Never Forget

Being raised a "Navy junior" is an experience many share. From as far back as I can remember, our lives were shaped by the military. We moved every 2-3 years (which was hard as a child but now I'm glad of it) and lived in several of the United States including Hawaii.

At the ripe old age of 5, I remember my father building a float for the Memorial Day parade in Columbus, Ohio where we were stationed. It was a replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This made such an impression on me. My little mind couldn't understand why we didn't know who was in there. In fact, there is no body in the tomb. It's so those who've lost someone (MIA) can imagine them in there.

My father (who'll be 91 this June) will be buried one day at Arlington National Cemetery. Those war years as a fighter pilot and the decades of service afterwards training pilots and flying super-connies during the cold war are times he'll never forget. His family won't either. We have many fond memories too. One of my favorites is playing in the surf with a giant airplane inner-tube.

It wasn't until I met my father in Paris in the late spring of 2004 for a Trafalgar Tour that took us to Normandy during the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that I began to understand how deeply he remembers. As it happens, there was an elderly man on tour with us who'd survived the invasion. As our bus lumbered through the French countryside, we passed allied forces bivouacked, re-enactment style, in the hills and valleys - the Omaha Beach veteran narrated his arrival on the beachhead as his comrades-in-arms fell dead all around him.

We walked on that beach, which is now a kind of sacred park dedicated to the men who fought and died there. My father (who has never been one to share his emotions) did not speak about his war experiences on the bus. But later that day I saw him standing alone in the sea of white crosses overlooking the English Channel in silence. I think he was overwhelmed with memories of the friends he won't see again until he rejoins them on the other side.

My father graduated from Annapolis in 1942 and saw his first tour of duty the year after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was an Ensign on a destroyer that went down in the Guadalcanal Campaign (aka Iron Bottom Bay). Radar was primitive in those days. They were hit hard amid ship and sunk in a matter of minutes. My father says he and the Captain literally stepped off the bridge into the shark-infested waters. The Captain was never seen again.

My father was a champion swimmer and that's probably how he managed to stay afloat for 18 hours before he and a handful of others were rescued. I know he remembers sitting under a palm tree in a kind of daze and that at night a solo Japanese pilot would fly over the Marines encamped on the island. They called that flier Washing Machine Charlie because the plane sounded like a washing machine and kept them from a good night's sleep. But that's about all I know.

After that harrowing experience, the man who would become my father returned to the U.S. for flight school. The rest, you might say, is history. He met my mother at the Fort Worth Naval Air Station where she was working as a secretary by day and singing in an Andrews Sisters type trio at the USO by night. You can be sure that years later, when our family was stationed near Pearl Harbor, I was taken to visit the USS Arizona - an experience I'll never forget. Today we remember the fallen from all wars, past and present.

This is also one reason why I have a thing for a man in a uniform.

Photo Credit: Thomas D. McAvoy and John Moore for Time/Life.