On my way to the library this morning, I stopped at the Dunkin Doughnuts for an iced coffee. Almost didn’t, but I had time before the library opened. I carried The Iliad in my shoulder bag because I am going to read it this Summer, and this offered me an opportunity to read the five -to-ten pages I meant to read every day. The coffee was lukewarm, so the ice was already melting.
Right at the back of the store, at the table next to the last empty one, there sat an elderly man. I noticed that he was wearing a cap that identified him as a W.W.II veteran. I sat, opened my weighty tome , wondering why, “The Gathering of the Armies” is such a long Book. Before I found my place in the Robert Fagles translation, I decided I would ask the gentleman where he had served. Seemed more respectful than asking if he did fight in World War II.
He asked me if I’d heard of Patton, and pointed to the circled 3 on his cap saying that it signified Patton’s unit
He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and in Normandy.
He’d been wounded. I’m guessing he meant at Normandy because that’s the one he’d told me about. The soldiers had started hitting the beach at 6:30 am. He’d been in the third wave, the waves came ten minutes apart. His wave had been sent onto the beach by, “this big Texan.”
He’d been twenty, and had graduated from Saint John’s School. He’d always lived here, near here, in Cambridge. The recruiters came into the High Schools and told the young men to get their degree before they joined up. He did.
Said something about smoking a cigarette with the Texan. He’d smoked then. I said I’d always figured everyone did in the 1940s. He told me that you could get two packs of cigarettes, in supermarkets, for twenty-five cents for two. I said this explained how my father had smoked since he was thirteen. The gentleman said he’d smoked since he was sixteen, stopped twenty years ago,
He told me that he was eighty-five, that his birthday had been last week.
I hadn’t talked much. While the old Army vet spoke to me, he stared straight ahead, I had been sitting on his left. When I’d walked past him, before I sat, I wondered if he could see.
He left just before I did, and did not say good-bye. He didn’t tell me his name.
I’d never gotten to The Iliad. I text-ed Jamie from a bench outside the library and told him who I’d met.
I started writing this as soon as I got home. I’ve written down what I remember as I remember it. Some buddies of mine, men my age, have told me they’ve, “always been obsessed with W.W.II”. If the man in the Dunkin Doughnuts had embellished historical details to make his story more interesting, they might have spotted them. If he’d added things, I thought that was okay. He might have claimed experiences that didn’t happen to him. I thought I’d tell you what he told me.
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