My Father, My Hero: A Memorial Day Remembrance

My father didn't have to go to war in World War II.  He was 30 years old, and past the age of required service.

In fact, when he enlisted, he was told he couldn't go overseas or serve in combat.

So, he signed up to be a medical orderly, married my mother (who was 18 at the time,) and went off to train to do what he considered his duty.

It was the first time he had been away from the tiny town where he was born and raised, away from the family farm, away from the mill where he had worked since he was fifteen years old.

As soon as he got finished with his training, my mother, who was what was then called a "nurse's aide," signed on as a civilian employee of the military and worked with him in a military hospital in Kansas.

I don't know all the details, because I wasn't born until the 1950's, when my father was in his 40's. But he often talked about his days working in the psychiatric ward of the hospital, trying to help the soldiers who had nervous breakdowns or were suffering from "shell shock," which we now call "post traumatic stress syndrome."

Everyone remembers the men on the front lines who fought so bravely and put their lives on the line. But there were so many, like my father, who served just as importantly behind the lines. 

And how brave it was of him to do what he did: to leave the only life he had ever known for a world he hardly knew anything about, part from his new bride he waited so long to find, and go and do what he felt he should do for his country, when he did not have to. No one would have criticized him if he had only done one of the many civic jobs that older men (and women) did during the war. But he wanted to help and to serve in the military, and he did.

So here's to all the orderlies, the cooks, the message carriers, and all the other mostly unsung soldiers who also were part of the "Greatest Generation," and here's to Thomas Rhett Martin, my dad and my hero.