d grown up in the Depression and I’d grown up a pampered son of the richest, laziest nation the world had ever seen. (My words, not his) I was a Paratrooper, and a soldier. If the balloon went up, I’d march to the sound of the guns and destroy our country’s enemies and set the world to rights. Just as he and his buddies did.

I’m still not sure that I could have done as he said. But I’d have rather died than have let the old Vet down. So if you live in Michigan City, and you know who I’m talking about, and he’s still alive, go shake his hand. Tell him that the young Paratrooper he met all those years ago still thinks about him. If he’s gotten his final discharge and has gone on to his heavenly reward, thank his family for me. Two hours in his presence told me more about what it means to be a soldier and a Paratrooper than 4 years of living it.