From the beginning, you must know that all of this would be frowned upon as too much of a fuss. This would be disproved of because this is not the right thing to do. It is vainglorious. It would be dismissed because it didn’t fit the man. All of this is ostentatious. But, sometimes, a man is bigger than he realizes.
These are my great-grandparents: Tonice and Ocie, and their oldest of four children, my grandfather, Clem:
That picture has landed here before, but it is important to introduce them again today to wrap up a story that went untold for 60 years, research that was unfulfilled for a decade and a mystery that was unraveled off-and-on over the last 12 months and is being presented tonight.
My great-grandfather, Tonice, was, to me, the archetype of a Christian man. (He would probably object to that, and really would not like all of the things I’m about to say.) He was a humble fellow. He was a farmer, a pillar of his church and the kind of guy I’d do well to be like. He was a quiet guy. He had a voice that I remember as a loud whisper, the kind you lean in for. He was a kind, giving man. He’d rather you didn’t notice that he did his earthly work without fanfare. That’s probably part of why he came home from the war, like so many others, and didn’t want to talk about it.
The day we buried Tonice, in 2001, the preacher talked about how he’d been visiting people in the hospital even as his own body was being worn away. His preacher told us an anecdote about his wartime service, a topic he was always careful to avoid. His children learned perhaps as much about what he did in Europe in the church’s bulletin that day as they had in a lifetime with the man — and even then it wasn’t much. It just wasn’t important to talk about. Or perhaps it was important to keep to himself.
Before he died he’d asked for a simple funeral. As pallbearers we put his casket in the earth and covered it ourselves. It was one of the saddest and simplest and greatest honors of my life to be a part of that. He was, by rights, entitled to a military funeral, but he demurred. He simply wanted someone from the VFW to come out and present a flag to his wife. They did and it was all done simply and efficiently and he would have liked that.
I stared at that church bulletin for a long time. I’d come back to it every few months and then again around the time of year he died. My appreciation of history was in full bloom by then and I tried to find more about this chapter of his life. The man was a farmer and a family man, but there were other important things, too. I found his draft registration online. About five years ago, with my grandfather’s permission, we sent off to the national archives to see what they had on my great-grandfather. The 1973 fire sadly wiped out a lot of records. The title of that document is A Study in Disaster, and that seemed appropriate.
The government sent back word that they had nothing, and would we kindly fill them in? We had nothing, too.
The trail went cold.
Late last year a friend suggested I seek out his discharge papers. Returning troops, I was told, often filed them with the county back then. So I went to that office in his county at Christmas. They didn’t have anything, but they suggested I try the VA next door. I walked over and met an angel who called everyone under the sun until, after an hour or more, she found someone that actually had a copy of his DD-214. Someone, whose name I never heard, on the other end of that phone call had to go out in rain and maybe sleet to dig through files and boxes in an uninsulated outbuilding, but she dug up the file.
They faxed it over and suddenly, in my hands, were details. When he was wounded. When he was shipped back to the U.S. Where and when he was discharged. Some of his medals. His unit. This was the Christmas present of the year. My new friend at Veterans Affairs and I shared a little cry that embarrassed us both, which seems silly in retrospect. This was an important find. From this paperwork things started to come together.
Knowing his unit was the key. I found, online, a roster of the 137th that included his name. Confirmation. From there I was able to make this interactive map, which I shared here last January:
We decided that my grandfather deserved a big birthday present this year, so we continued the research. I found, and ordered, the medals Tonice never talked about. I had a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol on the anniversary of the end of the war in his honor. I took the history of the 137th Infantry Regiment of the 35th Infantry Division and wrote a narrative of Tonice’s days in France and Germany and Belgium, some of which is included in that map. I pulled in other sources, weather reports, soldier stats, the incredible tale of Mr. Michael Linquata a medic from the 134th, historical photos and more. There are now about a dozen or so sources in all. I added photo maps. It grew to over 30 pages, but I trimmed it to 26 for a high-altitude view of Tonice’s time in the war. It isn’t complete. It isn’t personal, but it is a tangible observation of a period he never talked about.
We ordered a nice display box. We worried for hours, it seems, over the proper layout and the precise measurements of things. We managed to keep it all secret. So my parents, my wife and I were able to present that big historical document, the flag and the accompanying certificate in my great-grandfather’s honor and this display case to my grandfather:
That picture in the middle is the one at the top of the post, circa 1944. My great-grandfather was a combat medic, enduring the coldest winter Europe could remember. A weather report I found, and incorporated into the historic narrative, said the ground was frozen four-feet deep. His preacher said, when we buried him, that Tonice was the man that took his field jacket off and gave it to a soldier in a war zone to help keep him warm.
That didn’t surprise anyone in the church that day. The conditions he was in at the time might have. He’d never talked about it. We knew about the quiet, steady nature and nobility of the man. What it carried him through, until now, even his children couldn’t imagine. I’m pleased to be able to give his son, my grandfather, a bit of insight on that. If I didn’t know what the phrase “labor of love” meant before, I have a slightly better understanding of it now.
I’ve been hinting at this and we’ve been working on this project for a good long while. I’d gone through all of the stages — elation at discovering a new tidbit, the fear of finding too many tidbits, pleasure at laying out a handsome display, the misery of wondering whether I had enough tidbits, the uncertainty of how it would be received, all of that — and now we’re finally to the point of getting the glass cleaned and making sure everything is just so and wrapping the box and putting it in my grandfathers hands …
And I’m going to tell you about that tomorrow.
