A True Veterans Day Story

When I was a boy, I'd spend small amounts of time with my grandfather. My most vivid memories embrace a time when he was in his late 60's - early 70's and I was in my teens. He was a formadible figure being 6'-4" and about 200 lbs. He was almost always grumpy and spent much of the time that I knew him sitting at a kitchen table by himself or in a bedroom he didn't share with my grandmother. I had heard stories throughout the course of my life that he had been in the army during WWII and that when he came home he wasn't the same. Being just a kid, my thoughts about that never went any further than just hearing it. Now, looking back, I never knew just how much that could mean.

During that time in my life I recall a Bible floating around the family. It was a small Bible that had a leather cover, red velvet spine, a hand-carved ivory insignia on the front, and, oddly enough, was written in German. It seemed to spend time at my aunt's house, then make it's way to my grandmother's, then to ours. Never knowing, at first, the story behind this Bible, I never even looked at it. But that all changed. As time went by I spent more time with my grandfather. When I was about 15 I found myself spending time with him every sunday. I would sit with him, watch old black and white movies, roll him cigarettes with an old buglar cigarette machine, and talk. One day while I was talking to my grandfather and rolling his cigarettes, the subject of that Bible came up. I don't recall how the subject came up but I do remember that the whole story behind it unfolded so unexpectedly that I didn't know how to react - so I just sat and listened. T his is what I heard. During the depression, work was scarce and a lot of people were homeless and hungry. Many people, including my grandmother and grandfather, were reduced to living in what became known as "Hoovervilles". Hoovervilles were makeshift shelters or shanties made of whatever people found laying around, which were built on land belonging to other people. When WWII broke out, many men saw enlistment as an opportunity to feed thier families as well as serve thier country. My grandfather enlisted and served under Gen. George Patton. in Europe. While overseas my grandfather saw combat the old fashioned way - in fox holes and trenches. During one particular skirmish, he was engaged in a one-on-one firefight with a German soldier. He told me that he and the German soldier exchanged fire - one shot at a time - for more than an hour. He said he could hear the bullet whistle by him before he could hear the report from the German rifle and that everyo ne talket about the fact that if you could hear the bullet go by, you knew you were OK. He told me that the last round he fired was never answered by a round from the German soldier so he advanced on the Germans foxhole. As he continued to unfold memories from forty years past, I heard a crack in his voice that I'd never heard before. It caused me to look up from my mindless, repetition of rolling his Buglers. I looked in his face and to my surprise I saw tears welling upin his eyes. I had never see him like this. He continued to tell me that when he got to the German foxhole he found a German soldier killed by a single bullet which had hit him in the center of the helmet and through the forehead killing him instantly. The German soldier was not more than 15 or 16 years old. My grandfather went through the Germans wool coat (as was a common practice) and found that Bible which he brought home. The next day a German "potato masher" (German hand grenade) found its way next to my grandfather and blew him out of the trench was in. He carried some of that steel in his legs until the day he died. Just as quickly as that story began, it was over. But I now know that it lived on in his mind long after he was done telling the story to me. My grandfather passed away in 1983 just as poor as he was when he lived on Line Ditch. Until I grew up I thought that he never had anything to leave to his two kids or many grandchildren. I was wrong. When he passed away, he took with him the memories of the horror and pain of war, but he left behind a legacy of freedom and democracy for which he and countless others paid a significant price. I am now 43 years old and I will be forever in debt to him and all men and women who have made sacrifices such as those made by him so that we may live in the "land of the free". I am humbled by thier sacrifice. Even though they may not leave us money or other material things, they have left us very wealthy, indeed. I now have that Bible and it will remain in my possession along with the memories of that day I spent with my grandfather when he painted a picture, the colors of which I've only recently been able to see. My heartfelt "Thank You" goes out to everyone who has ever served honorably in our Armed Services. Now is the time for our generation to do what we must to make certain that we pass the torch to the generation coming up behind us.


The photo I sent you is that of my grandmother, grandfather, and the baby is my dad on August 1, 1931, in front of thier shanty in a Hooverville in a place known as "line ditch" in Camden, N.J. The entire "villiage" had only one spigot from which they got water.....COLD water.
I have also sent some pictures of that Bible. I can't read it but I know that we'd all do well to learn a little from what it says.