In photo, Walt Nygard, former Corporal, USMC, is a Vietnam Veteran. Between 2003-2012, his oldest son, Joe served three combat deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq with the the US Army. Walt has a BA in English/Art from University of New Mexico, is a writer and artist and works for Combat Paper NJ.
A photograph, large, black and white, military photographic section stamps on the back, is buried somewhere amongst my mountain of papers and pictures and personal things. Germany, 1950s, the camera is aimed in on a white, neatly painted reviewing stand, old-time stone barracks in the background.
The precise moment of the photo captures a 1st Infantry Division color guard as it hits the reviewing stand. The soldiers are magnificent. Starched khaki uniforms, bloused trousers, white duty belts, helmet straps, rifle slings and boot laces, chromed helmets, fourrageres, Big Red One shoulder patches, the National Colors floats high and proud. Division Colors, dipped in salute, are bedecked with fluttering battle streamers from American wars going back to the Revolution.
The officers on the reviewing stand are at attention, rendering salute to the National Colors. On either side of the reviewing stand are a scattering of parade attendees, mostly in uniform, but some in civilian clothes. Next to the left front corner of the reviewing stand, a lone officer stands holding his eternal salute. Next to him stands a little boy at his best position of attention, little hand at the bill of his cap. The officer is my father. The little boy is me.
A very fine American poet named Donald Hall has said that baseball is fathers playing catch with their sons down through the years. And, indeed, when I think of my Dad – my “old soldier Daddy”, as he liked to say, supposedly echoing words I'd said at an age too young to remember – I see him in those canvas crepe-sole shoes, a no-longer-serviceable pair of khaki trousers and white T-shirt. He's got an old-time ballglove, tiny by modern comparison, with no laces between the fingers. He's throwing to me with easy grace. His smiles’ relaxed and throws are rhythmic, hard enough to be real baseball, not so hard a boy can't field. For some, love begins at the distance of a baseball throw.
We'd play till sundown or dinner or homework. He'd bounce me some grounders and toss me some pop ups. He'd remind me to call for it and to use two hands. Later on, when I played ball, I did it because I loved it. My Dad had given me the gift of something he loved. It is a gift I treasure to this day.
A high school dropout in 1936, he left an Oregon logging camp to enlist in the U.S. Army. He was 16. He earned his Combat Infantry Badge as a platoon sergeant, slugging his way across France, Germany and Austria. At a place called Gunskirchen Lager, a satellite in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp system, the American soldiers of the 71st Infantry Division came face-to-face with the essential evil of the foe they'd been fighting. He never spoke of it, but I know in his heart, he felt they'd done something right. He never claimed that those American dogfaces of World War II were heroes. But I knew they were.
Like many a self-educated man, my Dad was a huge booster of education. And he was willing to take it wherever he – or his kids – found it. Our rooms were crowded with books and magazines and newspapers. Encyclopedias, dictionaries and almanacs were readily consulted when a question needed answering. My Dad would excuse any dereliction of childhood duty if the offender was known to be reading. In this environment, I grew up to be a pretty good student of English and history, pretty mediocre at everything else.
He didn't have much to say when I told him I was enlisting in the Marine Corps. It was the end of 1968 and not a good time for an American boy who took service seriously, felt a historical obligation and knew this was no World War III. Vietnam was the war that would be fought by my generation. If I ever grew to be a man like him, I didn't want to have to listen to other men tell me how it had been back in the days of the Vietnam War.
He drove me to the recruiting station where all was set for me to leave for boot camp. As we stood outside, he told me this “would be the first of many journeys,” as has, indeed been true. We embraced and he shook my hand. We both held back, which is something else fathers and sons must do. Tears do no good in moments of passage.
While Vietnam radically altered my perceptions of American history and how it was evolving, the actual experience of service left me with no doubt that I had walked with men who are the best part of my generation. My return to civilian life, to college and to work, along with the passage of time, has done nothing to diminish that feeling. I think that is something not lost on my sons.
By September, 2003, our latest war'd been won. Or so it was announced by the feckless, draft-dodging imbecile who was President of the United States. Still, I couldn't visualize Baghdad as a 1945 Berlin, with happy-go-lucky GIs handing out the chewing gum and cigarettes, the locals laying on the love.
And now, I'm the father of a son going off to war. My oldest son - my lefty, who'd pitched and played first - found himself in the 10th Mountain Division, in the mountains of Kunar on the Afghan side of the Pakistani border. I tried to do what my Dad had done for me: write often, dispense easy-going wisdom and humor, send books and magazines, pass along the poop. But technology stymied me as at some point we became reliant on email. I had the disconcerting experience of late-night cellphone conversations, eager to hear his voice, the little delay between speakers scrambling up our exchange. Him telling me he's going on a mission in the morning. Me babbling on, is your weapon clean?
Did you pop the rounds in your magazine? Check 'em for sand? Trying to be his Dad, I sounded like an over anxious kid . . . and when it was time for him to come home – after 71 of them had been killed, including the soldier he knew and most respected, Sergeant Jared Monti, who'd later become the first soldier awarded the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan – our vacation-prone President extended them for another four months.
Pulling up to my house after work, I see my younger son - my righty, shortstop and outfield – bound out of the house to tell me the news. He didn't cry, but he was choked with anger and cursed that President and all his people and all the war and I was never prouder of both my sons.
My son did two more deployments. A year on convoy duty in Iraq. Then his third, with an MP company in Kabul, guarding U.S. Officers and personnel at the height of the green on blue killings. We became something of a battle-hardened family, a shell we wore in an indifferent U.S.A. But a Dad feels pretty worthless when his son's in a war.
I told him to bear witness, to see everything, to write things down. I told him most of his generation was so self-involved and clueless that they'd never know their own history. I reminded him of Ernest Hemingway's comment that to send a man to war for a year gave him a lifetime of things to write about. I told him that someday someone'd want to know.
Father's Day's coming. A contrived holiday, but I think of my Dad waiting for me to get home. Both my sons are nearby now. My Dad's been gone since 1985, but with my son's kids there's three generations that bear his name. My son's done with the Army and I see these children and grandchildren moving off into a distant future I'll perhaps get a glimpse of. Maybe they'll be here this Father's Day. Maybe, like my old soldier Daddy, I'll ask the little children if they “wanna go throw the ball around”.