On December 31, 2002, at 8:00 a.m., Dad received a telephone call from someone at the VA with the results of the CT scan. He was told, “You need to have a biopsy because you have cancer.”
Despite the fact that the CT scan showed a growth on Dad’s lung and that a biopsy would have to be performed, the doctors insisted that his heart condition was more serious and that they could not perform the lung biopsy until he underwent an angiogram. Therefore, Dad consented to having the angiogram performed. When Dad’s primary care physician returned from his vacation during the first week in January, he put in the order for the angiogram to be performed. Again Dad was told that we would be informed of the appointment date and time for the angiogram. He went the entire month of January without receiving any word from the VA Hospital about when this would be done.
Meanwhile Dad’s coughing and breathing conditions worsened; he became so short-winded that on January 31, Dad, Mom and I went to the emergency room at the VA Hospital. The male nurse who was on duty in the emergency room said that he knew Dad was sick and needed help. Dad saw his primary care physician later that afternoon. His physician examined him and stated that Dad’s lung was beginning to collapse.
Dad’s physician called for the cardiologist to meet with Dad on Monday, February 3, 2003. He informed us that it didn’t look good for Dad and that nothing could be done until Dad had the angiogram to see if his heart was able to withstand the biopsy procedure. Dad’s blood oxygen level was 93%. On Monday morning, February 3, the three of us arrived at the VA early for the 12:30 p.m. appointment with the cardiologist. We met with a nurse practitioner. She indicated that Dad’s lung needed attention more than his heart. She felt that hospitalization was the quickest way for him to receive the necessary treatment. She could see how sick Dad was and that he was having a terrible time breathing, he had a terrible cough and she could not hear air in his left lung. She made several phone calls trying to have him admitted to the VA Hospital. While awaiting responses to her phone calls we returned to the waiting area, because she was getting behind schedule on seeing other patients. About an hour later, after consulting with the cardiology and pulmonary specialist she came to the waiting area she told us that those physicians indicated that Dad’s medical condition at that time did not qualify him for admission to the hospital. In other words, physicians who had not even seen Dad, determined that he was not sick enough to be admitted to the VA Hospital. She then had Dad scheduled for an angiogram over a week later, on February 11, 2003, and sent us home.
Needless to say we were all not only disappointed but furious for not only this treatment by the VA staff that determined that Dad was not sick enough to be admitted, but also for their constant delays in providing Dad vital medical attention. How could employees of the Veterans Administration have such a cavalier attitude to someone who had gallantly served his country?
Upon leaving the VA Hospital I immediately proceeded to our local hospital, East Jefferson General Hospital. After the triage nurse at East Jefferson saw Dad and discovered his blood oxygen level was 86%, Dad was admitted at once. He was put on oxygen and his breathing difficulties subsided considerably in only about five minutes. X-rays there revealed that his left lung was collapsed and that he had fluid in or around his lung. Cardiology exams revealed that although he had angina, his heart was healthy enough to withstand any testing for his lung condition. On Wednesday, February 5, 2003, over 1400 cc of fluid were removed from his lung cavity in order to improve his breathing. The biopsy was performed on this fluid. The doctors informed us that the tumor on Dad’s bronchial tube was malignant.
He began radiation therapy on Friday afternoon, February 7, 2003 and the oncologist assigned to him was successful in having Dad accepted into program for an experimental drug being tested. The drug was a form of chemotherapy but is administered orally by pill; it does not have all of the side effects of regular chemotherapy. The doctors were hopeful that this combination of radiation therapy and oral chemotherapy would prolong Dad’s life.
Dad remained too weak from this ordeal to be released from the hospital and he was transferred to the skilled nursing facility until he completed his initial sixteen radiation therapy treatments.
Dad began a regimen of the oral chemotherapy and the initial prognosis was promising. Although he was still able to get around, he was now constantly tethered to an oxygen tank.
After several weeks, however, it appeared in subsequent x-rays that the cancer had spread to other parts of his lung. Dad then progressed to regular chemotherapy but after only three weeks the injections were collapsing his veins and making him terribly sick. Dad made the decision to cease this treatment and return to the oral chemotherapy in hope that this was retarding the spread of the cancer even if it was not stopping it. Although ill, Dad’s spirits were still high and, on May 10, he celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday and he and Mom’s sixty-first wedding anniversary. Although he was saddened to learn several days later that his friend, Les Vink, had passed away on May 10.
Dad had a regular visit with his pulmonary specialist in June. The date was June 6, 2003, the fifty-ninth anniversary of D-Day. The doctor broke the news to Dad that the cancer was still spreading and at such a rate that Dad would probably survive the summer but he would not see Christmas. Dad’s response was, “Fifty-nine years ago, I would not have bet you a dollar that I would live this long.” Dad further expressed his belief that he would still beat this thing and be around longer than his doctor predicted.
Dad was still feeling strong and made plans to attend the 90th Infantry Association reunion in August. The reunion was scheduled to take place in St Louis. Dad had also made plans to attend the 712th Battalion Association reunion in September in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. I scheduled vacation days at work for these two events, planning to drive Mom and Dad to these two functions.
It was during the month of July that I located Joe Mack Reeves and during our conversations, we made plans to stop and visit with Joe and his family in Tennessee on our way to Fort Mitchell.
By August, however, Dad strength was beginning to wane. He cancelled plans to attend the 90th reunion and hoped that he could regain his strength to travel to Kentucky and visit Tennessee to reunite with Joe Mack.
In the beginning of September, Dad’s oncologist thought he could make the trip and administered medication to provide him additional strength to make the trip. Unfortunately, Dad had an adverse reaction to the medication and became gravely ill, he was so dehydrated that he required hospitalization. Dad never fully bounced back from this setback. Our plans for attending the reunion in Fort Mitchell had to be cancelled.
Both Joe Reeves and Dad were looking forward to meeting again. The story of Dad and Joe reuniting after sixty years was such a compelling human interest story that newspapers both in New Orleans and Murfreesboro ran articles on how they met during the war and had not seen each other in sixty years.
I called Joe to inform him of our trip cancellation and explain that Dad’s health had worsened. Without hesitation he asked if he could come to New Orleans to visit Dad. I naturally agreed and Joe scheduled his visit for the same weekend we would have been traveling to Fort Mitchell.
The New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper heralds the reunion.
Cpl Gruntz and Joe Reeves’ reunion. (Author’s collection)
We were all anxiously awaiting the arrival of Joe and his wife, Nancy. Despite the passage of sixty years, that bond that had formed between a young soldier and a small boy was still there. After catching up on what had occurred in each other’s lives, they began talking about the farm in Tennessee as if the occurrences of 1943 had just happened.
Dad’s doctor had indicated in July that Dad’s desires and abilities would slowly begin to disappear. His mobility would gradually be reduced, and his desire for foods would dissipate. Finally, the natural instinct to live would be diminished; the intellect eventually would determine that there must be a better existence on the other side. By the
middle of September, the physician’s predictions were beginning to come true. Dad was fading away; he came under the care of hospice.
Dad’s world was growing smaller. By the time of Joe Reeve’s visit, Dad no longer left the house. We all looked forward to Thanksgiving with hope but with the realization that it would be our last Thanksgiving together. Dad gave us hope and still maintained that he wanted to celebrate Christmas as a family.
To buoy Dad’s spirits, I bought a Christmas tree on November 11. All of my children and grandchildren helped to decorate the tree in the sun room next to the kitchen. Dad’s bed was in the sun room where he could be near to all the activity in the house.
We had a small quiet Thanksgiving dinner; Dad was still able to traverse the few steps from his bed in the sun room to the nearby kitchen table. Although Dad’s condition was beginning to fade fast, he still maintained that he would be with us for Christmas.
As the word of Dad’s illness spread to his old Army buddies, he had been receiving calls from many wishing him well. As Christmas approached, Jim Cary called to extend holiday greetings and wish Dad the best. Dad told Jim. “If I can make it through Christmas, I will feel that I have accomplished plenty.”
Dad made it through Christmas and New Year’s, but his world was continually shrinking. He was no longer able to walk and I had to lift him from his chair to his bed and vice versa. Eventually, his world became the bed. As his doctor predicted, his desire for food gradually disappeared.
I had moved back in with Mom and Dad several months earlier and as I was leaving for work one morning shortly after Christmas, Dad asked where I was going. He said he wanted me to be there when he died. I told him that I would be there when that time came but that he was not going to die that day. Dad’s tolerance for pain that he had endured in the field hospital in August 1944 was still with him fifty-nine years later. Throughout January, the hospice nurse indicated that the dosage of pain medication for someone in Dad’s condition was 200 mg; Dad was only taking 50 mg.
By February 4, 2004, however, Dad had slipped into a coma. On the morning of February 7, 2004 we awoke and Dad’s breathing, even with oxygen, was labored. Mom and I were next to the bed. She left the room for a moment to take an insulin shot for her diabetes. Dad then breathed his last. I called Mom to tell her and I looked at my watch; it read 7:12 am.5 The number that been so significant to him in life, 712, was with him even in death.
Dad was buried with traditional military honors. The grave side scene of a military funeral is often depicted in the movies, but this familiarity hardly prepares one for the reality of experiencing the haunting echo of Taps and the meticulous folding and presentation of the flag for your own family member. At Mom’s request, the Honor Guard handed me the flag with the customary Army protocol:
This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.
Retracing Dad’s battle route with him had indeed altered my perceptions of war. If those words had been uttered to me before our trip a decade earlier, the deep significance of their meaning would have escaped me. As my eyes welled up, it was with grief and sorrow I received the flag, but also with a deep sense of pride and admiration.
EPILOGUE
Thanks Dad
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
French Proverb
When the last troops from World War II came home, after the parades ended and the GI returned to civilian life, there seemed to be a collective societal effort to put the war years in the past. Patriotism seemed to be talked about in platitudes and was somewhat of a cliché. As I was growing up, there seemed to be an almost complacent attitude about veterans, perhaps because there were so many of them. Recognition of the sacrifices of America’s Greatest Generation was put on hold for far too long. The National World War II Memorial honoring the sixteen million who served and the more than 400,000 who died was not opened until almost sixty years after D-Day, long after many veterans it is meant to honor had passed away.
At the end of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, about the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is portrayed as having said “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”1 During my school years it seemed as though the giant had fallen back asleep.
But following that day “which will live in infamy”, the reaction of the American public was swift and strong. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sparked something in all Americans that day. In movies depicting that period, as well as stories and newspaper accounts depicting the mood and reaction of the American public, one immediately gets the sense of the emotions of the day – fear of the unknown future, anger and hatred toward the attackers, and an enormous swell in patriotism and a fierce determination to achieve victory. But for one born after that date, these depictions provide only a sense of emotions from that period. As Dad once told me, “No amount of words can describe what it feels like to be shot at. The only way you will know what it feels like is when someone aims a gun at you and fires a shot.”
The full impact of Dad’s statement about understanding his wartime experiences became clearer as the events of September 11, 2001, unfolded. History will both compare and distinguish these two dates, December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, but for anyone born after 1941, we can now more fully appreciate and understand the depth and intensity of the emotions our parents and grandparents experienced that fateful Sunday in 1941. My generation and my children’s generation now have a benchmark upon which we can compare and equate the beginning of World War II.
Having never been in the military, much less in combat, I realize that I can hardly expect to fully comprehend the emotions and feelings my father and other combat veterans of World War II and other wars have endured. My life experiences provide me no comparable event with which to relate. I can only expect to have knowledge of facts and only a small sense of his experiences.
Knowledge of all of the facts does not equate to a complete understanding or full comprehension of all of the emotions associated with battle. Movies filmed decades after World War II, such as Saving Private Ryan, provide more graphic visual and audio depictions of battle. The movie experience, however, cannot come close to the actual experience. The movies cannot provide the smells associated with war — the putrid odor of decaying flesh, the smell of five men confined in a tank for days on end, or the smell of tank exhaust fumes or expended ammunition. Nor can one spending two to three hours viewing a movie or reading a book experience the full range of emotions that a combat veteran experiences in battle twenty-four hours per day for weeks or months at a time. My reaction on viewing the movie Forrest Gump does not come anywhere close to emotional experience that Bob Levine experienced during the Vietnam scene. The full understanding of those aspects of combat, which will forever elude me, is reserved for that relatively small fraternity of American service men and women who have actually experienced combat.
Even though I will never know the full feelings of combat, hearing Dad’s story brought me out of the darkness of complete ignorance regarding the harsh realities of battle. At least I now have a small sense of the reality of war and what my father endured during World War II.
In the years following our trip, I accompanied Dad to his 712th reunions. I, like Aaron Elson, the son of another veteran, was welcomed into their inner circle and I came to know and respect all of the 712th comrades. After Dad passed away I continued to attend their reunions and was entrusted with the inevitable task of handling the legal affairs associated with disbanding their organization as their numbers were beginning to dwindle more rapidly and it became too difficult for them to travel. It was with extreme sadness that their final farewells were made at the last reunion in 2007.
Cpl Gruntz at D-Day Museum in 2002. (Author’s collection)
Echoes of the sadness I felt on Dad’s passing have revisited me whenever I learn of the
death of one of his 712th brothers – Reuben “Goldie” Goldstein of A Company, Tony D’Arpino of C Company, Al Kruszewski, Wayne Hissong and Joe Fetsch of Service Company, Dale Albee of D Company, and Dan Diel, Orin Bourdo, Zygmund Kaminski, Ed Swierczyk and Cleo Coleman of B Company.
Patton once said that there should be no mourning of the fighting men who died. “Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” Although I could not help but mourn the passing of the men of the 712th Tank Battalion, I am thankful that such men lived.
All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to all veterans for the freedoms we enjoy, a debt that can never be fully repaid. My journey with Dad strengthened and increased my respect and admiration for the men and women in the armed forces and for all veterans. I have come to more fully appreciate not only the sacrifices made by Dad and the other men of the 712th tank Battalion but also all combat veterans of not only World War II, but Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
As I reflect on the hardships my parents had to endure as children and young adults, I realize what a privileged life I have been given. But, of all the gifts Dad gave me throughout my life, none can compare to that gift in October of 1994 – when he finally answered my boyhood question, “What did you do during the war, Daddy?” His sharing the story of his experiences in World War II with the 712th Tank Battalion is a gift that I will forever cherish.
Endnotes
Prologue
1. Even after Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras in February 2006.
2. The 1973 movie about the struggles of a first-year law student balancing his coursework and personal life.
Chapter 1
1. Hodding Carter and Gerald K. Smith, The New Republic, February 13, 1935, pp. 11-15.
A Tank Gunner's Story: Gunner Gruntz of the 712th Tank Battalion Page 26