Ripshit Heart

Now that Grandfather is gone, I regret that I never taped him talking about WWII, like I had always planned to. I used to ask him about it sometimes, but he wasn't very forthcoming with answers.

The first time I asked him one day to tell me about the War, I was about 10 or 11. It went a little something like this...

ME: tell me a war story

GRANDFATHER: well, what kind of war story?

ME: I don't know; do you have any war stories?

GRANDFATHER: Well I don't know what you want to know about.

ME: Uh.... did you blow stuff up?

GRANDFATHER: No, because in order to blow stuff up, you have to use a bomb. Bombs are dropped from airplanes. I was on a ship.

ME: (after a long pause) Did you... cause things to explode?

GRANDFATHER: No, because in order to make things explode, you need to use a bomb, which are dropped from airplanes, and I was on a ship, not an airplane.

SWEETIE (butting in): SIDNEY, TELL HER WHAT IT WAS LIKE IN THE WAR!

GRANDFATHER: Well, we *did* shoot down the Japanese planes with machine guns that were on the ship... but we didn't cause them to blow up.

The next time I asked him about the war was a couple of years later. He chuckled as he told me about being in the Pacific and not able to get to a supply ship because the Japanese were bombing the supply ships or something. Thus the entire crew of the ship were forced to eat chipped beef on toast for a month. He actually giggled as he told me it was called "SH... well... (whispered) shit. on a shingle." He could never eat that particular dish again. The mere sight of shit on a shingle still made him feel queasy.

Last year at Christmas, Grandfather took me aside and said that all the screaming children made him really agitated. In the War, before the Japanese fighters would attack, it would be very still and silent. Then there would be noise and chaos, and my sister's kids brought back the same panicky feelings of being on board a ship with kamikaze pilots crashing on deck.

posted by Scooter B. @ 9/08/2007 09:11:00 PM 0 comments