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I have been asked why my latest book (WYLIE FINDS HIS SPECIAL PLACE) is a children’s book and not one of the military or crime novels I usually write.  I hope this blog entry sufficiently addresses that question.

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The Greatest Memory of Mom

Okay, I admit it.  I am sixty years old. It is the age my late mother said was another step in maturing.  She lived to be 85 and shared with me what she had learned in life. “At twenty, I worried about what others thought about me.  At forty, I didn’t care what others thought about me.  At sixty, I realized that no one was thinking about me—everyone was focused on their own lives.  At eighty, I stopped remembering who the “others” were.”

I have come to understand just how wise my Momma was.  But, it is not her wisdom that I remember most about her.  It is not the adventurous spirit she shared with my father or the extremely practical manner she approached everyday life.  What I remember most about my mother was the special times we shared when I was in half-day kindergarten in the 1950’s.  Tears form in my eyes and a grin spreads across my face when I remember the days we shared our lunch after school.  It was the only time I can recall when she would stop during her busy day and sit down with me.  As a mother of four baby boomers born over a span of eight years, it was rare for her to have any moment in the day when she could lay aside her duties and exclusively devote a few minutes to just one child.

My older siblings were still in school and my little sister would be down for her nap when the bus dropped me off at the corner of our street and I would rush home (you could do that safely back then, even at age five.)  Mom would fix us PB&J sandwiches; mine being with the strawberry jam and hers with blueberry.  After we finished our simple fare and I gulped down the cool, whole milk we segued to my favorite time.  We would go to the small bedroom in the front of the little post-war, two-bedroom suburban home and lie down on my parent’s full-sized bed. It was my nap time.

Before I’d drift off to sleep there was a set routine that we shared. Mom would pull from the nightstand a copy of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” and ask me which I wanted to hear today. Even at age sixty, I can remember the worn, gray cover on that old volume and the black & white sketches that illustrated each story… just as if the book was in my hands right now.  After I made my choice, we would lay on our backs as Mom held the book over our heads and began to read to me in her monotone voice. 

She was not a dramatic reader and would not change her voice to mimic the characters or punch up the story by changing the speed of her reading.  My mom never would have been selected to be the story reader for children’s time at the local library.  It was not her style of reading that I remember half a century later. Rather, it is the warmth and closeness I felt for Momma as I snuggled against her and watched her turn the pages of that old volume.  I don’t remember anything else of that year—the kids in my kindergarten class or the color of our house or if I  had a dog that year or the bus rides to school or even what was my favorite Grimm tale.  What I do remember these many years later is my mom reading to me and how super special and super loved it made me feel then.

And it makes me feel the same today.  Thanks for that memory, Mom.

READ TO YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN!  YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A GREAT READER, JUST READ TO THEM! THERE IS NO VIDEO GAME OR OUTING OR VACATION THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO THEM.  A HALF-CENTURY FROM NOW THEY WILL REMEMBER YOU DID AND LOVE YOU FOR IT.

Colonel Milkus unlocks the tall safe near his desk in the JCS J-2 offices of the Pentagon.  He initials the form taped to the inside of the door, noting what time he opened it and his name.  Before reaching in to get his files he turns the paper sign on the safe front door from “Locked” to “Open”.  Attention to detail.  It marks a professional Marine.  How many times did his TBS instructors repeat that phrase? 

Milkus takes a thick file to his desk.  From the inside cover he removes a floppy disk.  He boots up the personal computer on his desk and loads the disk.  It still amazes him how swiftly the military has moved from paper and typewriters to computers and word processing.  When he started in the fifties it was carbonpaper and three typos allowed per page. Then it was magnetic cards and now in 1985 this PC has the capacity to calculate with the same power of big mainframes from only a few years ago.  This computing power is what has made the Black Jewel project a viable subject for advanced research.  It would be impossible even to attempt it without modern computers. 

Field deployment of Black Jewel sounds easy to do when using the computers and their artificial modeling world.  However, he knows in his heart that he won’t change.  He will continue only to trust his life to a grunt Marine with a rifle.  Computers know nothing about esprit d’corps and traditions.  No computer model can account for the heroics individual Marines will evidence to save their buddy or the mission. 

Milkus lets his mind drift to an earlier time as the computer slowly brings up the complicated program.  He recalls Foxtrot Company’s fire fight on a moonless night fifteen years ago.  His entire company’s survival depended on second squad, second platoon repelling a savage assault by the NVA.  No re-enforcements were available.  No air support.  No evacuation.  No way to redeploy the company.  If that squad’s remaining ten men did not hold, the thin perimeter would be violated and what little mutual support the platoons provided each other would be lost. The company would be destroyed piece meal. 

It didn’t matter what errors had led to this situation.  It didn’t matter that Milkus had two previous 'Nam in-country tours and was the most experienced and senior company commander in the battalion.  It didn’t matter that every Marine knew the war was already lost by the politicians. What mattered was that second squad, second platoon, Foxtrot Company was elected by destiny to receive the ultimate test of courage and fidelity. 

In a War College computer model, the skirmish would be over in minutes and the post action critique would commence to point out what errors had resulted in the company’s destruction.  But computers were not in that tree line on that night.  No, not a computer but grunt Marines with M-16s who chose to do their duty.  And when morning came and with it air support, Foxtrot Company was still there to be evacuated.  Sixty-seven dead NVA surrounded second squad’s position.  Those bodies closest to the Marines were dead of stab wounds. Another five Marines in second squad were dead and two more wounded.  One would die later that day of multiple wounds.  For three solid hours this squad had refused to retreat an inch. They used automatic weapons, grenades, side arms and finally hand-to-hand combat; anything and everything to protect their buddies.

Milkus shakes his head to clear it of a memory he usually keeps locked away in a very special, secret garden of his mind.  He normally visits that walled remembrance only in his dreams or when he has had two beers too many. He is bothered by questions in his mind, “What were the names of those four who lived?  What did they look like?  What was the name of that rifleman I nominated for the Navy Cross?  Why can’t I pull up their names and faces anymore?”

The computer program finally springs to life and Milkus stops his memories.  He enters his password, “2SQ.2PLA.FOX”.  Every time he enters it he chuckles about the little irony in his choice.  Computers will always have limitations.  True Marines know no limits.

The above entry is a passage from the novel CREW ELEVEN by Robert Bartron (available in this site's web store)

As he rested in the adjustable hospital bed that Hospice Services had placed in the front room of his single-wide mobile home, Dad took a first and final account of his life.  His two-year battle with lung cancer was almost over and he had two questions he wanted answered. Had he really done anything important in his life? What was his biggest regret?

My father died as he had lived his entire 73 years.  As death rapidly approached, Dad looked reality in the face and sneered.  He was not going to let the way things were determine what he was going to do.

He had lived through the Great Depression by ignoring it and finding ways to have an exciting and adventurous youth despite extreme poverty and the lack of real parental authority in his dysfunctional family.  He graduated from high school when he was 15 because he could breeze through the academics and he was in a rush to see the world. When he was only 16 he lied about his age to gain employment as a deck hand on a tramp steamer that worked the entire west coast from Seattle, Washington to Valparaiso, Chile. Then he altered his birth certificate so he could enlist in the Navy. He was waiting to report to Boot Camp when the attack on Pearl Harbor stunned America.  Very quickly, he completed his basic and advanced training and he was sent to sea on a ship in the Pacific.  He was cross-trained as an aviation radioman and found himself over the skies to the northwest of Midway Islands in early June 1942 when three Japanese carriers were sunk in under ten minutes.  From 1941 to 1944 he fought in four major sea battles, was shot down, captured by and escaped from the Japanese, survived the sinking of his ship and earned multiple Purple Hearts and other decorations that meant little to him. In fact, my brother and I lost them all when he gave his medals to us to play with.

He did not dwell on what he had done; his focus always was on what he could do tomorrow.  He never held the same type of job for more than a couple of years before his wandering feet and expansive interests led him to try something new.  He seemed always to be in a race to find the next thing in his life.

As he lay there dying, it was the only time in my life I ever heard my father talk about his feelings concerning what he had seen and done in life.  Oh, he was a true Irish storyteller so he often shared humorous anecdotes about the past, and, like all good Irish raconteurs he never let the truth get in the way of a good tale. But Dad never shared his feelings about what he had experienced and accomplished.  He would share funny sailor stories from World War II, but he never talked about the loss and gore and terror of battle.

So when he lay staring at the wedding picture taken on a cold Wisconsin January afternoon that showed both my Mom, an original Navy WAVE, and him in uniform, I listened very intently when he said, “You know, Bob, that is the most important thing I ever accomplished in my life.”

“You mean a successful fifty-year marriage?” I responded.

“Oh, that was also important and you kids were important, but men have done that for all of history.  No, I mean, when my shipmates and I won the war.”

 I immediately connected with his intent.  He loved his family and was proud of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  However, here on his death bed he had resolved that the single greatest achievement of his life was serving in the Navy.

“I don’t mean I personally won the war,” he continued, “but when our country needed us we stepped up and did our part.  It was a war that had to be won.  And we did it.”

That was all he said about that.  There was nothing more to say.  He had weighed everything in his mind, and looking back for the first time in his life, he realized that he had achieved something important, very important.

Then he shared something else that has been on my mind for the past weeks. It was a little secret just between us veterans.

“Bob, I do have one regret in my life.  Back when we were floating in the sea with twenty men clinging to a 10-man life raft after the Yorktown went down, I made up my mind that I would not die in the war.  I set a goal to celebrate Armistice Day on 11-11-11.  I promised myself to live until I was 88 and see the parades and hear the speeches and remember all my shipmates who fell from the sky and those that went down with their ships.  I honestly regret I won’t be able to do that.”

“I’ll remember for you Dad,” I said then and I will this Veterans’ Day.  I will remember my Dad and Mom and Navy vet brother and our older son who is an Army combat veteran of Iraq and our son-in-law who is a Navy pilot with multiple war zone tours.  I will especially keep our youngest son in my thoughts as he currently takes his turn in serving America by flying combat missions in Afghanistan.  I will remember my shipmates who went to sea with me when we crossed the Pacific and Indian Oceans and those who defied death and gravity with me as we flew twelve-hour missions hunting Soviet submarines. 

“Veteran” is not just a word to me.  “Veteran” is a thousand individual faces I’ve known. But when I remember them this 11-11-11 they will all look like my Dad and Mom standing in the Wisconsin snow so long ago, wearing Navy blue.

 Rest in peace, Dad and Mom…and thank you, dear ones, thank you.

Robert Bartron is a retired Navy pilot and author whose military fiction novels emphasize  the courage, dedication and honor of members of our armed forces.