Veterans Day special

by Danny Howard

For the record I cannot confirm nor can I deny any of this – I am not sure if I myself remember any of this as fact/facts, however I shall do my best – you see, when I requested by father’s military records, they wrote back saying my father’s military records were burned in a massive fire that burned most of those records.

I have heard these stories, as told by my father, as far back as I can remember, and probably ever before that.

Now, before I embark on his military career, I thought you might like to know about his early years, that he told me about his family, how they were so poor.

How poor were they?

Now cut that out!

They were so poor they had to save up to be poor, as proof they were living at the Union Fairgrounds. Now, I don’t know why they were living at the fairgrounds. I never thought to ask. Maybe it was because they were poor.

One of my favorite stories my father told me was that he (my father) was having supper of baked beans. My father dropped this plate of beans on the floor of the old Secretary Office at the fairgrounds.

Grandpa had my father scoop the beans off the well-traveled floor, in fact, some of the floor had been worn down to the subfloor, put the beans back on the plate and eat it. The beans, not the plate.

Dad would tell about how his father would hit him when he did bad – and hearing about those hitting.

I don’t think he had to have a reason. I think my sister cleaned that up years later. “Grandfather just liked to hit his children.” Looking back now, I think she was right.

Well, back to the story.

Dad was a farmer from way back, probably right after he learned to crawl. His dad had him out in the barn cleaning it with his older brother who, according to my father,,didn’t seem to want his help. I think he told my father, “I don’t want your help, get lost, get out of my way,” or something like that.

One day it got really heated. My uncle told my father, “I’ll throw you right out that door if you so much as breathe.”

My dad said, “I’d like to see you try,” or something like that.

(Sometimes I don’t think my father would be any good at playing cards, as he didn’t always have a full deck to play with.)

My uncle grabbed my father by the neck and the seat of his pants and dad went flying through the big roll doors. That might have been painful if the door hadn’t given way the way it did. Dad just rolled under the door and into my grandfather, who was going to milk room with two buckets of milk.

Now grandfather, being the understanding parent he was (not), grabbed my father by the neck and the seat of his pants and threw my father back into the barn and into his brother.

There was a trip to the wood shed for the both of them.

Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all fun and games. No sir, dad worked in a casket factory as a store clerk, and delivered ice for those ice boxes which weighed up to 40 pounds. And let’s not forget the weight of the ice tongs.

Now, with all of that stuff to keep him busy, one day he got a letter from the president of the United States of America. Yes, the president, good ol’ FDR took the time out of his busy schedule just to write a letter to my dad.

It said, “Greetings.”

He was off to boot camp. Now, boot camp was almost like the Boy Scouts, camping out in tents, hiking, doing all types of exercises, jumping through tires, etc. Why sometimes you even got to scrub a garbage can or two. He was assigned to the Medical Corp. Dad didn’t want to be in the Medical Corp, so he told the sergeant, “I don’t want to be in the Medical Corps.”

“Oh, I see,” said the sergeant, “and just what do you want to be?”

“I want to be a pilot.”

“Why don’t you go and tell that to the captain? You’re in the Medical Corps and you will like it.”

After almost no training they gave my father a syringe and was told to give shots to the men standing in line. The first guy comes up and dad gives him a shot, then asked for another syringe. “What? There was enough for five guys” (it might have been for more but like I said it has been years). They quickly got the guy and gave him some medications to counteract the medication dad gave him.

The stories my dad told me were stories right out of a Stephen King novel. Like this one guy who is brought in with stones and dirt embedded in one side of his head.

OK, what happened? “I got run over by a truck, well, my head, anyway.”

“I was on guard duty last night and I thought I could get in a nap so I laid down and this fuel truck runs over my head.”

We really didn’t believe him, so we went out by the runway and there was an imprint of a man’s face in the ground. The only thing that saved him was the fact that in England, where it rains 356 days a year, made the ground so soft that a fuel truck could run over a guy’s head without hurting the guy.

Then there was this guy who came in. to get a shot. “Hey, I don’t like needles.” Now this guy would make Mr. Universe look like an 85-pound weakling. We gave him the shot and turn away. Then Bang, the guy hit the floor. But before he hit the floor he hit the desk, cutting his lip which took eight to 10 stitches to close the wound. So, instead of one shot of needles, he had to have 16 to 20 stitches.

Another time, they brought in a guy all busted. We knew he was on the ground crew, so what happened?

“I fell off a plane,” So, we asked how he fell off a plane when he was on the ground crew. “I was refuelijg a. plane when some fuel spilled onto the wing, and I slipped off the wing. All fall of about 10 feet.”

Then there was another guy they brought in by ambulance. His head, well, it wasn’t there. Most of it wasn’t. It seemed that a cap on each of the propeller blaeds had broken loose and hit him in the head. Now I know it doesn’t make snese to me why they would make cap that could come off a propeller blade, but they did. The only thing they could do at that time was to get a stocking from a nurse, and put what was left of his head into it, and hung him up in his bed. He died shortly there after.

Then there was the call to come to the end of the runway. It seemed a guy just walked into a propeller blade. They didn’t know what happened. Was it suicide, or was he not paying attention. All we could do is to hose him off the runway.

The planes would sometimes make a three point landing, and sometimes they didn’t. Some would land with their wings hitting the ground and spin the whole plane around. Sometimes they would lane nose first and flip over. Sometimes they just crashed. Sometimes they made it out and sometimes they didn’t.

Sometimes they didn’t even try, they just jumped out. One time a pilot radioed the crew to jump.Everyone did except the tail gunner who had not heard the order to jump. When he saw the parachutes of the others, he jumped. All while the pilot was fighting to keep the plane in the air long enough for all the crew to get out. They he turned the plane away from any buildings and jumped himself. But it was too late. By the time we got there, the tail gunner who landed near the crash site, was holding the pilot, and saying over and over, “He died for me. He died for me. He died for me.”

Dad used that more than once in his pastor times – oh, did I mention he became a pastor?

One day they came to dad and asked him if he be willing to give rub downs on black people, as there was a lack of personnel who were willing to work with African Americans. Now, when dad had gotten in the Army it was the first time he even saw a black person. So, dad had an almost steady job giving rub downs to African Americans.

Then he told me about his treatment of a foot disease. The treatment was to put an acid on the skin. But it had very bad side effects, so they banned the use of it. Dad thought it was foolish so he mixed up a diluted form of the acid. I believe it was one-eighth percent of acid to the rubbing oil. It worked, so soon he had another steady job.

Then came D-Day. He drove an ambulance down those skinny ramps onto the beach. Every time they would show a scene of the landing on TV, he would say, “I remember that building.”

He never told me his rank. Just that before the was was over, he was in charge of the Medical Corp. The only thing he made clear was that he didn’t want to be in the Medical Corp. But when he couldn’t get out of it, he became the best he could be. It was only after his death that I learned he was a staff sergeant when I read his obituary.

He told me all about the training he got, but it seemed to me that all of the training was on the job.

Like the time he was in a plane, and they were flying low to avoid radar. They would fly over a house and go back down then again, then down, then up, down, up, down. Dad got sick and threw up. The vomit went allover the inside of the plane and baked itself to almost every inch of the inside of the plane. I will let you guess who cleaned that up.

It seems at first he enjoyed telling me those stories, but as the years went by, the stories were told less and less until they seemed to have lost their glory. I think as he got older the stories got more painful and to avoid the pain, he stopped telling them. Forget them, never, he just stopped telling them.

For a man born in1922 he was not actually a “cowboy”, but almost. He lived through the Great Depression, delivered ice for those ice boxes, drove a Model T, and a Model A, fought in World War II, saw man walk on the moon, and was down in Florida, to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger; it was a long trip home. Not bad for a boy born in the small town of Union, Maine.

Then, one day I went to see him at the Veterans Home, in Augusta. He looked so very tired, I wanted to tell him, that it was OK for him to go. Mom is waiting for you. Don’t worry about Barbara and me, we will be all right. But I didn’t, I wanted to have him a little while longer. I gave him a sip of water. I didn’t ask if it was all right, just a cup of water. I thought dad would like that.

I walked home. By the time I got there, my sister had called. I said, “Is this about dad?”

“Yes, he’s gone.”

I always knew the man could read minds.