The Red Flannel Rag

you punched me.’ Your daddy said, ‘I wish I had been awake just five minutes ago. I

would have caught the man who took a shit in my mouth’.”

Dad was not the same man when he returned from the war. His hair was short

and had lost its curl. He looked tired and old. The sparkle in his eyes had dulled and

had been replaced with a studious and reflective gaze, but most often his eyes were filled

with fear and stress. His sense of humor, while still with him, was sporadic and very

unpredictable. He was very moody. He would occasionally talk about his experiences

in Germany with his men friends. He told a hair-raising story about crossing the Rhine

River with General Patton’s army. The soldiers were in pontoons as they crossed the

river. They were vulnerable targets for the German sharpshooters. As the pontoons left

the shores of the Rhine, the German snipers started shooting. They killed or wounded

every soldier in the first pontoon and started shooting the soldiers in the second

pontoon. Dad was in the second pontoon. They shot every man right up to where Dad

was sitting in the middle. The man next to him was hit in the shoulder. The next shot

rang out and slightly clipped the end of Dad’s finger. The shooting stopped. His

pontoon landed safely on the opposite shore of the Rhine River.

I often heard Dad describe the necessary mental work he had to do to survive the

war. He told Mom he had to make us “little in his mind” so that his love for us, and the

fact that he was missing us, did not distract him and make him vulnerable to deadly

mistakes. He told us what happened to men who took the time to cry about their loved

ones at home. He said, “Many of them didn’t make it through the next battle.”

After Dad returned from the war, he had nightmares. Mom told me that when he

awoke after a nightmare he would cry and tell her how scared he was that he would

never be able to make his family "big in his mind" again.

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