Download PDF of this full issue: v41n1.pdf (28.9 MB)

My Dad and Me: Two Veterans Learning to Reach Across the Years

By Joe Miller

There is now a folded flag on prominent display at my mother's home.

Joe's parents' 69th wedding anniversary in 2009.

My dad passed away on October 14, 2010. Joseph Ignatius Miller (formerly Michalski) was born in Chicago on May 3, 1916. He was my hero, and I want to reflect on our relationship, especially as we approach what would have been his 95th birthday. First, some background.

Dad loved baseball, and the Chicago Cubs wanted him to join their farm team in 1935, when he was nineteen. That never happened; his father wanted him to get a "real" job. So, he worked as a box maker at the Western Electric factory in Cicero, Illinois for nearly forty years. However, there was an important break in his work life when Uncle Sam drafted him into the Army in early 1944. His military experiences were to affect him the rest of his life (as we veterans all know), though he never really opened up about it all until much later in life, and even then, hesitantly and piecemeal.

As a twenty-seven-year-old family man, he was called up at the height of the war. Mom and I moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, to live with her aunt and uncle. They took care of me while Mom went to work in a local defense plant.

Dad was assigned to the 106th Division, 424th Regiment, Company "G" as an infantryman. By November 1944, he was on a troop ship headed for England, where his unit received further training before going on to France. The 106th crossed into Belgium in early December and was sent to the Ardennes just before the German offensive. This is where all hell broke loose for this green and untested unit. Nothing major was supposed to happen! When Dad talked about this in later years, he marveled at how little the "higher-ups" seemed to know. He always suspected they knew more than they let on.

He was also dismissive of documentaries about the Battle of the Bulge because they could never reflect what he actually experienced in the confusion and fear of those early days.

Dad was taken from the battlefield with shell shock. He was sent to a field hospital, then a hospital in Liege, Belgium, a hospital in Paris, and finally, a hospital in Norwich, England. There he received shock treatments and insulin shots for the shell shock. Many years later, when he was interviewed by my sister, he told her he could not remember anything from the ten days of shock treatments. He was sent back to the States in July, 1945.

Finally, at Buckley Field in Colorado he was examined for his shell shock. It was determined he would not be sent to the Pacific because of this, and he was eventually given a medical discharge in October 1945, along with the Bronze Star. He was granted 10% disability, about $75.00 a month for the rest of his life. This was later rescinded after some people at Western Electric complained about him receiving disability payments while working full-time — how would this be dealt with today?

Now, growing up, I was told about the missed chance to play for the Cubs, the struggles with the bosses at Western Electric over union issues. And, I had vague memories about living in Janesville when I was two or three. But, I was never told about Dad's military experiences. All I knew was that he had been in the Army during the war. There was some vague reference to his unit having been "lost" in the war, but nothing more that this. In fact, he was not a big talker. He always had a quiet intensity about him.

Even when I decided to enlist in the Navy in 1961, a year after high school, Dad never took me aside to talk about what the military was like. I'm guessing he felt that the Navy was safe; if I had joined the Army, he might have seen a need to tell me more. It seems he had little fear or concern about me in the service until I was to be sent overseas.

I completed language training in Chinese in 1963, and I was ordered to Taiwan for duty with the Naval Security Group. After a period of leave at home, the day came for my departure from O'Hare Airport to San Francisco, where I would await travel arrangements at Treasure Island. My mom, dad and sister came to the airport to see me off. Mom was upset about my leaving, but that was expected. When it came time to shake my dad's hand and say goodbye, I was shocked to see tears coming down his face! Up to that point I had never seen that kind of emotion from my father; it wasn't like I was going to a war zone. He did not say anything, of course. It was the beginning of a new relationship with my dad, as if I had walked through a door that allowed us to know each other a little better.

We wrote to each other, and there was the occasional phone call when I needed help with one thing or another. We could even talk about politics in a way we never could before. I told him I planned to cast my first vote (absentee, since we were still in Westpac) for Goldwater in '64, since I just could not vote for LBJ after the Tonkin Gulf lies. My dad, lifelong union member and Polish-Catholic Democrat, let me know he did not think it was a good idea, but he left it at that. He allowed me to grow.

Later, when I got out of the Navy in early 1968, I jumped right into the anti-war movement. My Taiwanese wife (and sometimes our daughter Lisa) joined me in almost every Chicago demonstration. Dad never opposed these activities; he just thought they would never get any result. That late spring of 1968, he and I were Bobby Kennedy supporters. When Kennedy was murdered, we were both devastated. That year my dad voted for Richard Nixon. I wrote in Dick Gregory.

Over the past thirty-five years, my dad voted Republican and became a fan of Rush Limbaugh. Our discussions about politics got more heated, and we both learned to stay away from that subject for the most part.

We could talk about veteran issues and our various war experiences, however. He respected my work with VVAW and welcomed my comrades into his home. As we talked in recent years, one could see the continuing effects of his wartime experiences. He would stare off into space and reveal just a little more in a throwaway comment. He would talk about how rough medics had it, or make a cryptic reference to German prisoners of war who never made it to the rear area. The war never left him.

On a final note, though Mom and Dad had not voted in recent elections, when my father passed away last year, there was a large color photograph in a prominent place on his dresser: Barack and Michelle Obama at the 2009 Inaugural Ball.

Joe Miller is a VVAW National Coordinator.