Michael Swartz

My father was a victim of the Depression - a fact that would haunt him throughout his life.  It colored everything he did, every action he took, every pleasure he denied himself.  He was also a victim of WWII - not in the physical sense, but in the toll it would inflict on his emotional being.  To make matters worse, like so many returning servicemen of the Greatest Generation, he steadfastly refused to talk about his experiences.  No, a real soldier returned from the War, buried the memories, sucked it up like a man and got back to work.

That was the main impediment to my really knowing and understanding him.  In fact, I often feel as if I didn’t know him at all.  I yearned to understand what he had done and seen during the war.  When the TV show “Combat” was on, I was allowed to sit next to him in the den and watch - but he remained absolutely silent.  He took me to see “The Longest Day” when it came out in the theater.  But, again, I could only sit next to him.  There was no conversation.  No sharing.  No opening up.  Nothing except his physical presence.

My father died when he was 65.  Had he lived longer, I might have been able to get him to open up about his experiences.  As time went on, I grew determined to learn about his war experiences - even though it could not come from him.  After years of searching, I finally discovered which unit he served in as a surgeon.  

Even better, I found a book that had been written about the unit’s experiences after they landed on Omaha Beach on June 16, 1944 - 10 days after D-Day.  It turns out the 45th Evacuation Hospital was the first medical unit to arrive at Buchenwald after its liberation.  That explained so much about my father’s refusal to talk about his experiences in the war.

I plan on going to Normandy next summer to stand where he stood.