A FATHER'S ATTEMPT TO TELL HIS SON SOMETHING ABOUT HIMSELF, HIS FATHER AND WHERE THEY CAME FROM.

When my son, Sean, was in high school, we spent one evening in front of the TV.  Sean was laying on his stomach on the bed and I was sitting on the floor--just inches from his face.  I made some long-suffering comment about a girl with a tattoo on the program.

"I understand why you don't like piercings; but how come you don't like tattoos?"

Here was an opening every father yearns for.  It was a rare chance to tell his son about his father and--more importantly--about the fathers that came before him all in hopes to make an impression.

"OK.  This is completely irrational and I own it.  I realize other people see it differently; but you asked me and so I'll give you a personal answer.

I grew up in the shadow of World War II.  This is a high falootin' way of putting it but I don't know any other way of telling it.  .  Your grandfather, my Dad, fought in the war.  What they don't teach you in school is we almost lost the war at several points.  Dad fought during the last great German counteroffensive--what we call the Battle of the Bulge.  Things for the allies could have collapsed right then and there.

Anyway, Dad was in a pathfinder patrol at the front scouting out where the enemy was as well as where he wasn't.  Suddenly the counteroffensive began and Dad and his squad found themselves thirty miles behind German lines in a matter of a few hours.   The Germans were all around them; so they had to hide in the forests, farmhouses and barns by day and tried to

 

work their back to the American positions by night.  It was cold and they were scared to death.  During their trek back, something horrible happened.  We know few details about it; but let's put it this way:  there were several points during the battle when neither side took any prisoners.  Let's leave it at that.

When they were almost in reach of the allied positions, Dad and his buddies were caught out in an open field and came under fire.  In trying to take cover, Dad stepped on a landmine and was severely wounded.  If it hadn't been for the fact he was running when he tripped over the mine, he would have been killed instantly.  As it was, his leg was almost blown off and his body was riddled with shrapnel.  Somehow, they got him back to the American outposts where he was evacuated to a hospital in England.  The doctors wanted to amputate his leg but Dad screamed, cursed and fought them off; finally getting them to attempt to repair his leg instead of taking it off.  (You'd have to have known Dad to understand how he could intimidate a bunch of officers into doing what he wanted.)

Dad almost died.  He survived but he suffered from his wounds all the days for the rest of his life.

The same people who almost killed your grandfather, took the Jews and put them into the concentration camps.  Those they didn't kill once they arrived at the camps were stripped of all the clothing and belongings--including their prayer books and Hebrew Bibles.  Then they processed them.  During the process, the Germans tattooed on their right arm a number serial and from then on that number was their name.  After the war and if they survived, those tattoos were constant reminders of their sufferings, hatred, and death under the Germans as they lived in those camps.  Those tattoos never came off and those who survived the liberation of the camps always carried around those numbers for the rest of their lives.

I know that when people get tattoos, they are trying to express their personality.  But when I see a tattoo, I can only remember those Jews who lost their names.  So for me, a tattoo doesn't express their personality.  It only takes it away."

After I had finished,  I looked at Sean and there seemed to be a look in his eyes that he had grasped onto something important about where he came from.  The wheels were turning!  It was the kind of look that a father always hoped he'd see in his son.

I slowly and seriously broached the question:  "Sean, what do you think."

Sean replied in a whisper:  You're so old.