Redemption

Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment: 1st Person POV
October 18, 2006
Prompt: “What a strange trip its been …” – Jerry Garcia


If I had one wish in my life, it would be that World War II had never happened
- Charlie

I was the black sheep of the family, born in 1925, and the youngest of four children. We lived on a hilltop farm in a bucolic small New England town. My mother was chiseled and stern; my father, shadowy and quiet. Every Sunday, churchgoers parted and created a path for us to our family pew.

During the war, I ran away and enlisted in the Marines. They sent me to the Pacific Theater. Although I fought in many battles, I never killed anyone.

I always rebuked the Brass for bad decisions - there were a lot of them – and always proposed a better way. Had anyone heeded a particular one of my proposals, hundreds of lives might have been saved.

In 1945, except for me, all combat Marines washed their uniforms and helmet cloths in lye and hung them out to dry in the tropical sun which bleached them medical white. Except for me, they all looked spiffy in dress combat parades. Me? I soaked everything in water overnight. I told the commanders that the white made the men sitting ducks on the battlefield. For my impudence, I was ordered to clean latrines. Afterwards, I was assigned to help take the island of Saipan to secure Iwo Jima for invasion.

I was crawling on the ground when a Japanese grenade exploded in front of me. People rushed me to the ship’s surgery and strapped me to an operating table. There was a big storm where we were in the Pacific and no anesthetic on board. The ship tossed and turned at the storm’s whimsy and four men held me down while the surgeon operated on my head. My wounds kept me out of Iwo Jima the next day, but I was sent a Purple Heart and a Bronze Medal just the same. Thirty years later, I gave all of my military decorations to a US Senator to throw over the White House gates, but that is another story for another time.

According to official Marine footage of Iwo Jima after the battle, the volcanic ash island looked like a dump with wisps of newspaper floating about and, if you looked hard enough, hundreds of strange white shapes that looked like bowling balls.

After the war and after my wife divorced me, I decided that I wanted to see all 50 states in the Union. And except for the Dakota’s, I did see all of them. In Minnesota, a Japanese businessman paid my bill at the Mayo Clinic. Later, I found a Japanese Buddhist colony in western Massachusetts and stayed there for ten years, most of the time helping to build a temple - the second largest in the country.

In several New England towns, I ran for Selectman. In Lincoln, Massachusetts, I set up campaign headquarters around a crate at the town dump and invited everyone in town to visit me and talk about what was important to them. I figured they all came to the dump anyway. I almost won that election.

One of my last homes was in a town nearby where my daughter lived. As a volunteer in this town, I became very involved with the local government and community organizations. I donated a lot to the town: time, work, and often, money from Mother’s trust fund for me. Some influential people in town government did not like me. They had me declared legally incompetent and committed to a psychiatric ward.

A series of Veteran’s Hospitals, defibrillators, and walkers followed. In the last town I called home, I got myself to a park to hear free weekly concerts and to a local soup kitchen to help ladle soup for the homeless.

My burial was in a cemetery near the home I ran away from over sixty years earlier. After Reverend Kathy bowed her head, after the Marine Color guard fired volleys, saluted, played Taps, and presented my grandson with a tightly folded US Flag, my friends from the soup kitchen in Waltham and two of my children cried, my friends from the House of Peace in Ipswich prayed, and my friends from the Japanese Buddhist colony in Leverett drummed, chanted, and burned incense on my grave.

Although I knew I could never make up for the horrors of World War II, I did what I could.



Most of the above is from Charlie’s personal letters to and conversations with the writer. The rest is from his obituary and from stories told by his friends and family at his burial. Charlie died on May 1st 2005.

My Homeland (in Ten Lines or Under)

Elizabeth Milligan
2007
Write about your Homeland

My home land is inside of me.
It is of infinite rooms.
It is fortified and emblazoned by the life outside of me.

My homeland is a tapestry of tales
Of stories about choices.
About rooms explored and doors only opened a crack and then shut,
Or never opened at all.

My homeland,
Where life’s seductive dust and noise are relegated to a sane perspective.