rawlife’s BodyBlog

   I was watching the history channel the other day and a little clip popped up about Guadalcanal, otherwise known as "Green Hell" in the Pacific islands during WWII.  It sparked my interest because my grandfather was there in the 1st Marine division, along with in Peleliu, another Japanese Pacific island.  It might sound a little weird, but I didn’t really feel a strong connection with my grandfather until he past away, which was a few years back.  These past few years though, I’ve felt it real strong.  I get a little teary eyed here and there when I think of him and the things he did in his life.  I can almost feel the discomfort courage it took to get over.  The fact is, I get like that a lot though when people have gone through real hardship, in his case hardship in life in general and then pure unadulterated hell in the war, and come out a real hero in life.  That was my grandfather in a lot of ways. 

He was awarded the silver star for valor on Peleliu, several thought he should have been given the medal of honor.  He never ever talked about the war, almost real stereotypical WWII vet…just rarelv ever mentioned it and when he did, it was never one of these ’war stories,’ it was just a little blurb having to do with whatever else he was talking about.  He had to sleep with stories on tape in full blared earphones(volume ALL the way up) until the day he died.  Basically every single night.  I don’t know how my grandmother put up with it, you could actually follow to the stories he was listening to in his headphones in the other room-he had those big puffy ones, not the ones that go right in your ear.   

   Anyway, this documentary was pretty cool-the vets they interviewed described exactly what he described to me in detail the one and only time he ever talked about anything that happened in the war-I had a paper to write for school and I convinced him to open up a bit…he still didn’t get gory or anything, he just didn’t think it was was necessary or in good taste.  It was real clear to me though that Peleliu was hell on earth.  And now even more so.  He refused to watch war movies: "I have no desire to watch that or anything like it."

   What really touches me though is the sense of responsibility and pride that generation took in its country and fellow man.  Back then it was all about patriotism, but boiled down, it was still a feeling for the greater good.  My grandfather, much like many others of this day enlisted.  Didn’t wait to get called, and when he had done his year, he did another.  Guadalcanal and Peleliu killed a lot of his friends and left him considerably messed up for life, but I don’t think he ever regretted it.  When he got out, he worked his way up from a whole lot of nothing basically, to being the owner of a couple of banks and a microchip factory that actually supplied NASA with the first ever microchips in space.  He did real well for himself and continued helping his fellow man with whatever he could until the very end. 

On the other hand, from what I’ve heard from my mom and uncle, he was a…I hate to say it, oftentimes a real bastard of a father.  I think many from that generation were-just real hard "if you’re too stupid to understand, then I don’t have the time to show you" kind of stuff.  Fortunately, by the time I came along, all that was out of his system and he was the kind grandfather that I describe him as today.  When he died, people came out of the woodwork to pay their respects-they all remarked on his generosity and kindness…too bad he couldn’t show his own kids that.  I know they think highly of him but I can tell, at least in one of them, that the feelings are somewhat not 100% warm. 

   This blog kind of branched out in ways that I didn’t want it to, but I guess that’s alright.  Lately, I’ve really been working on just ‘letting go’ and not trying to control everything.  I’ll chalk this up to that.  The real point of this was to remark on how I would love to see people get get back to feeling something for one another and actually getting up and doing that something.  The truth is that people aren’t really going to ‘feel’ the need until they do a little bit of the deed, but I think plenty of people are getting to the point where their logical understanding is becoming such that it is bringing on feelings of its own.  These guys stared a gruesome death right in the face for one another and their country; and they did it voluntarily. 

  If you feel like it:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.