Mondays with Mike: No glory, just guts

Growing up, World War II was in the movies, on TV and in our classrooms. It felt close. Everywhere. I knew my dad had served in the war, as had his three brothers, uncles on my mom’s side, neighbors. It fascinated me, it was exotic, a grand adventure. It was scary but not really scary because, after all, there he was. There they were. Our guys had won.

That’s my dad Mike on the left. Brother George Knezovich center and Dave Knezovich on the right. Steve Knezovich, not pictured, also served in the Navy.

My best friend’s dad — and our Little League coach — had been there, too. In the infantry. One time when I was at my buddy’s house (they had a pool table in the basement!) my friend showed me some German medals that his dad had squirreled away in their basement. We could only imagine.

As much as I wanted to know about my dad’s experience  — all their experiences — I didn’t get much. Which was more or less par for the course. My father wasn’t an extreme introvert but on the blabbermouth scale –1 being painfully quiet and 10 being verbally incontinent — I’d put him at a three. And he was pretty typical I think.

But he was tightlipped even by his own standards about his time overseas. I mean, he was in the VFW. He got the American Legion magazine. He went to the patriotic parades. But he only talked about his time stationed in France once with me. He’d been at a company softball game and drank one of his infrequent beers there.

That evening I learned how he and countless others fought seasickness on the Liberty Boats – seafaring cattle cars for troops — on the way over. He was not on the front lines, he was in the medic corps, at least I think he called it that. He took care of guys who’d been shipped to hospitals behind the lines for care. It included a little bit of everything, including some direct care, shuttling the wounded between facilities — and shuttling the dead. It was maybe a 10-minute window on his wartime experience in the TV room of our little house. I was sitting on the couch; he was lying on the floor in front of the TV, as he liked to do. I wish I’d had a tape recorder. But that was it.

He hadn’t been on the front lines and yet, I could tell he’d seen some awful stuff. Sometimes I look back and wonder if my dad didn’t talk about his experience much because of what he saw or because of what he hadn’t seen but knew that others had. One of his brothers had been on the front lines and I learned later that it changed him forever. An avid hunter before the war, he would not touch a gun again according to one relative. But that wasn’t the only change — he suffered mightily and it undoubtedly not only changed him but cut his life short. Over the past few years, I’ve made a good friend, a Viet Nam veteran, who has wrestled with PTSD ever since his time in the jungle. Surviving war is just the first step for lots of folks, and it’s always been that way.

I got to thinking about all this because, of course, Veterans Day approaches, and with it, remembrances and rituals (including blockbuster sales events). And special reports. I heard one Sunday morning on Bob Edwards Weekend. It was about medical staff who treated the wounded in the jungles of Viet Nam in the late 1960s.

It wasn’t easy to listen to, but it was riveting and poignant. I couldn’t find it online anywhere except here:

https://soundcloud.com/search?q=Stories%20from%20Third%20Med%3A%20Surviving%20a%20Jungle%20ER

It’s in four 15-minute parts. Any of the segments reminds that war is terror and butchery and it forces people to give up their humanity just to survive. No glory there.

There’s going to be a lot of blah blah around Veterans Day like there is around everything these days. Things get sort of mixed up. On one hand, there is nothing glorious about war, and fear sometimes we forget that and try to glorify veterans — and from my experience, it’s not what they want. On the other hand, I think about my dad — probably the most gentle man I’ve ever known — being put in the position he was put in. And that makes me think about everyone that has been put in that position. I don’t know how they did it.

I feel grateful that I never faced it. But I’m not a pacifist and so I’m grateful for those who have faced it. And I feel absolutely sick that without question, we’ve put people in that awful position unnecessarily way too much.

Mostly, I realize that no amount of parades, ceremonies, or expressions of gratitude can balance the books with these people. While we honor their service, we are obligated to do whatever we can to avoid requiring it.