“The American Cemetery, Omaha, Normandy, France” from dorsetbay’s photostream on flickr.com
Out of advanced infantry and airborne schools, these were three of America’s finest!
All they wanted to talk about was girls! They loved to laugh, joke, and drink beer! Their bodies were young and ripped from paratrooper training. They thought they could do anything! They were gonna live forever!!!
The three brothers were big strapping Swedes, over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and deep chests. All had reddish-blonde hair! Their faces were nicely featured. The girls talked about them as much as they talked about the girls. The oldest, age 21, is the reliable one. As his dad is long dead, he has become the man of the family, and takes care of everyone. In spite of early maturity, he is full of fire and life.
But no one can take care of everyone else very long……
for he is killed on the second day of the Normandy invasion.
His body still lies in France.
The middle brother, age 20, Mr. Personality, the one everyone loves to love, never hears of his beloved brother’s death. The spark of his personality is extinguished……
as he is killed just two short weeks later in the invasion of Italy.
His body remains in Italy today.
The youngest, age 18, Big Red, is returned to stateside duty due to an urgent request to President Roosevelt from his mother. He feels very guilty (the legendary survivor’s disease) because he lived instead of his brothers. He becomes a lifelong alcoholic, and dies of alcoholism at an early age.
He dies with that same reddish-blonde hair, deep chest, and great handsomeness he shared with his brothers……
but his face was lined, deeply lined.
I remember that he was able to cry at appropriate moments, when others were unable to cry.
Upon the death of her two sons, the mother never smiles again. She dies a bitter old woman. I remember her blaming Roosevelt for killing her two sons, as if Roosevelt was to blame for their deaths at the hands of German forces.
Did the two ever taste a woman? At that time, unlike today, it was entirely possible that they had NOT.
I don’t know.
The effects of their deaths are real even today. If they lived, would Big Red have become an alcoholic? Would the family have been spared the terrible effects of his alcoholism?
I don’t know.
Would the family have been spared the bitterness of the mother and the emotional walls so many family members were forced to build?
I don’t know.
Certainly, our family gatherings would be different, as the children they would have fathered would be with us. Because of that war, our gatherings are smaller, just like the gathering of every family whose members went to war throughout history.
Today, the family retains the brothers’ medals, a few faded photographs, and a few letters from overseas. None of the family alive today was yet born when the two brothers were killed. These once potent paratroopers are now just memories handed down from their generation to the next.
They loved the cute little girls they went to high school with. Those girls are now dead or in their eighties.
We talk of bringing their bodies home, back home to Indiana, where we all are from. We talk of burying them next to Big Red, the three finally united again and forever. Some of those cute high school girls are buried in that same cemetery.
We talk of their love for home,
for Indiana.
They did not love France.
They did not love Italy.
They loved Indiana.
We talk.
