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| The shoulder insignia of my later maternal; grandfather's outfit, the 13th Airborned Division, for part of his service during 1942-1946, |
Thinking today of my late maternal grandfather, David Lewis Stokes from Lexington, North Carolina, who answered the call like so many others more than 80 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Initially anti-aircraft personnel in a Pennsylvania-German National Guard unit, he later served as glider infantry before taking the opportunity to train as a paratrooper ahead of the planned invasion of France.
Miraculously,
he, along with his two older brothers and three brothers-in-law (Uncles
Baxter, Jack, Sid, Charlie, and Bob) all managed to come home and lead
relatively normal lives for many decades afterwards. Since so many others did not, I have always wondered how our family was so fortunate given the sheer magnitude of the 1939-45 war.
Likewise, a special mention of the only First World War veteran I knew, Harrison Terrell, the neighbor of my maternal grandparents, who I used to see and say hello to daily as I climbed off the school bus each afternoon as a small child as he tended his large front yard/garden. A Philadelphia attorney, and a Quaker, he nevertheless joined up when the United States entered that conflict in 1917, and was sent to France where he served until the end of that war, the journey home, and eventual demobilization.
I knew all of these men well as a child and young (-er) person. The only one who ever spoke of his military service was my grandfather Dave, and then in somewhat humorous terms about his training and early run-ins with irate sergeants. He mentioned once, however, in response to one of my childish questions, that he had been close by when a friend was killed (Melvin Brown). The subject was quietly changed, and even at seven years old I somehow knew not to ask again.
There were a few times later during my formative years when the rest of the family would be woken in the night by his quiet cries of "No, no!" across the upstairs hall before my grandmother would wake him, and he would return to sleep. I have always suspected those episodes were related.
His
older brother Jack, a school teacher and principal, I learned later as
an adult, slept with a loaded automatic pistol close at hand, the result of his time in the Pacific Theater. His wife, Aunt Mollie, slept in another bedroom for much of their marriage because of that habit with which Uncle Jack struggled for the rest of his days.
These
men were my idols as a boy and remain so today. I can't imagine doing
what they were asked to do. My deepest respect goes out to them and
others who have served in various conflicts past and present. Clearly, those who came home, even if visibly unscathed, nevertheless left a part of themselves behind on some foreign soil somewhere. We now know a great deal more about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and its lingering effects.
As parts
of the world seem to be caught in an irreversible downward spiral in late 2023, I keep asking myself the
following questions, for which, I fear, the terrible answers are already plain
as day. Have we learned nothing from the horrors of the past? And why
must history invariably repeat itself?
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