He shook it vigorously, proudly. “Yeah. Forty-fifth Infantry. Was in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. In five campaigns late ’42 to the end of the war. Was most ever’where fighting the Krauts ‘cept . . . that, that little island . . . . what you call it.” “Sicily?” “Yeah. That’s it,” he said, rubbing his temple. “I had two strokes and I have a little trouble remembering sometime.” From a ways off, thunder rumbled low and long. I invited myself into his war and he took me back to the 1940’s, when the world would tear people in pieces by the millions, and we dealt with the paradox of that horror coupled with the knowing that the alternative would be worse, much worse. Young men knew their calling. He told me about Hitler, Rommel, Patton, and a German guard he found dead at the gate of the concentration camp. The guard had a camera and “’Course I wasn’t supposed to, but I took that camera. It had eight pictures of the camp. Still got ‘em.” He smiled. “We liberated that concentration camp . . . oh, what was the name of it?”
“You were in the 45th? It was Dachau, April of ‘45.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That was it, and we, we loaded thirty-nine railroad cars of them poor starving folks.” Lightning split the night bright behind him and golden-silhouetted the bent old man, and the thunder banged, now closer, louder. “They was just walking skeletons, they was.” He shifted the cane to his other hand and steadied himself again on the handlebar. “You know I wanted to give ‘em my K Rations, but Sgt. Williams said no. Another GI give a man some and he wolfed it down and fell to the ground holding his stomach and then died outright.” Gazing into the night, he was quiet a few seconds and I was careful to give him that time. Then he turned those strong eyes to me and said slowly, “I tell you, son, in the war I seen some awful things, but I never seen nothing like that Dachau place.” Shifting his weight, he leaned too hard on the motorcycle and it teetered some. I put my hand on the other side to steady it. “Oops,” he said, “Didn’t mean to push it.”
“It’s ok. I got it.” 11