“Hey Suz. Where did we get this?” my husband asked as he held out a rather wicked looking tarnished brass knife-like thing we have used as a letter opener in a pinch. I did not really know; it might have been something from my mother’s family.
Hubby left my office and I thought maybe I’d find a clue in one of the “family history” files I keep meaning to clean out. Finding the photo of a grandfather I really never knew well has catapulted my memories through a lifetime of snapshots.
“That was my dad in WWI,” I remember Mom telling me, pointing to a rather heavyset young man in a trench coat posing stiffly for the camera. As I thumbed through the file, my mind began its time march through years of the men in my life who wore military uniforms and the mental snapshots of them that occasionally invade a good night’s sleep.
I see my father and his brother, World War II pilots whose planes were shot down over Germany three years apart, but who miraculously were held in the same POW camp before the war ended. The same uncle also served during the Korean conflict and their younger brother wore an Air Force uniform in Europe in the late 1950s.
I see the cousin who spent his military time climbing radio towers behind the Berlin wall doing clandestine watching or whatever. We never have been sure whether it was watching or spying, and he is not tellin’.
My mind begins racing. There is the young, handsome man a sorority sister married a week before he shipped out to Vietnam. He was flown home alive a week later missing his legs.
Flashing by is Larry, the super fellow another “sister” married at age 19 and followed throughout an Army career that included two tours in Vietnam, War College, a master’s degree, and a final assignment at the Pentagon. I miss them both dearly.
I see myself crying, saying goodbye to the young man with dancing, somewhat mischievous eyes—even in his formal Westpoint graduation portrait—leaving for jungle school in Panama. And crying again when only darkness emerged where the twinkle had been just 12 months earlier.
Oh, and there is the Army-Navy Game in Philadelphia where I ran into my math tutor who was so happy to have received his appointment to the Naval Academy! The Navy won that one.
My mind is sprinting now as it moves forward to another generation and I think of a nephew, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him to be in the Mediterranean on the USS Cole when it was being fired upon. And then I feel pride at watching him receive his wings as a helicopter pilot in Pensacola.
There is no imagination or mind game going on when I hear footsteps on the stairs. It is my husband, the six-year Air Force veteran whose time in uniform ended at Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand near the time the U.S. ended its offensive action in Vietnam. Those who have Zoom meetings with me may have seen a few of his framed citations and medals hanging on the office wall behind me.
After cleaning the letter opener that started my mind journey he unlocked one mystery. In script on one side and in block letters on the other the brass letter opener says “St. Mihiel.”
A quick internet search shows that the Battle of Saint-Mihiel was the first large offensive launched mainly by the U.S. Army in World War I. The battle was fought from Sept. 12 to 15, 1918, under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing.
I still do not know how the letter opener came to live in my house, but I do believe it came from Granddad Bigler, the WW I soldier in the black and white photo living in the family history file.
Thank you to all the Veterans for your service.