When Story Matters More than Fact
Excerpt from the unpublished book Lenses.
In 1944, my dad was a private in the US Army, stationed in Georgia — a bugle boy waiting to be shipped to the war in Europe.
The day before he was due to leave, he received orders for Officer Candidate School. It turned out that his company was sent to the Battle of the Bulge. He heard that they were all captured, without casualties, and that the train taking them to prison camp was bombed by the Allies, and then there was only one casualty — the bugle boy, the man who replaced him, died.
Some might see that as chance. But to Dad, he owed his life to that other bugle boy. He had an obligation to pay it back, to live a life that mattered. Dad was given a life and also given a belief that he had a personal destiny.
And at every decision point in his life, in the back of his head was the image of that bugle boy who had taken his place, a humbling sense of responsibility, a debt owed.
I’m reminded of the final scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan at Arlington National Cemetery, long after World War II. The man who was saved is standing with his children and his grandchildren. Not a word is said. But you get the sense that the man’s whole life was predicated on that sacrifice and that debt.
Fifty years after the war, when Dad had retired as a superintendent of schools and a colonel in the Army Reserves, he connected over the internet with a group of veterans from his old company that got captured in the Battle of the Bulge. He learned that the bugle boy didn’t die, and he got in touch with him by email, and they shared life experiences.
Then a year later, the officer who took command of that company soon after Dad left for OCS and before the Bulge, chanced upon Dad’s autobiography on my website and emailed him a detailed account of what had actually happened. In fact, more than half the men in the company died in the battle.
There was the story that gave Dad a sense of debt and destiny; and there are the facts, which were very different.
The story Dad believed for so long mattered more than the facts, giving shape and meaning to his life — that was a rare gift and far more important than mere facts.
