To the Front (eBook)

Grandfathers' Stories in the Cause of Freedom

Michael M. Van Ness M.D. (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
318 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-0-9997705-9-7 (ISBN)

Growing up, I was surrounded by military heroes. Herein are the stories they told of the rocky road traveled in the cause of freedom.

While I grew up amongst military heroes, I was too young to know it. Now that I am older and the heroes of my childhood are gone, their stories endure. Although it is too late to ask them questions, it is not too late to learn from their lives. "e;They preached sermons with their lives."e;

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in a military family. My maternal grandfather, Major General John B. Anderson (née Andersen, changed upon arrival at U.S. Military Academy to “Anderson”), graduated from West Point in 1914. My father, Captain Harper E. Van Ness, Jr., was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Class of 1943. My father’s father, Harper Elliott Van Ness, was an Army sergeant in World War One. Farther back, my maternal grandfather’s brother Nels Andersen fought in the Spanish–American War. My maternal grandmother’s grandfather John Palmer joined the Confederate Army in 1862. John Palmer’s uncle Samuel Bell was an officer in the Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry and fought in the Mexican–American War, 1846–48.

Growing up, I was surrounded by the stories of these men. Artifacts of their service lay about in the living room, while others were hidden in drawers. In closets hung uniforms stored with dress swords and field boots. Displayed were medals and photographs of people and places from around the world. Some of my first memories are the roar of jet planes, the chatter of a .50 caliber machine gun, and the shrill sound of a bosun’s whistle.

It was natural for me to think I would follow in their footsteps. I was a good student and athlete. When my father was stationed at the Pentagon, he would often take me and my two older brothers to events at the nearby Naval Academy—pistol matches, wrestling matches, and football games. I always enjoyed our outings and could see myself wearing Navy blue and gold.

But there was a problem, I was near-sighted. In those days, the need for glasses disqualified one from an Academy appointment. There was another problem. My father was fearful of financial insecurity. In fact, he was obsessed by the fact that he was raised poor in Mexico, Missouri. Although financially secure now as a Naval officer, he was never going to make the kind of money folks in Washington, D.C. did. From an early age I, too, was very conscious that our family circumstances resembled those described by David McCullough in his book The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West. We were poorer than our neighbors who had not been in the military, but I never felt inferior to them. Naturally, I felt deep pride in my family’s military service and tried to carry myself with the dignity befitting a military brat who one day might be an officer and a gentleman.

During my early years, frequent trips to Bethesda Naval Hospital were common, usually for treatment of minor athletic injuries. Those visits got me thinking, “If I can’t go to the Naval Academy, maybe I’ll be a Navy doctor.” My father warmed to the idea; nothing wrong having his son as a Navy doctor. And near-sightedness was not an obstacle to a career in Navy medicine.

Childhood dreams of a Navy medical career were reinforced by a week-long hospitalization at Bethesda for knee surgery in the autumn of 1966. I was thirteen, placed in an open ward with wounded enlisted men from the Vietnam War. They doted on me, the son of a senior officer and his comely wife. I relished the attention and admired the men and their stories of combat and service life. I could see myself a part of this world, a world of courage, adventure, and sacrifice. I liked the sights and smells of clean sheets, antiseptic, and starched uniforms.

My childhood dreams evaporated in the heat of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. The threat of the draft changed the attitude of many of my peers, whose families were both career politicians attuned to current events as well as career military men. Washington was a hotspot of protest marches; in addition, my adolescent fantasies of sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll, stoked by the 1967 Summer of Love, were increasingly at odds with the discipline of military service.

By 1970 any thought of my application to the Naval Academy had vanished. I was not alone. As a member of the Alumni Board of the Naval Academy, my father was told there were only 1,005 applications for the 1,000 slots in plebe class. If I wanted in, I would be accepted, no questions asked.

My cocksure response was a resounding “No!” Without thinking, I added, “Dad, these days, only losers go into the military.” How stinging and painful was that rebuke. The last of his three sons dismissing out of hand his long-held hope that we might follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, I never fleshed out my thinking with my father.

As this book reveals, however, I did join the Navy, I was a Navy doctor, and I cared for many of the “greatest generation” during my service at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I hope that path makes up in some small way for my youthful arrogance.

My father died in 2007 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His second cousin, the Reverend Kitty Lehman, delivered the eulogy. Her words were kind and thoughtful.

…We cannot adequately attend to our response to this place and to this occasion without asking its larger meaning. We are here to remember and to pray, amidst the fallen. What can be the meaning of so many lives lost in this war-torn world, in this endless struggle between love and fear? Have we come far enough yet, in our restless pursuit of justice and peace, to confirm their sacrifice? I find it most genuinely helpful to admit that we don’t know. Still, the clearest triumph is that we hold life most precious.

Some years ago, I picked up a book by Mark Helprin. Actually, I got it for my husband, himself a naval aviator during the Viet Nam war. The novel was about the Alpini during World War I, or at least I thought it was. As sometimes happens, I ended up reading it before my husband got around to it. The title is A Soldier of the Great War. Like all fine literature, it turned out to be about life. World War I was simply the backdrop and the metaphor. The Great War turned out to be life itself. Harper was a sailor and an aviator of the greatest war of all, the battle for life’s ultimate meaning. And so are we all soldiers of that great war.

It is in places like this and at times like this that we pause, to consider in awe and reverence all that is of greatest value to us in this life. We recommit our own lives to serve those goods above all else. We express our intuition that such great goods are enduring in a more transcendent sense than we can even imagine. And in so doing, we define ourselves, and we shape the world for future generations.

For Harper, the overriding goods were family, friends, and community, lived out in service to country, to the wonders of science and technology, and to the ultimate mystery we term “God,” the benevolence that we hope and trust comprises the very core and extent of all things, of inner and outer space. That was the sermon Harper preached with his life. It remains for each of us to preach our own. May we do as well. AMEN.

I treasure Kitty Lehman’s eulogy. I wish I had said something like it to my father. He had arranged for her to conduct his burial service, “to pipe him over the side.” Maybe he knew she would capture the essence of his life better than those closer to him. I wish he could have heard her speak, expressing the gratitude and understanding of the trials he faced.

I wish, too, that my grandmother, Sue Palmer Anderson (née Sue Moore Palmer), had been so comforted at her husband General Anderson’s graveside service in 1976. The duty chaplain did his best, but my grandmother was distraught with grief and resentment. At the time, I did not understand her anger, but I do now. What I remember best from the ceremony was the 13-gun cannon salute, the smoke from one round to the next, curling up into the sky and then settling around the white gravestones of his West Point classmates and comrades-in-arms.

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, my family was invited to a liberation ceremony in the Dutch town of Roermond, a town my grandfather’s troops liberated in March 1945. I was told: coffee with the mayor, a photo opportunity at a memorial site, a parade of restored military vehicles, and a remembrance service in the town cathedral.

My brother Scott had visited both in 1970 and in 2015, but I had no idea what to expect. I was happy to know the citizens of Roermond were planning a remembrance; their plans dwarfed anything in Parkersburg, Iowa, my grandfather’s hometown. Still, would the celebration live up to my expectations? Or would the whole thing be a disappointment? It was one of those times when you simply hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

I managed to obtain an American flag that had flown over the American Cemetery in Normandy and a letter of greetings from Iowa Senator Charles Grassley. I tried to learn a few words of Dutch for the meeting with the mayor of Roermond. At the meeting, my brother Scott was going to show her the Order of the Orange Nassau, Grand Officer, with Swords, the second highest military decoration of the Netherlands government, which General Anderson received in 1947. We wanted the mayor and her staff to know how much we appreciated their efforts.

They planned a Remembrance Service, a memorial service in the city cathedral on Sunday at the end of the three-day celebration. I was asked to say a few words, two minutes max. I jumped at the chance.

The remembrance service was more elaborate and moving than I could have imagined: two hours of testimony, orchestral music, prayer, and quiet reflection....

Erscheint lt. Verlag	12.4.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
ISBN-10	0-9997705-9-4 / 0999770594
ISBN-13	978-0-9997705-9-7 / 9780999770597

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