Part 5, You should have seen this coming

With the trip to Uncle Raymond's under my belt, the annual trip to my Grandmother was due and, on June 19th, we left to join the rest of the family for the event. I loved riding down to Granny's because Daddy would always drive over the dam at Lake Bistineau, and the view was really cool to a 5 year old kid.

When we made it to Granny's, I could tell that there was a big deal going on compared to other times we visited, because then, there were no cars in the yard. On that day, there were at least 8, maybe more.

Momma came from a huge family and had sisters: LC, Essie May, and brothers: Lattis, Wayne, Earl, Richard (who we always called Uncle Taylor), Morris Ray, Parker and Levon. With momma, that made 7 boys and 3 girls born to my grandmother. As you can see, I had tons of aunts and uncles on my momma's side of the family and three sets from Daddy's side. Can you imagine having 13 aunts and uncles! It was the best and most loving family environment you can imagine.

To my knowledge, every one of the McInnis brothers went off to fight and win World War II. As most combat Veterans do after they returned from a combat tour, whenever they met, they would talk about the war. They would make a small fire in Granny's front yard and, while the women were in the house with Granny doing their birthday lunch thing in the kitchen with the chicken that Uncle Morris Ray caught from the coop. After wringing her neck in front of all the little kids, he gave it to the women to cook. That 's when the McInnis brothers met around the camp fire.

The older boys could play in the storm shelter or "ditch fish" for crawfish. When there was water in the ditch next to the road that ran along the west side of the yard just west of the chicken coop where the laying hens were, the bigger kids could always catch crawfish with a stick that had a string tied on the end of it and a piece of bacon tied to that.

We little ones had to be underfoot in the kitchen with the mommas. It was either that or taking a nap, or stay on the front porch or around the front steps. Not much lattitude there but the front porch wasn't far from the camp fire and I headed over there to experience something that would, later on, become my standard of thought, spirit, duty and patriotic demeanor when it came to thinking about McAruthur's duty, honor, Country.

Even though I didn't understand anything at all about those wierd places my uncles talked about, I knew they were important and I felt it was important for me to listen to every word they said. I heard words like Saipan, Tinian, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. There was another wierd one named Occupation Force Japan and Uncle Morris Ray was there. There were other crazy words like depth charge, U Boat, Nazi dogs and Mathausen (sp) Concentration Camp, where my Uncle Wayne became the first U.S. Army Medic to walk through the gate and begin the liberation of the Jews there.

I certainly could not remember those things as a 5 year old kid, but after that and throughout most of my early life, when I had an opportunity to visit with any of the uncles, I asked them to tell the story. I will share some of those with you now so that you will know what I learned very early on and learned with detail for many years after that.

Uncle Morris Ray loved criminal justice and became an MP in the Army right after the war began. He talked about arriving on Guadalcanal in the midst of a huge battle. He repeatedly said that he was suppossed to be a traffic cop on the beach making sure everything that came off the invasion barges made it to the right place at the right time. Think about that for a second. In the middle of the battle for Guadalcanal, my uncle and a few of his MP buddies, was responsible for getting the tanks, men, ammunition, artillery pieces, mortars and medicine to the men in the battle.

At the end of the first day of battle, during a meeting with the ground commander at the beach commander's tent, Uncle Morris Ray was told to get with other MPs and go to the jungle, capture a Jap, and bring him in for interrogation. He repeatedly explained that he was with the POLICE and not the infantry, to no avail. Despite that, he found himself and a few others, belly crawling through the jungle and setting up an ambush point where they might kill 4 and catch 1. He told me about the fear of that and I thought about it for years and again, when I was going into combat in Vietnam. He was part of the occupation force at the end of the war and didn't get to come home in 1945. Regardless of that, he did return and began a career in law enforcement until the day he retired. Want to know what he looked like? Robert Mitchum. He was some kinda tough looking guy but was as gentle as a lamb. I loved him alot. Oh yeah, he got the Jap.

Uncle Earl told stories about cold, dark nights spent hunting U Boats in the Atlantic just off the East Coast where so many of our ships were sunk at the beginning of the war. It didn't occur to me at the time but I was learning that there were bad people out there and there was a lot of fighting where ever they'd been.

Uncle Wayne talked about being the first Medic at Mauthausen (sp) Concentration Camp. I won't go into the details here and neither did he. With all that we've seen on the History channel and the Military channel, you know the picture, but he saw it first hand. It was ugly.

He almost died there because when he was inside the camp, he became sick and our medical corp did not have the medicine he needed. The doctors on hand found some of it in the Nazi Camp Hospital and administered it to Uncle Wayne. German medicine was slightly different than ours and for whatever reason, it almost killed him but he made it okay without any life long effects.

Uncle Parker didn't hang around much when that kind of talk was going on, so I really didn't get much information from him except that he'd fought on Okinawa. We all know about those kinds of things from movies and documentaries. To say the least, since he'd made Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa, I would say he had seen more combat than some of his brothers, but what he'd seen was pure hell. He was always quite the gentleman and never spoke of such things.

It's ten oclock here and this is more or less my bed time. Eyes are getting heavy and the screen is hard to see. With these things in mind, I hope you are beginning to see where the military influences in my life came from. I have some more to say about that but not tonight.

Thanks for the comments on the blog. Without them or a personal email, I dont have any way to know how many of you are up to speed with the blog and Leland says it would not be good to get way ahead of everybody OR to feel like I have a deadline. I just compose when the spirit leads me but I did want to mention the comments or confirmations through the net. Thanks again. Stand by for more.