6 thoughts on “Only One”

  2. I guess to be classified a ‘veteran’ you have to have been on the battlefield, or at least part of the greater military participating in the war.

    Too bad, because any American, and others, who was alive during those war years was a ‘part’ of the war. (There are at least thousands of them alive today.) It is at our peril when we dismiss the profound affect war has on the total population of a nation at war. If we could acknowledge this truth, we just may not be so quick to launch one.

    My 97 year old mother has recounted to me through the years the profound affect WWI had on her family and thus her. It is not surprising that she has always hated war – even participating in peace marches during the Vietnam tragedy. Our present plundering of Iraq has led her to conclude that we have learned nothing, that WWI, the war ‘to end all wars’ as it was called, ended nothing. It was merely a prelude to a century of wars.

  3. Although I respect what the families went through, I think the battlefield vets do deserve a special place of honor.

    My grandfather was in the trenches on the Western Front on the original Armistice Day. I suspect that was one of those experiences that you had to experience first hand to fully appreciate.

    My dad had been born a month earlier, and I don’t think Grandpa knew it yet because the mail hadn’t caught up to him. Then, after he got home about June 1919, for many years he had terrible nightmares about the war. Grandma made him sleep in another room for a considerable time. Although considering Grandma’s snoring, that may have been OK with him. She was a powerful snorer.

    He was a sweet man, and he’s been gone about 50 years now. I still miss him.

  4. I certainly agree that those who were ‘in the trenches’ deserve a special place of honor. I remember two veterans of WWII who came home, resumed living and about 20 years later committed suicide – finally victims of the war. Perhaps there should be a qualification, not age, or gender, or physical fitness, or mental fitness, or station in life, or employment status, but only if you have experienced war first-hand would you be qualified to launch one.

  5. The Man in the Model A

    You’ve no doubt heard of “Dutch Uncles”…Well, John Garman was sort of a “Dutch Grandfather:” to all us kids on the ‘upper east side’…He and Mrs. Garman (aka: “The World’s Foremost Authority”) lived across the street from us…No matter what your childhood problem was, you could get help – from John – or the sagest of advice – from the Mrs.

    John taught Vocational Machine Shop at Poplar Bluff High School for many years…Since he was a Master Machinist and was employed by the State of Missouri Dept. of Education, his lack of formal education was not a hindrance…He was one of the most ingenious and creative thinkers/problem solvers I have ever known…My indebtedness to him could never be repaid…

    John had a sixth-grade education…He was forced out of school at the age of 11 when his father was killed in a logging accident…Being the oldest child, it fell to John to earn a living for his mother, aged grandfather (both born in Germany) and his several siblings…He got a job at the local sawmill as a millwright’s helper…

    One day (circa 1912) while painting graese on the chain driving one of the great saws, his glove got caught and his right hand went round between the chain and drive sprocket…When he pulled off the glove his last two fingers came off with it…The parts that were still attached were mangled…They stuck his hand – and the two severed fingers – in a bucket of coal oil and ‘rushed’ him (by mule-drawn wagon) to Morehouse…Niether of the town’s two doctors saw any alternative to amputation of the hand…But John’s mother refused…A drunken veternarian wound up basting the hand back together on thier kitchen table and luckily, it healed…Not well, but it healed…His fingers pointed all directions…So that shaking Johns’ hand was like grabbing hold of a sack of peanuts…

    But John learned to use it and his trigger finger worked just fine…When war was declared in 1916, John joined the Missouri National Guard and went to France as a member of the Rainbow Division…Where he gained a reputation as a very clever and useful guy to have around…

    Back home the anti-German hysteria was in full swing…And all the Garman family decided to anglicize the family name to “Gorman”…All except John’s mother…Her reply to the suggestion was something like: “My Johnny is in France and his name is Garman, anyone who doesn’t like it can kiss my ass”…

    So one branch of the family remained Garmans…

    John was a wonderful man, a most outstanding teacher and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known…All his students adressed him as: “John”…He cussed like a sailor with boils and would never tolerate laziness or stupidity – which to him were one and the same…I never heard of him paddling a student, but he kicked plenty asses (including mine)…

    He drove a 1930 Model A…Which was not a “car”, it was John’s Machine…And it ran like a fine piece of machinery is supposed to…You could barely hear it at idle…

    I graduated in ’63 and the state forced John to retire at the end of the ’64 school year, by which time I was in the Marines…I was in Japan, on my way to Vietnam when I got a letter from home with the news that John had died from “complications” of a bad cold…I cried…

    Mrs. Garman left the Model A sitting on her driveway (where it had been parked every night of my life) until about a month before I got home in ’67…Some guy walked up and offered her $400 for it and she took it…I could have strangled her when I heard…

    John was one of many, many veterans I knew when I was growing up…They all did their part and took justified pride in having done so…Their example taught me to do the same…

  6. There are four in Italy as well, plus one who enrolled just after the war.

    And if you think the trenches were bad, think of the battle for Gorizia, where IIRC something like 100,000 men died in a single day.

    (My grandfather fought on the mountains. He died more than twenty years ago but for some reason I still think of WWI veterans as people who are around, old but still hale. WWI was fought on our land, my home town was occupied and there was rape and pillage. The memory is still fresh.)

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