Memorial Day Isn't Funny

I was a twelve when it happened.

We were sitting in the den, mother, daddy, my little brother, and me. The television was playing, that old, big, black and white, large cabinet TV. Mother and daddy were sitting on the sofa. My brother was sitting beside me. My memory says he wasn’t bothering me.

We were watching a movie. It was The Story of GI Joe, the screen adaptation of the story by the same name, written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Ernie Pyle.

The movie tells the story of the U. S. Army marching up the boot of Italy. It’s told from the point of view of the grunt, the infantryman slogging through the mud to the point of exhaustion. He crawls into a foxhole to wait higher up command decisions, and then he slugs his way through battle after battle, again and again.

In Pyle’s story the army gets bogged down at Monte Cassino. Here the Germans are using the monastery atop the mount for their spotters as well as their artillery. Every time the army moves the guns fire and they are picked to pieces. Meanwhile the generals are talking, considering whether or not to bomb the monastery, a religious shrine to the people.

One character in the movie has received a 78rpm record from home. The letter accompanying the record tells that the sound contained in the record is the voice of the GI’s first born son, a son never seen. Somewhere along the line, the GI had picked up an old victrola. It didn’t work. After every patrol he’d come back into the hole they’d dug in the bank of a gully. He’s pull of his helmet and battle clothing. He’d begin to tinker with the machine. Over and over, day after day he tries to get it to work, to play the voice he’d been waiting.

The eventual day comes when he flops down exhausted after another patrol. He pulls the victrola to him, works on it some more. He pauses, places the record on the turntable and cranks the machine. He hears it; the sound is clear beneath the scratching background, “Daddy! Daddy!” says the voice.

The GI, after months of being holed up in horrible conditions, breaks. He runs outside his hole; he raises a fist against the Germans atop the mountain. He screams. And then he falls. He falls splish splash into the mud. He slides. His face is a contortion of mud-soaked rage. In my pre-teen mind it was comedy. It was funny. I laughed.

It took only a second to realize I was the only one laughing. I turned to look at my daddy. He was sitting on the sofa. Mother was holding his hand. He was weeping like a baby. Large tears flowed like a river to soak his shirt.

I didn’t look back at the TV. I looked at my daddy for a long, long time. There was a mystery here. There were things going on I did not understand. My daddy; my big, strong, invincible daddy was crying.

I remember going to my room to think about this. I don’t know how the movie ended. I do know my daddy never talked about this. And I know that never again did I play war in the backyard.

That night is impressed on my mind after all these years. That sight of my daddy’s tears changed my life. Somewhere in the mud of Italy, my daddy saw too many of his friends make sacrifice for their country, for freedom. Many of those made the ultimate sacrifice.

Daddy never said a word about that night, about my laughter and my leaving the room. He didn’t have to. That was the night I discovered that dying for one’s country is not funny.