Stories From the War

“I held him for hours that night, waiting for someone–anyone–to help, to save him, but no one ever came…”

We sat silently for a few moments, watching on as Grandad looked at the floor and wiped tears from his eyes. This was the furthest he had ever made it into this particular story.

Our Grandfather–Grandad, we called him–had been telling my older brother and me stories from the war ever since we could remember. We would sit at the foot of his recliner, listening intently, as he told us endless stories about his experiences as a US soldier in Europe in the early 1940s. He was a master storyteller, a true fountain of wisdom of a time gone and a generation nearly gone, too.

As children, it was our favorite thing to do in the world–sit there around Grandad’s recliner and listen to the stories he would tell about the war and the people and places that were involved in it. As we grew older and more mature, it remained our favorite thing to do. It was his favorite thing to do, too, to tell those stories. Over time, we increasingly understood the importance of his stories–the history and value they held–and we requested them as often as possible. By the time we made it into our twenties, we had heard them all at least once. All except for one: the one about his time in Austria.

He tried on several occasions to tell us the story about Austria, but for reasons we never knew, he could never quite make it to the end. He would begin determined, but eventually, his voice would start to crack, his eyes would swell with tears, and his lungs would give out on him. He would sometimes say that we would try that one again another time, but at some point, he gave up trying altogether. Though we desperately wanted to know the story of what happened to him in Austria, we never pressed him–no matter how much it ate at us. We could see the pain it brought him, even all those years later, and we could hardly begin to imagine the things he must have seen there. We knew it must have been tragic or gruesome or, most likely, both, because he had never refrained from telling us his stories in their most unfiltered and uncensored nature–so much so that our parents would often remind him that they would prefer some of them wait until we were a little older. “It’s important for people to know what really happened,” he would say to them. “Even young people… especially young people. It’s important that those events are not forgotten, so that they may never be repeated.”

Though Grandad was now very old and slow, he recalled stories from the war like they had happened last week and not many decades ago. He knew every date, every location, and every person without missing a beat, never forgetting or leaving out a single detail.

He told us the story of working on his parent's cotton farm in West Texas and receiving his draft notice in the mail within a week of graduating from high school. He told us about going to boot camp in Georgia, remembering the exact date he had arrived–April 14, 1942. He told us about the other young men who were drafted with him, most just days over eighteen years old. He told us about how some of them looked mean and patriotic and ready to fight and how some others looked small and nervous and wanted to go back home. He told us about being handed an M1903 Springfield rifle and being taught how to disassemble and assemble it back again. He told us how it took him only a week before he could do it with his eyes closed. He told us about carrying that rifle with him when he boarded a ship that was headed across the Atlantic and how when the ship arrived he was sent off into war. He told us about how the Germans strung piano wire across the paths in the jungle so that they would cut the necks of US soldiers riding through on Ford GPW Jeeps. He told us about how his unit welded pieces of sharpened iron on the hoods of the Jeeps so that they cut the piano wires as they drove through them. He told us about the ping sound it made. He told us about Kurt Stevens, a bright-eyed boy from rural North Carolina who jumped in front of a grenade and saved half his platoon. He told us about finding Kurt’s parents many years after the war and giving them Kurt’s dog tag necklace and thanking them for raising a brave man and apologizing for not being able to save their son. He told us about the time that General George S. Patton arrived at his base in France and delivered a fiery speech to his unit. He told us about seeing the camps at the end of the war and the nightmares they brought him. He told us about the nightmares the camps still brought him. He told us every one of his stories–a few with pride, several with conviction, and many with sorrow.

Never, however, did he tell us the full story of what had happened in Austria in early 1944. Though we had heard only very little of the story, we knew that it loomed large in the storytelling canon of our grandfather; we just didn’t know why.

As we grew older, my brother and I quickly began to appreciate the harsh reality of the war and the effects it had left on our grandfather’s mind. We no longer romanticized the war and marveled at it; instead, it sobered us, and we bemoaned the fact that our grandfather spent his nineteenth birthday with a US-issued rifle in his hands, ordered to neutralize the enemy at all costs.

We knew that it would not be long before all the survivors from the war–and thus the primary resources of the era–would be gone. So, we set out to preserve his stories from the war–to make detailed recordings and notes of them, in just the manner they were told to us: directly from the source.

For three weeks my brother and I sat with Grandad at his kitchen table and recorded his stories and wrote down various dates and places. This was the first time we had made physical transcripts of his stories and also the first time we had heard them from any place other than the foot of his recliner. After many weeks of this process, we had collected a truly comprehensive first-hand account of the war, as told by one of its few remaining participants.

We spent weeks downloading recordings, organizing notes, and piecing together many small stories into one large one until finally only one piece of the story remained untold. We knew that the time had come to inquire about the single missing story. The one from Austria. The one that had eluded us for so long.

We arrived at Grandad’s house early one morning and we sat around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and discussing the project.

“Grandad,” I said, "the recordings we took of your stories from the war, we uploaded them to our computer and we organized many pages of notes and it all looks really good. You know, people will be able to listen to these stories for many, many years. People won’t forget what you all did over there.”

Grandad looked at his coffee mug pensively. “We were just kids, really,” he said. “Just doing what we were told–trying to be good Americans.”

He was proud, but pain was evident in his voice.

“Some of the greatest Americans who have ever lived,” I said.

We sat quietly for a moment. “We were thinking,” I continued, “we know that the story from Austria, it’s very hard for you.” I stopped for a moment, understanding that he was prepared for my question.

“Would you be willing–or able–to tell the story on tape so that it won’t be forgotten?” I asked.

Grandad remained stoic, as always, but a visible sadness that he could not prevent overtook his face. He sat for a moment, in deep thought.

“Yes,” he said sternly as if he was trying to convince himself that he could do it.

I grabbed hold of his hand and held it for a moment. “We can take as long as we need,” I said softly. “I know it’s difficult.”

He took a long drink from his coffee mug with two hands and then sat it down gently on the table. 

“I have one request, though, if you do not mind appeasing me.”

“Of course,” I said. “Anything.”

“Can I sit at my recliner for this one, with you two at my feet, like the story should have been told many, many years ago?”

My brother and I looked at one another, both exhaling with relief. “Of course, Grandad,” we both said.

We grabbed our bags and helped him into his room and sat him in his recliner. We sat on the ground in front of him and prepared our recorder and our ears and our minds.

“What have I told you about Austria?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “we know that it was 1944 and there was a firefight. At some point, you found yourself protecting a young person, possibly a child. He seems to have been sick or wounded and needed medical attention.” 

I stopped for a moment, for the first time feeling for myself the heaviness of the story that I didn’t even know. “But no help ever came, and eventually you had to move on or be left behind.”

Grandad exhaled slowly with his eyes closed, preparing himself to tell the tale he had never told before.

“When my unit arrived in Austria in mid-1943–August 5, 1943, that is–I met a woman; her name was Amelie. She was an Austrian actress. At least she was before the war broke out. I knew her only a short time, but we fell madly for one another…”

He stopped briefly and took a long, deep breath to collect himself.

“When we were sent to Germany in October ‘43, I left Amelie, but I told her I would return and to wait for me. By the time I made it back to Austria, in the Spring of 1944, the Allied powers had begun bombing campaigns all around Vienna. When I arrived, I was informed that Amelie had been killed in an explosion–one of the first that had hit the city. I went to her home and I found there her mother, Anja. She handed me a baby. ‘It’s yours,’ she said. Then she told me that I must take the baby away from Austria, away from the war, if he were to live. I spent a day and a half there in Vienna with this baby before the German Army marched into the city in their last efforts at an offensive. I found myself in the midst of war, holding a baby–my baby.”

He stopped for a moment, tears rolling down his face. I wasn’t sure he would continue, but this time, his lungs didn’t give out on him.

“I tried and tried and tried… but I couldn’t save him.”

He looked up at us, his pain visible. “That was my boy,” he said. “My son. Your uncle. Jakob.”