Play Ball

This story is based on memories I had of growing up in a family full of WWII veterans, and how differently I was treated after serving in the Army.

Play Ball – by Mark Andersen

The family reunion, a once a year event in the small Midwestern town where Jim’s grandparents had settled, an event where distant relatives came together to celebrate nothing more than being members of the same clan. Every year glasses were raised to toast those who had passed away, and glasses were again raised to welcome the newest additions to the tribe.

The gathering was at the same park every year; one would find the park hidden away in small forest just on the edge of town. A narrow one-lane gravel road led up to main shelter house. The building was in reality an old barn from the failed farm that was on this site. There was a plaque on the outside wall of the old cowshed thanking the Dickenson clan for nobly donating the land to the city for a park; the reality was that Jim’s grandfather gave up the land to pay back taxes on the farm some fifty years ago. Jim guessed the city fathers felt guilty forty years later when they turned the family homestead into a park.

In the shelter house, there were several picnic tables setup in rows. In the center four tables were lined up end-to-end that were to be filled with food, at the end of this row of tables was a stack of plastic cups, next to the plastic cups in a large blue bucket of ice was half-barrel of beer. As the families arrived, the tables filled with food. Brothers, sisters, and cousins hugged and exchanged pleasantries. The younger children ran over to the nearby baseball diamond to play a pickup game.

As the day wore on and after the meal was eaten, the women gravitated to one side of the outbuilding, while the men gravitated to another side, oddly enough, the half-barrel of beer gravitated to the side of the shelter house where the men were. There was an unwritten rule that children were not allowed on the men’s side of the building. Jim would often sneak as close as he could to listen to his uncles talk; they had amazing stories of war and its glories.

Many of Jim’s uncles were WWII veterans men that to Jim were bigger than life. Men whom Jim wanted to emulate. The regaled themselves with stories of a war that had ended some 40 years before. They all knew everything there was to know about each other’s exploits. Yet, each year they asked the same questions of each other and told the same stories. Two uncles stayed silent, year after year, the wartime trauma still fresh in their minds so many years later.

“Where were you stationed John” he heard his Uncle Kevin ask of his Dad. “I was on the USS Enterprise.”

“Oh Yeah, that’s right, I don’t know how you could go to sea…no place to dig a goddamned foxhole.”

“Like you have room to talk, you were in a bomber over Germany”

“I flew fighters, don’t you dare compare me to one of those goddamned bomber jocks.”

“Pete, tell that story again about how you caught those two krauts taken a shit and you captured ‘em”

“Y’all have heard that one a thousand times, and I don’t know if I can bullshit my way through it the same way anymore”

“Carl, where were you stationed again” his dad asked turning his attention to his brother-in-law.

“John, you damn well know I didn’t go.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, what was it again, flat feet?” Jim’s dad said as Carl got up and walked away, while all of the veterans at the table laughed amongst themselves.

Jim’s father and Uncles held those that had not served on low regard. As the beer flowed, they were not afraid to hold the non-veterans in contempt, even if they were family. Through it all, two of Jim’s Uncles sat drinking their beer in silence. No one asked questions of them, no one bothered them about serving or not serving. Jim knew that his Uncle Robin had been in the Army during the war, but that was about it; Uncle Robin never discussed the war. He was not sure about his Uncle Harry. He thought his cousin Will had said something about him being a paratrooper, but that was about all he had been able to find out.

As the years went by, Jim grew from a child into a man, when he graduated from High School, he wanted nothing more than to join the Army and be like his father and uncles. Serve his country, go to war, become a hero and tell glorious tales. The day before his induction into the army, his Uncles who had served came to town to wish him luck. Absent were Uncle Robin and Uncle Harry.

When Jim arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia for basic training he was no longer Jim Dickenson, he was now Dickenson. He had learned to answer to maggot or any one of a thousand names the drill instructors could come up with to demean him. It was late March; the days were long and physically and mentally punishing. After what seemed like years and tens of thousands of push-ups, sit-ups and miles run, basic training was over. It was time for his advanced training.

Advanced training was really just an extension of basic, he had the same malevolent drill sergeants, the same barracks, the only difference, it was now late May, and the coolness of late spring had given way to the brutal heat of a Georgia summer. In his advanced training, he learned how to kill his fellow man in a much more efficient manner. He played war, honing his skills; he had become adept at his chosen profession. His next step was airborne school; he was going to become a paratrooper.

For Airborne school he moved across post, over by the two hundred foot towers. Just looking at them gave him an adrenaline rush. First ground week, then tower week and finally jump week. Each week was more mentally and physically punishing than the last. The blackhats made the immorality of his drill sergeants a pleasant memory; they were relentless, pushing him right up to the point of breakdown each day. The three weeks of Airborne school seemed to last forever, just as it seemed it would never end Jim completed his fifth jump. His Dad came down to witness his final jump and to pin Jim’s wings on his chest, he was not sure who was more proud, him or his Dad.

It was August; it was finally time to home on leave. He could not go home with his father, as Jim had to wait for his orders. A week after his graduation Jim received his personnel folder; he could not believe his eyes, the 101st Airborne Division, 1/502 Infantry. The famed 101st Airborne…he never imagined in his wildest dreams that he would be assigned to the most famous division in the army.
As he was reading his orders, CNN blared in the background, “Today, Saddam Hussein sent the Iraqi Army into Kuwait…”

His flight from Atlanta finally landed in his hometown; his parents greeted him at the airport. As they drove up to his childhood home there was a banner across the front of the house welcoming him home. Aunts, uncles and cousins came to see him. His uncles Robin and Harry were there…both with a distressed look on their faces. As the celebration wore on Jim had a rare moment alone, when his Uncle Harry walked up to him. His uncle looked at him, in his dress greens, his eyes fell on the patch on his left shoulder.

“101st, that is a good unit.” His uncle paused

“I was with ‘em from ’43 to ’45.”

“You were? I have never heard you talk about it before”

“Some things, cannot be put into words that people who were not there or were not a part of it would understand. And some things, you never want to relive, even though the things you saw and did torment you every single day of your life.”

Jim nodded, not wanting to say anything that would stop his uncle from opening up.

“You, you are now a part of the brotherhood, however, you do not yet have the scars to know the words. I hope this thing in the Middle East is over before you are traumatized the way your Uncle Robin and I have been. We have enough mental wounds to last this family for several lifetimes.”

Those words kept going through his head, what had his Uncle Harry meant. Jim had no idea. It was midnight when Jim arrived at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He reported to the 20th replacement depot where he went through his in processing, after a week he finally got to his unit and immediately started to prepare for deployment; they were going to Saudi Arabia.

Once in the Saudi Arabian desert, the hours turned to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, where the only war fought was against boredom…then the air war started…he could feel an anxious fear welling up inside him. Then, the ground war opened up. Jim saw and did things, he did not understand, nor could he comprehend. He saw his friends die. He killed the enemy. The enemy almost killed him. His world centered on him, his rifle, and the guys to the left and right of him. Then, as fast as it had started, it was over. It was all a blur to him, images that he could not get out of his head, sights, sounds and smells that came to him in his sleep, tormenting him. He thought to himself,

“My god, what have I done, please forgive me.”

When Jim came home from the war, it was time for the annual family reunion. The number of uncles who had gone to war in the 40’s was dwindling; however, the core group was still alive and as the day wore on they gravitated to the one side of the shelter house, still telling the same stories from a lifetime ago. This time, there was new member in their midst. Jim sat quietly, drinking his beer, sitting next to Uncle Robin and Uncle Harry. Jim said nothing, but he now understood his Uncle Harry’s words. He now bore the same mental wounds as he did. He wondered to himself,

“If only my Dad and uncles knew the true cost of human conflict…if only they knew the absolute madness of man killing his fellow man…they would not be glorifying war.”

He now realized why his Uncle Robin and Uncle Harry never spoke of their time in combat. They knew the boys were listening, and they did not want to glorify warfare. They knew the only way to stop the madness, was to stop glorifying man’s foolish crusades. If young men did not have an idealized, sanitized, John Wayne, Hollywood picture of battle, maybe then the madness could end. Jim stood up and walked out to where he knew his younger cousins were hiding and listening.

“Hey, get your gloves and that bat I saw y’all playing with earlier. Let’s play some ball.”