"It Wasn't Right. What We Did."

  I believe this happened during the summer of 1974. I was between my Freshman and Sophomore year at the University of Notre Dame. I had completed a year of Army ROTC and was waiting to hear about whether would be awarded an ROTC scholarship. I was, much to the relief of my parents. It was not clear to them how they would pay for my education if I was turned down.

The owner of a main street liquor store took me on part time to help with sweeping, cleaning and heavy lifting. I will call him Frank. Frank was a tall, lean friendly sort of guy with prematurely white hair. He had an infectious smile and knack for getting your goat. Tattooed on his arm was the insignia of the 1st Infantry Division, the famous Big Red One.

Frank paid me under the table in cash. He always gave me a coke when he paid me. Being 18, I would asked him for a Budweiser. He would smiled and say “sure".

Then handed me the coke.

“Next time…Maybe”.

One July day he called me to help him lug a bunch of liquor cases from the alley to the basement. To get to the basement, you had to throw back steel doors like those you might see covering a tornado shelter. The liquor was stacked onto a hand truck and gingerly crated down a narrow flight of concrete stairs.

Then the real work began. You could barely move in the storage area. Case after case of liquor had to be carefully carried from one end of the basement to the other to make room for the new inventory.

It was back breaking, miserable work. The basement was dank and dusty. Outside it was sweltering.

Frank also hired Ed, a long time buddy from the American Legion to help. Ed was quiet and taciturn.

All business.

At some point we took a break. Frank gave me a coke and got a beer for himself and Ed. We were all beat and there were at least another couple hours of work ahead for us. We took our seats on old wooden crates and wiped our dirty, sweaty faces.

Frank, taking a pull on his beer, turned toward Ed with a soft, sad expression and said, “It wasn’t right. What we did. They were just kids.”

Ed looked at him soberly and glanced at me. Then Frank looked at me. A decision was being made. Were they going to change the subject, ask me to scram or let me listen in? Frank gave me a look that said, “You can listen. That’s it.”

Ed accepted me as a witness too. Reluctantly. Ed gave me a stare that chilled me to the bone.

Then Ed said, “It was war. And it was a long time ago.”

Frank shook his head. "It was wrong. They were babies.’

Ed shot back, “They had the damn Totenkopf on their blouses. Look what those guys did to our people at Malmedy.”

The Totenkopf was a death’s head insignia worn by Nazi Waffen-SS troops during WWII. Malmedy was the site where 120 American prisoners of war were assembled in a field and cut down in cold blood by the SS under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Peiper.

Frank would not buy it.

“They were cherry faced teenagers. They shook out the nurseries, put them in uniforms and marched them to the front. They could barely carry their damn rifles.”

Ed was quiet. Then he said, “It was war. It was a long time ago. Let it go’.

The silence was so profound it hurt.

Finally, Frank shook his head. “It wasn’t right. It was murder. I have thought about it every night since.”

Frank sighed and looked at me. “Time to get back to work”.

There was no banter after that. We finished the job and Frank had me follow him upstairs. He opened the cash register and counted out exactly what he agreed to pay me.

Then he handed be a Budweiser.

Frank never needed my help at the store after that.

I do not know why Frank let listen. I consider it both an honor and a burden. Maybe Frank needed to say those things in front of a witness. Maybe it was because he knew I had lost my own oldest brother in Vietnam 7 years earlier. Perhaps it was because I was going to be an Army Officer in a few years.

I will never know. I never saw Frank again. I got busy with other things. Life moves on.

I am sure Frank, and Ed have passed on, as have nearly all the men of the “Greatest Generation.” I hope Frank and Ed died in bed, at peace with their lives.

Joachim Peiper was arrested in 1946. The handsome SS officer had been a favorite of Hitler and Himmler. Peiper was implicated in numerous war crimes. He was sentenced to death by hanging in 1948. In 1951 his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was released in 1956.

In the early morning hours of July 14th, 1972, Bastille Day, Joachim Peiper’s home in the small village of Traves, Haute-Saone, France was attacked by unknown persons and set ablaze. His charred remains were found at the scene along with a rifle and pistol.

The medical examiner determined that Peiper died of smoke asphyxiation. A group calling itself “The Avengers” took credit for the assassination. They were believed to be tied to a communist cell that had been active in the French Resistance. No arrests were ever made. The case was closed.

Wars are fought by young men who would rather be somewhere else. They do things in the course of war that we do not want to know and they don’t want to talk about.

Sometimes they must talk about it. If a combat veteran trusts you to be the one to listen, you need to shut up and do just that. Receive the gift of their trust with awe and humility.

I have never shared this before. I think being able to share it after all these years was the point of letting me listen in the first place.