The decades passed with their own peculiar but incredible speed. I tried to put the memories of the war behind me. Unfortunately, those images seldom stayed put. Most people didn’t notice that soldiers almost never spoke of what had happened. Climbing imposing cliffs with machine guns firing at you or turning around only to find a buddy lying there with a bullet through the head wasn’t something one spoke about. The smell of the jungle, smoke, the acid scent of cannon fire, and the odor of death, all separate or mixed together, lingered on and on. We tried to shove that recollection into a box labeled Yesterday: Don’t Open.
Talk often turns to “Who were the heroes?” Let me tell you who the heroes are. Anyone who puts on a military uniform and marches off to battle is a hero. Makes no difference if bullets whiz by your head or you never step on the battlefield. Putting on the uniform and making yourself available for service makes you a hero in my book.
After I left the military, I realized that traumatic experiences permeated civilian life as well. Things I learned in war became valuable tools for surviving peacetime. I began to realize that my own survival had come with help that I missed seeing the first time around. Unseen hands had pulled me in and out of scrapes while I never realized divine interventions had been at work all the time.
Perhaps my most important discovery came out of an extreme back injury that occurred while I was still in the army. I was in Indiana acting as an adviser with the Indiana National Guard, fulfilling my obligation for civilian duty that was required of an officer approaching twenty to thirty years of military service.
The dirt roads had a slick covering of oil. You don’t mix oil and ice together or you almost have a skating rink. My sergeant was driving us down one of those back roads when the jeep slid out of control. When we tipped, I grabbed the roll bar, but my body went flying and flipping out. The unnatural twist and turning more than bent me out of shape.
I knew I had a serious problem, but I didn’t want to go to a hospital, fearing that after working on me, the army might make me retire. Unfortunately, the pain had only begun. Eventually, I was swallowed by the agony and forced to face treatment for the damage. I ended up with a spinal fusion from the L1 to the S1 vertebrae in my spinal cord.
Intrusive surgery in that part of one’s body is beyond terrible. I was left paralyzed from the waist down and couldn’t even wiggle my toes. Before the doctors went any further, I had to regain the ability to move my big toe. Although it felt like an eternity before any sensation returned, eventually I got a wiggle. I knew I would walk again.
My Christmas of recovery turned into a Halloween of despair. My first operation required twenty-two units of blood. While I was recovering, I discovered that a second surgery would be necessary. I guess you wouldn’t expect a disaster like that from an unscathed veteran of one of the worst conflicts of World War II.
* * *
I really didn’t like civilian life. I was army to the core. The hardest part of post-army life was recovering from what happened to my family.
Many years before my back operation, Joan and I had experienced a medical crisis that had ended unexpectedly in hope. The war had begun, and I was stationed at Fort Lewis, preparing to leave the country. Joan was pregnant and the “bulge” had begun to show. Then one morning there was no protrusion. Her stomach had become flat as the sidewalk. I immediately returned to Oklahoma.
We immediately went to see the medics at Fort Sill. In turn, they sent us on to Oklahoma City. Dr. Eskridge examined Joan carefully and then called us both in.
“The fetus is dead,” the doctor said unceremoniously.
“Oh, no!” Joan cried.
“You’re going back on the train?” the doctor asked.
We both nodded our heads.
“You’ll probably miscarry on the way home, but if you don’t, you’ll need to take these records to the military hospital and let them care for you. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”
He shook my hand and walked out.
We were just kids and didn’t know what to do except to take his advice seriously. With heavy hearts, we went home . . . but Joan didn’t miscarry.
Because I had orders to leave for the front, we had no time: we needed to get Joan to the hospital and get this problem resolved. Unfortunately, I also had orders to be on a maneuver and couldn’t even stay with her at the hospital. After all was settled, I could leave the country and Joan would return to her former home in Marlow, Oklahoma. We checked into the hospital with a staff of five ob-gyn doctors and prepared for the worst. Joan was checked and on her way to the procedure when the doctor stopped the gurney and made a final examination. He ran his hand over her belly and “Stop! The baby kicked!”
We were greatly relieved. The doctor couldn’t explain how the baby was alive, and we didn’t know what to think. Being as young as we were, we could only go home and be grateful.
The clock was running, and I had some final preparations as well as training that I had to complete before I shipped out. We kissed, and I told Joan I’d be back soon. We both knew that was a lie. She looked at me with those big gray eyes and tried not to cry. I didn’t want to think about how long the separation might be before I saw her again. I waved and waved and was gone.
* * *
Once I was back in the swing of preparation for battle, time moved faster, but the process took longer than I expected. Months passed before I was loaded on a navy ship heading for the Philippines. I knew the baby had to be developing fast, and that for a long time I would have no idea what my child looked like.
While the navy cruiser sailed across the Pacific Ocean, I learned that the navy boys had a special ceremony for their men who had never crossed the equator. King Neptune of the Sea held a special court to initiate the sea dogs. The first-timers were called pollywogs while the veterans were shellbacks. The navy personnel harassed the boys with ridiculous exercises that ranged from blindfolding them to covering them with flour makeup to giving them a shampoo with mayonnaise. Being in the army exempted me from the initiations.
Suddenly, a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Major Arthur Shaw present yourself to King Neptune.”
“What?” I turned to the soldier next to me. “I’m not a sailor. They got to be kidding.”
He laughed. “Kidding is the right word. You better get over there.”
I grudgingly walked between two sailors who escorted me to an elevated throne where King Neptune sat. The sailor held up his hand to speak like royalty announcing a military success.
“You are under severe penalty, Major Arthur Shaw, for the pain and suffering you have caused your wife.” He gave me a hard, harsh stare, then broke into a smile. “Your wife just gave birth to your baby daughter.”
The ship broke into applause.
* * *
Our lives had been so heavily invested in the struggle to capture Okinawa that most of us felt like we had been there for a lifetime. And then it was all over.
The war simply stopped and we loaded up to get out of there. Of course, no one could fully express their gratitude for surviving the horrendous battles where so, so many had died. We would always have one foot planted forever in that island, though we would almost never talk about what we had seen.
After making our adjustment to being back in the States, I was sent to Fort Sill, which I knew like the back of my hand. My training in artillery had begun there and that’s where I met my wife, Joan, in Lawton. The base was still humming and the big cannons firing in the practice fields. I was glad to be somewhere where a flying boxcar or a mortar could not fall out of the sky. Being home felt warm, friendly, and oh, so welcoming. In 1946, everything felt like a year of promise. I had barely settled in when I received orders that I was being assigned to the American Embassy in Turkey. Can you believe it? Turkey! Barely got home and was sent to another country I had never been to!
The airplane transport took off and I was on my way to Istanbul. I quickly learned that the influence of Mustafa Ataturk still swept through the country. After getting situated in the embassy, I discovered that my primary role was to help build a “West Point” in Turkey for training their military. We were to help them assemble an intelligent, informed, armed forces. All was going well until on June 25, 1945, North Korea invaded South Korea.
Our attention turned in a new direction. I became part of the process of organizing troops sent to Korea. We started putting together a Turkish Brigade to enter the conflict. One of the generals approached me about being his adjutant. Since I’d lived through the struggle in Okinawa and the Pacific, he knew I understood the war scene. Joan screamed when she heard about such a possibility and that was the end of that idea.
As the Korean conflict was winding down, I came back to the United States and picked up an assignment in assisting the Indiana National Guard. Finally, in 1962, I retired as a Colonel in the United States Army. I had served my country, my family, and friends. I could always proudly salute the flag.
* * *
The years slipped by. Joan and I settled into civilian life happy to watch our daughter grow and mature. I found my way doing various types of odd jobs. The army provided a good pension so I was at ease with those financial obligations. Making an adjustment from the rigid style of the military to an easygoing civilian life took some doing, but I continued to help with the Military Reserves and became involved with the Episcopal Church USA. I attended their conventions and worked in a local congregation. All the while, I kept trying to push my war experiences to the back of my mind, but they didn’t stay down. Often, in the middle of the night, they’d come roaring back to life. Of course, I never talked to my wife or friends about the awful struggles I’d seen. I had a small storage box with a firm lid and a lock. I never opened it, but I knew the horrors of the past were buried in that antique box I left in a corner unopened.
During those years, Joan was a heavy smoker. Cigarette commercials were everywhere. No one thought anything about it. Somewhere along the way, rumors were heard that smoking wasn’t good for you, but no one paid much attention. The warnings increased. Smoking continued. Everyone smoked.
Joan began coughing incessantly. A doctor warned that she appeared to have emphysema or something of that sort. The problem was that her lungs weren’t working and processing her blood as they should. She struggled along but finally ended up spending most of her time in bed. During her last nine months, Joan lay in bed doing nothing but reading all the time. I did the cooking, cleaning, and everything I could do, but we were on a downhill slide and I couldn’t stop the decline. Her breath shortened.
On December 6, 2002, at one in the morning, Joan slipped away. As overwhelmed as I was, I was relieved that her suffering was over. Her final journey had been hard and painful and now she was at rest. Our life together had been a great love affair and now I had to go on alone. Alone was the word that constantly lingered in my mind. Married on May 26, 1942, our marriage had lasted sixty years.
* * *
Death is natural. That old cliché that it’s part of life is worn but true. During my World War II experiences, I had seen bodies in plastic bags stacked up like a cord of wood. Men blown to bits. People ripped apart. The horrors of death had been scattered around me, and somehow, I had walked through those tragedies, even though I still don’t know how. I suppose that I never thought about the Specter coming to my house. The collapse of that which I held most dear was too great. How could I go on?
In war, death is all around you. One minute you’re talking to a friend, you look away, and when you look back, he’s lying there with a bullet through his helmet. You care about the guy. He’s your buddy. And then in an instant he is gone. His face, his distant, unfocused eyes stare back at you empty. The image burns into your mind and doesn’t go away. You end up never wanting to have a friendship with anybody in a uniform. They could all be gone in a flash. It’s simply too much, way too much.
I didn’t have much tolerance for so-called war-weary cases before I went to Leyte and Okinawa. After I crawled alongside cold bodies curled up around their rifles, their fingers already stiff, my bias changed. Any of us could have ended up in a psychiatric tent staring at the ceiling. Some men cracked like walnuts smashing against rocks. Others stopped talking; many became perpetually silent. Some of us sucked it up and went on. But the encounters, the experiences, the recollections never went away.
Some of the time, it seems the smell of death still hangs in the air. Horrible images keep returning. Dreams regurgitate what has been hidden at the bottom of your mind. Even decades later, those old memories will come flying back, screaming at you in the middle of the night. Humanity wasn’t meant to witness best friends stacked up in a pile of lifeless soldiers awaiting their final journey to the grave.
But when death overwhelms your wife, your daughter, your granddaughter, the load is completely and totally unbearable, emotionally insufferable. You’re afraid to go to sleep at night for what the dreams might say, and reluctant to get up in the morning because your body aches and there’s a knot in your stomach. You feel tired all the time and forget things. You think your memory is going, and then you reflect and realize that the problem is depression. Behind the darkness is an anger that you can never quite get your hands around.
The formula is basic. Denial + anger + time = depression.
You can’t laugh anymore. Sometimes you can’t concentrate. You shuffle around like a zombie, but you know you must get over it. At the same time, you recognize that willpower isn’t enough. Grieving is simply one hell of a mess.
In those moments of despair, I remembered lying flat on my back in the hospital after my back surgery. For a while it had appeared that my legs wouldn’t ever work again. Learning to walk again had seemed impossible. Then, in the midst of those dreaded log rolls, a voice had cut through the fog of my fears and I had moved without even a hint of pain. An unseen friend appeared out of nowhere, and though I couldn’t see him, it, whatever, I could never forget that angelic voice. An angel had guided me through the maelstrom of struggle and I had survived. Surely, God had not abandoned me then and would not now.
I began to realize that I could do nothing about the past. What was done was settled. I needed to flip the light switch and let the yesterdays settle into the dim. And the future was no different. I didn’t have a clue about what tomorrow would bring. All I could do was let it unfold when the sun came up once more. The only thing I could control was today.
No matter what had happened or might occur again, I could live for the hour at hand. All I really needed was one hour at a time. I decided that today could be faced with hope. Each morning, I would remember that this day had its own particular and important promise. I would pursue that dream.
Jesus once said, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor about your body . . . do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
That would be good enough for me. All I have is today . . . and the possibilities that hope brings. Such will always be more than enough. I have chosen to live with that hope.