So I am watching Band Of Brothers – yes, not exactly cheery, feel good Saturday
morning fare episodes 9 & 10. Episode 9 is titled “Why We Fight.” This is
where the unit crosses into Germany and discovers one of the concentration /
slave labor camps. My grandfather was in the ETO [102nd Div, 405th
Infantry – see more here http://www.lonesentry.com/102thrugermany/index.html]. I
had never specifically asked about such things but according to the pamphlet, outside
of Gardelagen in April ’45 “…Monday morning were found the
charred and smoking bodies of over 300 slave laborers, prisoners of the Nazis
who had been deliberately burned to death by their captors. Freshly dug common
graves in nearby fields mutely emphasized the haste with which all evidence of
this atrocity was being concealed. Another day and no trace would have
remained. Investigation disclosed that 1016 political and military prisoners
had perished [t]here.”
Grandpap
never talked to me about combat – other than one apparently fresh from the
states Lieutenant who walked down the middle of a road despite all warning from
combat vets and got himself killed. If I had asked, he may have tried to
describe such a thing but maybe not. Maybe he would simply have explained that
there was no way to describe or explain it. Did those sights, smells, memories
haunt his dreams until he passed? I don’t know.
I never
asked if he “understood” or “questioned” what he was fighting for. I doubt I
understood at the time though I had – we both had - seen BoB. He once told someone that Grandma would “never have understood
what [he] saw and went through over there.” But on the other hand he would
never have understood what she would have been going through with him over
there and two young daughters to take care of. Did SHE understand or question
why her husband was sent halfway around the world to fight? I don’t know.
With age
comes the insight to ask such things but alas the time of my grandparents has
passed. What I do know is that my grandfather returned to the softly rolling
hills of Beaver County and lived the rest of his days in peace. Amen.
