Veterans Day follow up

I follow a blog called Army of Dude kept by a soldier returned from Iraq. His Veterans Day post asked for thoughts and stories. I provided this one, then decided it might be worth repeating here.

I have spent a lot of time with WWII and Korean vets from my dad's battalion; my second book about them will come out by year end. At a reunion I asked a crusty old guy how he reacted when he got news the war was over. (These guys had been in Europe for 25 months and were certain they were slated to invade Japan.) He said there was a lot of jumping and shouting, but mostly the days went on like they had.

At the reunion a year later, he took me aside on the first night. He said he had been thinking about me all year, because I had asked him a question and he didn't like the answer he gave me. He went on to say that he did a little jumping and shouting, too but in the evening he found himself sitting on the steps of a house doing nothing, and suddenly he began to cry. His lieutenant (a good, respected guy) stopped by and said "Something get to you, Hawver?" and my friend answered "Just the word 'home' Lieutenant. Just the word 'home.'"

A couple of years later he told me he felt responsible for the deaths of two men because he gave them permission to bed down on a terrace that was a little more exposed than he liked. A mortar hit some women doing laundry, they ran to help, and the next round got both of them. "I knew I didn't cause it, but I knew I had allowed them to take an extra risk." His guilt made him extra cautious, and a few months later he made his squad dig in when rest of the platoon didn't. They took shells right in their position that night, and he knew some of them would have been killed if they hadn't been in holes.

His family didn't know these things. He was honest with me, a non-veteran, because I took the time to understand as best I could even though I knew I would fall short. His trust was one of the great rewards of my life. Later I gave him a WWII-era DI crest of the battalion as a gift. When his wife told me he had been buried with it on his lapel, it was my turn to cry.