Old Soldier

      More Letters From Paradise
            Old Soldier

Out walking this morning I saw him in the distance, slowly making his way towards me. As the distance closed between us, I called, "Good morning ,Jim." He dropped his hand from his walker, and we shook hands. The bones of his fingers were hard, but his grip was strong.

"How are you?, he asked." "Pretty good," I said."Me too," the ninety year old man replied. He is a small Japanese American with glasses and a ready smile. I have known him for more than ten years. I used to meet him at the end of  a bridge spanning the Ala Wai canal.  He was often doing a little dance for exercise. I would kid him about giving tourists some wrong directions, and mimic his dance. So now here he is, using a walker to make his way down the street for the fifty-nine cent cup of senior coffee at McDonald's.

"I lost a lot of buddies there." Recalling on this  Memorial Day weekend, his time fighting the Germans in Italy. "I remember you once told me that you were wounded in Italy." "Cassino." "There is another guy over there a block away, who was also there."

 I knew that  the struggle to capture Monte Cassino was one of the costliest battles of WWII. The Germans had blocked the Allies from liberating Rome. "Take care of yourself," he said as he pushed his walker away.

The bombing of this 1,400 year old monastery is one of the greatest aesthetic losses of WWII. And we now know that the bomber raid was due to a mistake in translation of a German radio message. A British junior officer mistook the German word for Abbot as meaning battalion. The message said "The abbot is with the monks in the monastery." The conclusion was that the Germans had a battalion of soldiers in the monastery. This was a clear violation of a an agreement with the Vatican that Monte Cassino was neutral. When a second translation was made, it was too late to call back the bombers.

The Germans took advantage of the rubble and in the fighting there were 185,000 casualties. And 250 men, women and children in the monastery itself.

Monte Cassino was restored in the 1950's and 60's. But you could never restore the building that was founded in 526 a.d. by St. Benedict. Warfare is very hard  on people and historic buildings.

       Aloha
       Grant