Soldier Boy

Ettrick Alvo Koch, came home from World War II to bury his German-born father, who was killed by a hit and run drunk driver. Nearing the end of high school, I began to understand how this war, and his experiences fighting on the front lines in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, buried the gentle, sensitive man who would be my father. I am a baby boomer, born a few years after my father’s return. He met my mother before the war at the Glendale Star newspaper office in California. She was petite and well groomed, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was six feet tall with, according to my mother, a John Wayne swagger and charm. Unfortunately, my mother was engaged to marry her high school sweetheart, Rex. When my father came home with broken bones and malaria, my mother visited him in the hospital. During the four years my father was on the front lines, my mother had married, been unhappy, divorced, and given up her first-born.

I realize now my parents’ union was based on a foundation of deep sadness and loss. They created a marriage and family to rescue themselves. The heart of my father was family; this was all he talked about: how important it was for a family to stick together against the dog-eat-dog world. With the help of his father-in-law, he built a solid cement wall around our entire backyard. Our corner lot with the three-bedroom home became his kingdom and we children became part of his spiraling, dysfunctional web. When my siblings and I were young, he was a loving, devoted man. As we inched towards adolescence, all the anger compressed inside gushed out. Dad wanted home, family, security, understanding and sympathy for his pain. But the older I got, the unhappier my father became.

Beginning in elementary school, Dad often took us to the local rifle range for target practice. He was an excellent marksman. While we excitedly tried to shoot and make a mark anywhere on the target, Dad consistently hit a bull’s eye.

My father started sharing war stories. His favorite, the one about the tomatoes, began during a soupy black night. His 30^th Infantry was slogging through the European countryside. Mortar fire echoed off the hillsides. As my dad relived these moments, the cigarette, dangling at the corner of his mouth, lit up the raging purpose in his eyes. We leaned in close to my father and couldn’t wait to hear what happened next.

It had rained the day, before and my father shivered as he hiked through the field. His pack was heavy, his gun loaded, his nerves on survival mode. As his feet squished through the dark dirt, he stopped and looked down. He noticed something red beside his mud splattered boots. He reached and touched a gooey, soft roundness. To his amazement he was walking through a tomato garden. Lagging behind the other soldiers, my dad picked tomatoes and shoved them one by one in his mouth. The juice rolled down his grinning, weary face. He picked more tomatoes and shoved them into his pack. Soon dad’s comrades turned and saw dad’s tomato stained smile and the tomatoes he carried to share with them. It became a tomato feast with everyone happily stuffing themselves. Dad always said this was one of the best days of his life.

While telling this story, my father became young again. Though mentioning The War brought an intense and nervous gravity to my father’s demeanor, the tomato story revealed his humorous optimism. No matter how much we plagued our father to tell us more war stories, he never told stories about shooting or killing. To hear Dad talk about The War we would never have known that he fired a gun. He only spoke about the awful rations, the closeness of he and his buddies, the time he stood at attention and saw Winston Churchill stroll by. Mostly, he expressed amazement at his survival.

As I entered adulthood, I saw the damage that The War had done to my father’s soul. He worked hard as a self-employed gardener, came home, showered, put on a suit and constantly talked to himself in the bathroom mirror: “Goddamn bastards…world’s gone to hell...what am I to do?” Before becoming a gardener, he had worked for the Los Angeles Water and Power Company. There, he also occasionally talked to himself. He was a harmless, lonely, disillusioned young man who had difficulty transitioning from soldier to family man. His co-workers became brutal rather than supportive. For his self-talk, they had him committed to a stay at a mental hospital. As a child I wondered what had happened to my father when he was gone for several weeks. After a series of involuntary shock treatments, my father was deemed “normal,” and allowed to come home. But with his unemployment, we were poverty-stricken. My mother had my two-year-old brother taken care of by her parents during the week so she could begin working at our local savings and loan.

This hospital incident was a turning point in my father’s life. His brain had been cracked open, and the result was despondency and periodic violent outbursts. Through the years his work with the earth as a gardener gave him back the grounding he had lost. But he was never the same. His humor, his storytelling flattened. Unhappiness swelled and put a depressive damper on our household. Whenever the truck pulled into the driveway at the end of his work day, we anxiously cringed, not knowing his mood.

War movies, preaching and storytelling soothed my father. He desperately wanted to love his children and to give them “a better life” but he didn’t know how. As we left to lead our own lives, he frantically clung to us. He would show up at my college apartment unannounced to take me out to dinner. I would dutifully sit with him and soak up the sadness he exuded. But I was entering my rebellious phase and wanted little to do with this depressed man.

After a year studying abroad, I remember my father meeting me at the Los Angeles Airport at three in the morning. His tan, weather-worn face was wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his formerly tall, thin body was overweight and bent. As he timidly walked towards me, I felt a stab of emotional pain: my father had gotten old! His shyness in sharing his feelings was pushed aside in the predawn darkness as he told me, “I missed you so much.”

By his sixth decade, Dad's softened anger allowed him to accept his humble fate. He loved nothing more than working in his garden or on his house. He remained the king of his small kingdom, but now he treated Mom with respect. He frequently told me how much he loved her and how much he loved me. His life had betrayed him, and he never fully understood why. Although he died before the Gulf War, the War on Terror and the Iraqi invasion, he never knew what to make of Vietnam.

We placed his ashes in a small garden at Forest Lawn. I cried more than I have ever cried before. I cried for the young, sensitive, intellectually curious boy my father lost and I cried for the mellowed, older gentleman he became. The one object I wanted was his Bible. He never attended church, but this Bible became his memory book. Inside were collected magazine and newspaper clippings, pictures of us children, report cards, personal ramblings and a few school essays we had written. I opened this treasured book and carefully unfolded the brown stained articles.They included statements about the perils and futility of war:

“…Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the bargain, is the most formidable of all beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on his own species.” From The Philosophy of William James

“…The 3^rd Infantry Division (my father’s division) had suffered more casualties than any other division in the entire American Army. You don’t celebrate things like that.”

My father had double-underscored the last line above: “You don’t celebrate things like

that.”

When, in the early eighties, I visited Russia as part of a Women’s Journey for Peace, we were welcomed at a special ceremonial luncheon by the Mayor of Minsk. “I met and fought with American soldiers and they became my friends, my compatriots. I will never forget them and I hope we will eventually learn the lessons of war.”

Emotionally responding to the Mayor's simple words, and without realizing what I was doing, I stood up. The Mayor smiled and leaned forward. “My father fought in The War,” I said, “and I am touched by your words and honored to be here.”

Stepping down from the podium, the Mayor reached into his pocket. “Your father was a brave man.” He shook my hand and handed me a small silver bison. “This,” he said, “is my city’s symbol of courage and bravery and I give it to you as a token of remembrance.”

The silver bison stands on the bookshelf as I write these words. Tears flow as I relive this experience, and as I reread a typed note written in response to one of my high school essays and tucked inside my father’s Bible:

B10 English, Students Victoria, 15 and Dad, 45. Subject: Simple Enjoyment

Our Blanket of Stars

…and the sky of blue mist with its hem of woven stars that often seems so wonderful to you and me, Dad.

We find endless beauty as we look up and lift our eyes to a golden sunset…a fluff of clouds…a thunderhead of majestic importance…how fast the sky’s expression changes with the power of a storm.

I enjoy your phrase, ‘hem of woven stars,’ Victoria. The sky is a magic lighted highway…a parade of lasting beauty. I even enjoyed it during the war…with bombs bursting in air…I looked to see if ‘our’ sky was still there.

Let’s be thankful this miracle of miracles has been enjoyed by you and me.

© 2011