I haven’t written about Veteran’s Day since I was assigned to do it by Wilbraham, Mass., public schools in the 1970s, or to cover memorial events as a cub newspaper reporter. I recall coming home from elementary school to delve into one of my father’s gargantuan etymological dictionaries to figure out how Veteran’s Day differed from Memorial Day, when we were doled out identical assignments. Basically, I learned it meant old, and specifically in Old Church Slavonic (still used in the Russian Orthodox liturgy) it was derived from “vetuchu,” meaning old.
The focus of Lubachka is on the civilian survivors and casualties of war, but today I’m writing about my American-born father and his U.S. military service. I know that witnessing so many civilian (as well as fellow soldier) casualties as such a young man had a tremendous impact on him, and certainly would help him empathize with the horrific plight of his future wife and her family.
Looking at this from a “vetuchu” perspective is unavoidable, as even fewer records of my father’s military service exist than those of my mother’s early childhood in work camps and civilian prisons. Michael William Gural’s military records were among the approximately 16-18 million destroyed in a July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis suburb.
Moreover, I generally avoid writing or speaking about Veteran’s Day because of my strong views opposing much of U.S. military policy and action, present and future. But none of that undermines the tremendous respect I have for those men and women who were either forced or volunteered to serve their country, or at least do what they thought was best at the time.
I have a lot of anecdotal evidence of my father’s various stints in the U.S. Army, including how he was one of few survivors of a leisure swim off a boat during a tsunami in the South Pacific. A broad-shouldered, former competitive swimmer, my father did what he could to save others swept away in the violent waters.
Other stories were less heroic or tragic musings on daily life in the bunker, like how other enlisted young men (never him, he stressed) would use isopropyl alcohol to set ablaze the toes of a sleeping solider, peeping out of worn socks and combat boots that had been busted open with overuse. (My father was more a big-hearted comedian than a prankster.)
I also recall my father saying he’d lied that he was two years older to gain access early to ROTC so that he could both send money home to his impoverished immigrant factory worker parents in Newark, N.J., and also qualify for the GI Bill.
That evidence exists. The National Archives online database lists both the Michael Gural enlisting in 1943 at age 18. (He was born in 1926, and therefore was only 16 at the time.) Under serial number 32922859, my father is noted to have been “skilled occupations in the manufacture of miscellaneous products.” But based on serial number 12102416, my father reportedly enlisted in 1944, this time with his real birthdate of Oct. 18, 1926, as a Medical Administrative Corps (MAC) Officer.
I know he wore many hats during his years in the Army, also serving as a radio sergeant, a cook aboard the boat that encountered the deadly tsunami, fighting on D-Day, and eating horse meat while deployed ahead of the Korean War.
For all his sacrifices, my father was punished despite his greatest efforts to help and protect the United States. When he volunteered to parachute into Siberia -- because: a) he was too poor to ever parachute recreationally and really wanted to do it; and b) he spoke Russian – he was red listed. That punishment carried on for decades, well into my childhood and teens. We had an unlisted phone number to avoid the harassing and threatening calls of “commie” and “pinko.” He also was fired after a brief stint in a dream job with The Bureau of Labor for his alleged affiliation with anti-American factions.
To temper my views on Veteran’s Day, I’ll leave you with three quotes from my father’s peer Kurt Vonnegut, who dropped out of Cornell in January 1943 to enlist in the U.S. Army. Deployed to Europe to fight in World War II, Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing by hiding in a meat locker.
Reflecting on his own experience: “The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”
From my favorite Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse-Five: “You know we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock ‘My God, my God,’ I said to myself. ‘It's the Children's Crusade.’"
I risk enraging some who haven’t read Cat's Cradle, but this quote must be taken in the context of the novel. The tedious task of writing local Veteran’s Day feature articles slapped across the top of the front page with a sprawling American flag graphic that put nothing in perspective (while real wars played out in the streets, gang violence claiming young lives almost daily) always makes me recall it: “Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
The focus of Lubachka is on the civilian survivors and casualties of war, but today I’m writing about my American-born father and his U.S. military service. I know that witnessing so many civilian (as well as fellow soldier) casualties as such a young man had a tremendous impact on him, and certainly would help him empathize with the horrific plight of his future wife and her family.
Looking at this from a “vetuchu” perspective is unavoidable, as even fewer records of my father’s military service exist than those of my mother’s early childhood in work camps and civilian prisons. Michael William Gural’s military records were among the approximately 16-18 million destroyed in a July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis suburb.
Moreover, I generally avoid writing or speaking about Veteran’s Day because of my strong views opposing much of U.S. military policy and action, present and future. But none of that undermines the tremendous respect I have for those men and women who were either forced or volunteered to serve their country, or at least do what they thought was best at the time.
I have a lot of anecdotal evidence of my father’s various stints in the U.S. Army, including how he was one of few survivors of a leisure swim off a boat during a tsunami in the South Pacific. A broad-shouldered, former competitive swimmer, my father did what he could to save others swept away in the violent waters.
Other stories were less heroic or tragic musings on daily life in the bunker, like how other enlisted young men (never him, he stressed) would use isopropyl alcohol to set ablaze the toes of a sleeping solider, peeping out of worn socks and combat boots that had been busted open with overuse. (My father was more a big-hearted comedian than a prankster.)
I also recall my father saying he’d lied that he was two years older to gain access early to ROTC so that he could both send money home to his impoverished immigrant factory worker parents in Newark, N.J., and also qualify for the GI Bill.
That evidence exists. The National Archives online database lists both the Michael Gural enlisting in 1943 at age 18. (He was born in 1926, and therefore was only 16 at the time.) Under serial number 32922859, my father is noted to have been “skilled occupations in the manufacture of miscellaneous products.” But based on serial number 12102416, my father reportedly enlisted in 1944, this time with his real birthdate of Oct. 18, 1926, as a Medical Administrative Corps (MAC) Officer.
I know he wore many hats during his years in the Army, also serving as a radio sergeant, a cook aboard the boat that encountered the deadly tsunami, fighting on D-Day, and eating horse meat while deployed ahead of the Korean War.
For all his sacrifices, my father was punished despite his greatest efforts to help and protect the United States. When he volunteered to parachute into Siberia -- because: a) he was too poor to ever parachute recreationally and really wanted to do it; and b) he spoke Russian – he was red listed. That punishment carried on for decades, well into my childhood and teens. We had an unlisted phone number to avoid the harassing and threatening calls of “commie” and “pinko.” He also was fired after a brief stint in a dream job with The Bureau of Labor for his alleged affiliation with anti-American factions.
To temper my views on Veteran’s Day, I’ll leave you with three quotes from my father’s peer Kurt Vonnegut, who dropped out of Cornell in January 1943 to enlist in the U.S. Army. Deployed to Europe to fight in World War II, Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing by hiding in a meat locker.
Reflecting on his own experience: “The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”
From my favorite Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse-Five: “You know we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock ‘My God, my God,’ I said to myself. ‘It's the Children's Crusade.’"
I risk enraging some who haven’t read Cat's Cradle, but this quote must be taken in the context of the novel. The tedious task of writing local Veteran’s Day feature articles slapped across the top of the front page with a sprawling American flag graphic that put nothing in perspective (while real wars played out in the streets, gang violence claiming young lives almost daily) always makes me recall it: “Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
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