I am grateful that I belong to a generation that got to sit and listen to stories about World War II from the mouths of those who lived it.  Grampa, my mother’s father, had already been in the army when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, but my great uncles had likely joined up when another uncle, Uncle Sam, issued the call.  I remember sitting at a table with old men who called each other boys.  One was a medic in Europe.  Another saw so much action his hair turned white.  Another man was a POW.  As for Grampa, he remained stateside.  It was his eyesight.  The doctors told him that he would be a casualty the first day.  So they sent him to Louisiana where he worked German prisoners.  When Gramma brought their oldest child to the worksite, my Grampa recounted, they cried.  They all cried.  That little girl would make my grandparents cry, too, one day when the cancer proved to be just too much for her thirty-two-year-old body.  Her loss was always too painful to bring up.  His was a silent grief. 

But once a soldier, always a soldier.  Grampa seemed to frame his entire existence on his time in the army.  We were never allowed to wear hats at the table, for instance.  Grampa told us of the time a drill instructor snatched a hat from the head of one of the recruits and tossed it out the window.  It was also unheard of to remain seated when the national anthem was played.  One simply had to stand up and salute the flag if it was visible.  He was a part of the Greatest Generation, and I got to hear his stories.  I did not know how good I had it. 

As a boy, I spent many days with Grampa, cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking cordwood.  Building and repairing what needed it.  Cutting grass.  Shoveling snow.  He was a man with many friends who knew the value of hard work.  He lived through the Great Depression and the War, as he called it, and somehow, I got to sit at his feet, so to speak, and soak in his character, try to understand his experiences, study what it means to be a man of integrity and honesty.  He was not perfect, of course.  Nobody is.  But for a good many years, we shared the same time.  Our lives overlapped.  And I have come to believe now that I am much older that the time I spent with Grampa was a great gift.  In a world that seems to be increasingly spinning out of control, here was a man who was centered on what matters most: God, family, a good day’s work. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Barracks 

At eighty-eight he was 

stationed in another place: 

“This is better than Indiantown Gap,” he 

announced to my mother.  “Twelve men above and twelve 

men below.  I sweep, and I mop.” 

And Mom smiled, and Grandpa smiled, 

and the nurses were left unaccounted for 

like the pajamas 

that were not standard issue 

and the wheelchair that was; 

Samuel G. Bowers with a purpose 

though his back arched determinedly toward the ash: 

a summit reached, the winter looks toward spring, 

an old boy still mustered: 

“But they got black people in this barracks,” he 

revealed.  “Can you believe it?” he asked. 

And Mom smiled, and Grandpa smiled, 

then Mom nodded alone.