My Father’s War

It’s been over the summer that I’ve had to help my dad sort out his house and clear out 30 years of things he’s collected after the divorce from my mother. I took back the book I had given him as it was buried amid many other things he had hoarded in his home. He had no recollection of it as I secreted it in my luggage taking it back. It’s already gone on to be sold online so I’m glad someone else is enjoying it.

I cancel this project with a heavy heart but I’m glad to have had the chance to spend time with my dad. Sometimes plans we make just don’t work out and are better left in our heads than attempted with our hands.

Finally had a sit down talk with my dad after Christmas and might have the need to kick off the painting for Vietnam. He cracked the book and looked over it without having issue. The talk went well enough as I shared my thoughts on getting stories out of him to share with my brother’s sons. Like I wrote in the letter I included with the book, we’re almost out of WWII veterans. His generation of men aren’t long for this world either and passing on stories of what was is a thing to be stressed.

Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Amor Fatis.

I got my copy of Nam ’68 as a late pledge and I’ve gone through the book to get an idea of what I’m about to give my dad for Christmas. It looks like a solid rules set and should be easy enough to build/paint forces for. The dynamic of making it a personal wargame with names and ranks in creating the platoons might well crush my dad but I feel as though it is something worth the risk. If he has anything to work out in his heart or head I hope it’s a safe place to get them out on a gaming table. The idea of having him relive the war and be in pain isn’t my intention. I want it to be something I can use as a bridge for him and his grandkids. I have little to no idea what he did other than be in the war.

His story to tell was how after he got his draft notice from the Army with the order to report to Ft. Ord in California he turned to the Air Force recruiter and was off to basic in the next three days. I want him to bring more of who he is as a man out and share with the boys the human side of being an enlisted service member. Hopefully he won’t be so damnably lonely and can go off on a tangent during a game that will create a bond between unconnected people stretching a couple generations.

“The bad times are the good times”, even though it was war and he suffered his own wounds seen and unseen I really hope to give my old man a continued reason to get up in the morning and get out of bed as he hits his second retirement. If he can’t go out to work, then he might as well go out and play.

With my father being enlisted in the US Air Force and holding a career of almost 24 years in service the small mentions of how he started off got sprinkled in only a handful of times. Growing up as a military brat and moving every few years it was a simple existence of easy detachment from the world around me before connection to someplace new. It was standard to even have detachment at home where a depth of relationship with the people you were directly related to was nonexistent.

I know my father holds wounds physical and emotional from years ago. I want to know who he was so that there is a greater bond between us. With my brothers being younger they didn’t have as much time with him before my parents split so it would help them too.

It really boils down to getting to know a man who wasn’t there because of work. When all he has left are the memories inside himself, no other veterans to talk to about being there and only his sons left to say anything about it to, that seems to me like a lonely existence that I don’t want for him. I love my father with all his faults. This is my best guess and effort to find a way for him to work in concrete/abstract terms to share his head space with me and my brothers.