“All perspectives contain some truth. Let go of the need for right and wrong and just gather in the perspectives and hold them. It grows your brain and your heart!” ~ Unknown
the finest man
Dad was in town, so we went out for breakfast. I enjoy our father/daughter time. In fact, I get perfectly giddy. We talk a lot. These days he tells a lot of war stories with detail he never used to mention.
For instance, most people don’t realize the U.S. invaded Lebanon in 1958. Dad was a Spec 5 in Special Forces: a paratrooper, among other things. His platoon dropped into Lebonese villages that had been decimated by U.S. artillery. Their job was to clean up the bodies -or what was left of them- ward off snipers, and recon nearby villages. As they were flying to the first drop, a man they called Sorry gripped his machete, pointed it upward, and declared his badass was going to chop heads clean off.
At the first building to be cleared, upon sight of limbs without bodies, “Sorry was the first to give it up,” Dad said. Sorry’s bravdo lay on the floor with his food. I suspect the whole company puked before the job was done since they were there for four months. Dad has remarked that once you’ve smelled a decaying corpse the stench never leaves you. Men and women in combat never entirely leave war behind. It’s seared into their minds for as long as they’re on this Earth. Sentient beings can’t unsee, unhear, unsmell, unfeel some horrors.
After a decade of one covert mission after another, in jungles and deserts around the globe, Dad got out of the Army just after I was born. He remembers everything like it was yesterday, even the smell of those rotting bodies. It hurts me that such things haunt him, but I take heart. Despite it all, he has a great sense of humor, and faith in the goodness of man. He is unusually compassionate, and has always been so. As his commander once said, “Terry, you’re a survivor.” Part of his ability to survive has been because of that compassion. He is the finest man I have ever known, and a great teacher.
funny man
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