My Father

I may have told this before, but in honor of Veterans Day just past, I offer it again.

The old man was dying.  He told his visitor about being a Marine in WWII.  He woke in the night in a jungle somewhere in the Pacific.  He saw a line of men passing just beyond the ridge above him and it occurred to him that Marines knew better than to walk a ridge line against the sky.  Sure enough they were the enemy Japanese.  He and his squad wiped them out.  He then walked around and shot each one in the head because “you can’t leave live enemies at your back in the jungle.”  He was 19 years old then.  Now he was over 80 and he still suffered from killing those men.  He looked at his visitor, broken.  The visitor looked at him with love and told him he could forgive himself because in time all would be well between him and those men, who also had had no choice. 

That man was my father.  I believe it was the first time I had truly met him.