Operation Glory

I have asked my granddaughter what I should write about. She shrugged. She’s six years old. I asked her if there was anything she wanted to know about me. She shrugged again. Then she perked up and became very exited! She asked me if I had ever fought in a war. I haven’t. She pouted and shrugged again. She left to go watch Television.

Officially, in accordance with the United States Constitution, I have only been alive for one war during my seventy-four years on this planet. That, of course, was the Second World War: The West’s second attempt at self destruction. I was ten years old when that war ended. It was my childhood. It’s what I grew up with, it’s how we played. My friends and I would charged up hills and shoot at invisible Nazis. When I turned eighteen, I signed up for the Army and was shipped off to Korea. I turned eighteen in December of 1953. The cease fire had been signed in July of that year, and the way things had gone, I never thought it would last. I’m still surprised that it has lasted this long, but it’s a good thing it has.

When I arrived in Korea, Operation Glory was just about to get underway. If I was a young boy, hungry for war and glory, when I arrived in Korea, I was a peace loving pacifist when I left. For those of you who don’t know: Operation Glory (ha!) was nothing more than the exchange of dead bodies between the north and south. They gave us back 4,000 dead US Army and Marine Corp soldiers. For those bodies, we gave them about 13,000 of theirs. It took damn near six months. I still don’t know how I ended up in the middle of all that. They say there are no Atheists in foxholes, but after the shells are done falling, and you’re still alive, it’s a hard thing trying to find God underneath all those bodies.

Before 1955 came around, I was discharged, was back home, and found a job as a bartender at jazz and blues club in Chicago. I wasn’t very good at carrying strangers’ caskets, and I was a worse mixologist.