Iceland

Sunday, October 11, 2009

What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday when I visited my dad in the hospital we were worried that he wouldn't recover from the acute congestive heart failure. He was hopeful that a heart catheterization the following day would give him some relief and allow him to make it to the barbershopper convention then two weeks away. He was weak but he was sitting up in bed talking my oldest daughter's ear off. We were on pins and needles that this time he might not make it through. There were a couple of ways in my mind that this could have turned out. This isn't one of the ways I envisioned.

How did we end up here? Well, it started 68 years ago. From September 1941 through December 1942 my dad was deployed to Iceland. This was hands down the most grueling assignment he ever endured. The monotony of the menu, hard labor and long hours of guard duty drove men to suicide - several per week. Often he would have to take an eight-hour shift on guard duty after unloading cargo from ships the previous eight hours. Sleeping on duty was grounds for court martial. So this 19-year-old tobacco field hand from Kentucky that had never developed a smoking habit started lighting cigarettes to stay awake. If the smoke failed to keep him up the butt between his figures would eventually burn down and jolt him awake. Inevitably he started smoking them.

He escaped Iceland by applying to Officer Candidate School. It was a brilliant move really and so typical of him. One of the most enduring themes of my father's life is self-improvement. I would never accuse him of being perfect but status quo is certainly not his style. So he got the hell out of Iceland but he carried a lot of baggage with him. Lucky Strike, indeed.

Some 35 years later he improved himself again by quitting his smoking habit cold turkey. He left one un-smoked in the last pack of his last carton and walked away from a very powerful addiction. I can still hear his bellow. Several times a day at first and then less and less frequently (but still every now and then years later) you could hear his voice carry all over the house - probably all over the neighborhood: "I'd wrestle a TANK for a fresh Lucky Strike!"

No tank ever dared to take up the challenge and so here we are almost 35 years hence. He never touched another cigarette but they never quite stopped ravaging him. He managed a polite smile for a couple of visitors today but not so much for us. I'm quite sure he would rather take on that tank right now than what he has to endure. I know the details of a few of his many wartime engagements. If he displayed half the courage then that he does now it is easy to understand how he survived for so long and excelled at so many things on and off the battlefield.

But this courage is different in ways both subtle and profound. It takes a certain kind of courage to be faced with a difficult choice. Then there is the courage to accept something you have no choice in. I would have said the later is something my dad was no good at. But after all this time he's still teaching and I'm still learning. And Iceland sure is a hell of a place for a soldier to be stationed.