I remember waking up, about the age of five years old, during a thunderstorm and hearing my father screaming. I thought my father was afraid of the storm, and I thought that was really funny. It never occurred to me that the sound of the thunder intruding on his sleep brought on dreams of bombs exploding, bullets whistling close by, seeing his best friend, not 20 feet away, blown away by a Japanese mortar round. Or, maybe, the thunder triggered the memory of an artillery shell that left shrapnel in his body that is still there in his grave with him. He would often call out in his sleep as the memories he tried to suppress in his waking hours, rack his mind and body as he slept.

          My father was a drinker. Not the occasional beer after doing something outside on a hot day. No, he was the drinker who drank to forget. And he had a lot to forget. But, he never, ever talked about it. Not to his wife, not to his friends, not to other vets. I asked him once what he had done in the war. He just replied, “I drove a bulldozer.” I knew he had been in the Navy because my uncle had told me once, with great pride, that my father had been a fleet boxing champ in his weight class. I looked at my father that day and said, “A bulldozer? You were in the Navy. Why would they need bulldozers?” He just walked past me and got in his truck. When he got home, hours later, he was drunk and he was angry. My mother told me to never mention the war again. In my youthful ignorance, I suspected he was ashamed that all he had done was drive a bulldozer.

          Time rolled by, as it does. My father drank more and more. Into my teen years I worked hard to build my body up. I wanted to get to the point to where I could protect my mother when he came home drunk. I would try, but then I would be introduced to that fleet boxing champ. I get knocked down and my mother would pay the price. Over and over, until one day I didn’t get knocked down. My mother never had to pay the price again. I had thought that when the day would finally come, I would feel joy. But I didn’t. I felt nothing. By that time I honestly didn’t care what happened to him.

          But his attitude toward me changed. After that day I left him stretched out on the dining room floor with a broken elbow, he started talking to me. Oh, he still had to drinking, but he would talk about the war and his part in it. My father fought in the South Pacific. He was wounded three times. The day after the news of Pearl Harbor came in he joined the Navy. After basic he and his best friend joined the Construction Battalion, or the CBs. He didn't want to serve on a ship, he wanted the ship to get him to the fighting. During the island hopping phase of the war the Marines would land on some Japanese island or another and fight their way inshore. ( For those who don’t know, island hopping refers to the necessary strategy the Americans employed. In Europe, the Germans and Italians occupied towns and cities and had to be pushed out as the Allies moved toward Berlin. In the South Pacific, the Japanese occupied islands. The distances in the Pacific are so vast that no bombers could reach Japan, so the Americans had to get closer. Rather than take every island along the way, they took strategic islands and let the remainder sit without any support or relief from Japan. Some Japanese soldiers held out on those islands until long after the war. The last Japanese soldier finally surrendered in 1973.)  Landing with them would be the CBs, driving their bulldozers off the landing craft so they could make fortifications and shelters. During those times my father told me of the horrors of war. Of his buddy dying instantly, of a Marine captain ordering him to bury alive with his bulldozer five Japanese soldiers who had been captured, of what it felt like to look down the sights of his rifle and kill someone for the first time. Island after island. Land, fight, create landing strips and fortifications, then load up and go on to the next island. I began to understand the drinking and I began to understand why so many men came home screaming at the thunder.

          One story stuck in my mind. The next island in the line of islands was a small island called Eniwetok. It was important, but small. The Americans didn’t expect much resistance. It would have been bypassed, but they needed the airfield. So, the Marines attacked with their CB support. The Japanese, however, fully recognized the importance of Eniwetok and had fully garrisoned the small island. What the Americans encountered when they came ashore was some of the most vicious fighting of the war. Everyone was taken by surprise. My father told me that they had advanced up the beaches quite a way’s when there was a stunning counter attack. The Marines and CBs were forced back. But there was no ‘back.’ Only the sea, full of floating corpses. My father turned his dozer rear end to the sea and began to slowly give ground to the attacking Japanese. He set his blade to where it provided some protection for him and the handful of Marines who had taken cover around the dozer and they backed toward the sea. My father kept up a steady fire over top of the blade and the Marines kept up a steady fire around the blade, but still they had to keep backing up. As the back end of the dozer was entering the water the big guns on the distant ships opened up. It was a tense little while, but the counter attack was broken and they advanced once more. My father gave the Marines all the credit. He felt that if they hadn’t been clustered around his dozer he would have been overrun and killed. The story was moving and thought provoking. My attitude toward my father was softening.

          Many years later I was pastoring a church in Warren, Ohio. Warren was about 70 miles from where Marsha’s parents lived. When her Dad was diagnosed with cancer, he was set up with chemotherapy. This was 1988 through 1989. The chemo was set up for three times a week, requiring a three hour infusion. Since Marsha’s Mom didn’t drive and no one was available to take him to the hospital, I made arrangements with the church to take him for his treatments. Very understanding church. As it turned out, the therapy didn’t work and he passed, but for several months I would get to their place and get him to his therapy by 6 AM. I would pull into their driveway at 4:30, let myself in and put on a pot of coffee. We would sit and drink a cup and then we would go. As time went on, Marsha’s Dad got to talking about the war. Like my father, her Dad was a drinker. Not a mean drinker, but a drinker. And, like my father, he never talked about it. But, over those cups of coffee he began to open up.

          He was a Marine fighting in the South Pacific. It got me interested. I wondered if maybe my father and father-in-law ever crossed paths. And then came the morning when my father-in-law told me of the fight in which he knew he was going to die. It was on a small island called Eniwetok. I almost dropped my coffee. He didn’t notice. A far away look had come into his eyes as he told his tale. Up the beach, the counter attack, the furious fighting. I was hardly breathing. And then, there was a CB bulldozer turning in the sand, facing his blade to the enemy. My father-in-law and several other Marines clustered around it as it backed up toward the sea. They fired around the blade while the operator fired over the blade. The enemy would close in, but they kept driving them off. If, however, they were driven back to the sea, it wouldn’t matter. As the dozer’s treads entered the water, the Navy’s big guns opened up. The counter attack broke up, they moved forward. “Scared to death, Larry, but that CB sailor saved our sorry hides.” He was still looking far off, so he didn’t see my mouth hanging open and he didn’t see the tears in my eyes. It was an amazing moment.

          I am sure that the same scenario was played out all along the beach on Eniwetok. The odds are almost to great that they were in the same place at the same time. But this Memorial Day, as at every Memorial Day, my thoughts are with two farm boys, one from Pennsylvania and one from Kentucky, fighting desperately on a sandy rock in the Pacific whose name they had trouble pronouncing until it was burned in their minds. Scared, knowing they were going to die, wanting nothing more than to be behind that old mule on a scorcher day plowing a field. But there they were, fighting a huge war. And maybe, just maybe, they were each saving the life of a man who would one day father their own child’s spouse. You never know.

          Thank you, veterans, for your service. God bless you all.