Tomorrow being Memorial Day here in the U.S., and jumping the gun a bit...
Yesterday evening, I finished viewing last year's Christmas present, a complete box set of Band of Brothers. This got me to thinking. I knew my dad was in the 101st Airborne towards the end of WWII, but I was a bit hazy on the details. So I pulled out the memorabilia box from the attic, and refreshed my memories. Learned a few new things, too.
My father, Russ
joined the Army with his two best buddies, Dick and Robert, in early 1943. (Were they drafted? Probably.) At first, my father trained to be a tanker, destined to be a replacement in the 2nd Armored Division IIRC. Then sometime c. 1944, he volunteered for the paratroops, the "Screaming Eagles" 101st Airborne Division. (I think it's maybe because it paid better.) Dad just missed The Bulge, joining his outfit -- Co. C, 326th A/B Engr. Bn. -- to participate in the Moder River crossing on 31st January, 1945. In his retelling, by now a corporal, he was leading his squad of paratroopers crossing the river in a rubber raft. Under heavy fire, the rest of the guys were ducking for cover. Like the rubber was going to stop any bullets! My father ordered them to paddle as hard as they could, to get across the river ASAP, for otherwise they were just sitting ducks there in the middle of the water. He kept his cool under fire!
My father was with the 101st when they liberated Berchtesgaden in May 1945. They also "liberated" (libated?) Herman Goering's Wine Cellar at Berchtesgaden. Dad remembers getting drunk with the rest of the unit. Alas, he didn't make it up to Hitler's Eagles Nest!
Like any Occupation Force soldier at the time, my father was bored stiff and had the usual complaints about the food, the weather, about guard duty, etc. And worries about shipping out to the Pacific:
But wait! Dad finally did get his chance to visit Hitler's Eagles Nest after all:
"The German girls are too muscular to suit me." [:D]
More weeks and months of boredom, then VJ Day, ending any worries of shipping out to the "CBI", then more weeks and months of tedium still. Then a transfer to the 82nd Airborne, for some reason. A couple of weeks before leaving France, my father hurt his back badly in a celebratory "victory jump". Rather than remain there in French hospital ("the Frogs don't love us and we sure as hell don't waste any love on them"), he was determined to ship home with his new unit to march down New York's 5th Avenue in a grand victory parade late that year. Paying the price for his bad judgment, he suffered from terrible back pains for the rest of his life.
Dad wasn't a hero or anything. He was just a poor farm boy from rural southwest Michigan growing up during the Great Depression. His father had run off, had abandoned the family. When his mom died in a car accident in the early 1930s, my father was effectively orphaned. He was adopted into the family of one of his two best buddies. Tragically (aren't all war deaths tragic?), Robert Silberman went MIA on a bombing run over France a month after D-Day. By August, the War Department had officially declared him dead:
After the War and for the next 40 years, my father was like a true son to "Aunt" Nina and "Uncle" George. My elder brother Russ Jr. was named after our dad. I in turn was named after Robert, my foster uncle, my namesake.
On this Memorial Day weekend 2018, to my father Russ, to my "uncle" Robert, and to all the brave men and women, on all sides, who lost their lives in WWII and in all wars before and since: I salute you all!
