My Father, My Hero

Dark clouds loomed over Europe in the nineteen thirties. Grave feelings swept the continent, and the fallout came across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.

Most history books are written by the victors; the losers are left to read and decipher what is their truth. So, this is the biography of my father’s true experience in World War Two.

Being eighty-one years old, memory has faded to a dim light. Regarding my father giving his account, all is not forgotten, for he did tell my husband and me more facts about his time in the army during World War Two, when the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day came around.

Although many company commanders were either dead or wounded, no one company commander witnessed what my father bravely done, putting his life on the line for his beloved country and fellow army buddies. Now I shall tell his remarkable story!

If the reader has seen any movie about D-Day, they will then get a glimpse into what my father had witnessed, felt and seen and heard. It was a day in hell.

Let’s rewind back to my father’s early childhood. Some would say it was a misspent childhood; others would not, depending on one’s point of view.

Born in Dover, New Hampshire on August twenty-third, nineteen twenty-two, to a lower middle class family, he had one older brother, two younger brothers, and three younger sisters. One sister died very young. No one as yet told me exactly how she passed away. But she had been very sick for some time.

From old pictures that I have seen of my father as a little boy, he was a cute boy with blonde hair and a very mischievous smile, with bright blue eyes to match. Always up to something, usually it was getting into trouble of some kind, testing those around him, pushing their emotional buttons, one could say, to their very limit, while he would be enjoying it.

Sometimes, he and his friends would get a rifle and see who was the best shot. Later, that would come in handy during his time in the army, during two major battles, D-Day and The Battle of the Bulge.

His childhood was a very hard one. The Great Depression was on full blast; it was going very strong by the time my father was ten years old. Since they could not afford to buy lots of toys, they just used their imagination to the fullest, like using the rifle as a toy, not to hurt or kill someone, only to see how far they could shot in the nearby woods. Sometimes, they would shot at moving trains that passed by or at trees and other homemade targets.

As time went by, my father would go on Sunday mornings to Sunday school. One time, as he told me, he had some money to give as they passed the plate around, but he kept his money and spent it on candy. Later I found out from one of his childhood friends that my father didn’t actually buy candy with the offering money, but instead he bought cigars. He and his friend would stand around on Central Avenue, smoking their cigars and watching the women pass by. Need I say it was a lot of fun for them, enjoyment beyond words at that age?

I felt that my father’s favorite pastime as a boy was being a rebel long before anyone heard of the actor James Dean.

Growing up just above the poverty line, I guess gave my father some sort of freedom to find other ways to have some sort fun as a rebellious, joking boy. This he did with some wildness to it.

Humor played a great role in my dad’s growing up.