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All the money Dad had saved during his years in the war
What did your Dad do in the war? He told me that when touring it wasn't always possible to know whether he was still in friendly territory and whether he might encounter Germans around the next bend. When he encountered Allies, he had to be admitted back in through Allied (our side) check points. There were German spies who spoke English perfectly. They looked for them at checkpoints. He, himself, couldn't have looked more German, and his last name was German. They grilled him to make sure he wasn't a spy. One of the ways they did that was by asking questions only Americans would know answers to, like arcane sports questions. Dad knew nothing about sports. If they'd have asked him about Greek mythology or poetry, he would have been able to orate. He told me about how tense it was being grilled at checkpoints while they examined his papers, papers that had no official backing because he had created them himself. He did not have the authority to issue such documents, but he did have the equipment. Later they moved him closer to the front, near the bulge, where he was one of 16 Americans in charge of a prison camp holding 3000 Germans. He was behind a typewriter again, but said that the fear was that if we lost the battle of the bulge the prisoners would overrun the camp. By the time I was six years old, I'd learned what to say to my friends' Dad's when they'd ask where my father was during the war. At that time they were young men trying to adjust to civilian life after five or six years fighting a war. They stood in their homes like penguins in the tropics, in a better place, but not the one they knew how to be in. The first thing they'd ask any friend their children brought home was, "Where was your Dad in the war." I learned that if I said, "Battle of the Bulge," they would be almost speechless and for my family I'd have won respect and acceptance. That battle was that harsh. If you made it back from the front there, they sent you to it again, and then again, because there was no one else to call forward and it had to be won. Anyone who lived through it never was the same. I learned not to volunteer that he was behind a typewriter. When I said "typing" both he and I no longer were part of the club. After that battle had been won, he was preparing to be shipped to the Pacific to fight Japan when the atom bombs were dropped. Since that ended the war in the Pacific, he was got to go home. But not for months, and when they did get back, soldiers were going to have to find jobs. The army had Dad spend the intervening months in Europe teaching business management classes to the soldiers to help them re-enter civilian life when they returned. In between classes Dad snuck in more tours of France and purchased artwork and silver. Because of the the atom bombs he was going to get to live to have a home and a family and he was preparing for that. Part of that legacy is on my wall, a collection of hand painted postcards of France by French artists that he sent back. They hung on his walls for the rest of his life. They will hang on mine for the rest of mine.
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