My father’s service was undistinguished.
After learning to repair radios,
He was transferred
To the quartermasters corp.
He spent the war shlepping.
There were some benefits.
As it allowed him to help
His cousins who survived
The war, hiding in Paris.
He helped them figure out
How to get their lives kind of
Back together —
The war had ended.
He only carried a gun twice.
Once during the Battle of the Bulge.
They gave him a gun.
And told him to wait.
That was all he did.
The second time,
He told me,
His lieutenant
Gave him an unloaded
Rifle and no ammo,
And said that
Two German POWs
Had escaped a camp,
Killing a Russian guard,
An Eastern front POW
Brought to France as slave laborer,
Tasked upon liberation
To guard the Wehrmacht prisoners.
Two escaped, and my father
Was dispatched with
Unloaded weapon to capture them.
Villagers directed him to a field
And with empty gun and
Gestures corralled them,
To their relief, to
His American base.
The lieutenant loaded them,
My father and a driver
Into a jeep, my father guarding
These teenage soldiers
No more than his own
Twenty at most with
His club-cum-rifle
Though the LT had a pistol
And drove to the camp
From which they had
Escaped. My father
Watched as the two
Realized the destination,
Realized the consequence,
Realized the fate
Awaiting upon arrival
The relief upon capture by
Americans replaced.
He knew they were the enemy
He knew from the Paris cousins
What it might have meant to him,
A Jew, to these Wehrmacht
Regardless, when he told me
This story, on more than
One occasion even fifty years
After, his eyes moisten.
And we went quiet together.
14th Cheshvan
6th November 2025