In my view, the noblest wars are those that seek to free burdened people from the oppression of hatred so we
all may bask in the light of true freedom and equality. In the 18th century, the Revolutionary War was such a
war, as it liberated the colonists from the hook of British tyranny so that they could create an idea that became
America. In the 19th century, the Civil War forced a people to stop slavery from spitting in the face of our
most sacred creed: that all men are created equal. And in the 20th century, World War II was such a war, as
America and her allies brought to a halt Hitler's premeditated and systematic mission of annihilation before he
had reached his inconceivable goal.
For good reason, our Founding Fathers, the members of the Continental Army, and the soldiers of the Civil War
are heroic figures in our country's history, as we know they risked their lives to imagine a country and to bring
to reality a country that is based on possibility, hope, and fairness. The veterans of those endeavors have long
since passed on, but in their places stand you, equally heroic figures, who carried our American ideal to the
shores of distant lands. How honored we all feel that you remain with us and that we are among you once
again -- as you are living reminders of how service, duty, and pride merge, often without much fanfare, to
preserve the inalienable rights that are synonymous with America.
Many people believe that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and we certainly understand why. When we
look into someone's eyes, we see a composite of what has passed before that person's gaze: birth and death,
achievement and failure, company and solitude, safety and risk. I believe that hands, too, are windows to the
souls, as each hand is unique, and each palm and finger tells the story of a person's life.
The wartime stories your hands tell, the hands of the 297th Combat Engineers, are similar, aren't they, in that
during the war all of your hands wiped from your foreheads the splashes of The English Channel. All of your
hands pulled pins from grenades and hauled Bangalore torpedoes beyond the shadows of Pointe du Hoc. All of
your hands secured helmets against enemy fire, dug into the sands of bloody Omaha, and removed the dog-tags
of fallen soldiers.
As those who have never been to battle, we can only imagine that your wartime hands must have been
hardened, coarse, and too seasoned for their modest years. Your 18 year-old, 21 year-old, 24 year-old hands
had already seen so much, too much. Your fingers tell a story that only you can understand, and we can
merely try to follow the permanent traces in our flesh -- traces that underscore your willingness to embrace the
American charge of freedom for all, not freedom for few.
By the time I met my father, Joseph F. Cummings, Jr., 13 years after the end of World War II, his hands had
softened a bit, and perhaps all of yours had, too, as they had turned to gentler tasks. The first time I remember
slipping my fingers into my father's, I was aware, instantly, that his hands seemed giant to me, and strong. I
lost myself inside his grasp, which fast became a zone of shelter and security. The hands of the fathers we
knew were only the hands that rocked us to sleep, slipped wedding rings on our mothers' fingers, and helped us
build tree forts. The hands we knew were the ones that read newspapers, drove the family to church or temple,
mowed the lawn, and planted rows and rows of summer corn. The hands we knew were the ones that touched
our cheeks when we made our fathers proud, wiped our tears when we scraped our knees, and opened the
doors to our college futures.
As children, what we didn't know then was that those were the same hands that had touched the translucent
skin of Holocaust survivors and the same hands that had walked those skeletal remains to their first sips of fresh
water and their first bites of hearty food. They were the same hands that directed the flow of the war by
blowing up strategic bridges in one zone only to build them in another. They were the same hands that
navigated the hedge-rows of northern France, and the same hands that made their quiet way to pounding hearts
and family photos as The English Channel inched closer to the coast of Nazi domination.
Throughout our childhoods, you managed to keep that version of your hands hidden from us, and we all know
why you did. Your own youth had been interrupted by a calling -- a call to end hatred, and
narrow-mindedness, and a mindset based on a fear of difference. Your own path had been hurried along,
transported forward at lightning fast speed, so that you could save the world from calculated viciousness.
I trust we all know why you did what you did -- why you protected our generation from what you saw and
lived and smelled and tasted on the battlefields of Europe, but I do not know that any of us knows how you did
what you did. After seeing what you saw on that unprecedented, unparalleled undertaking of June 6, 1944,
how did you ever manage to return to a gentility that allowed you to brush a ladybug off our shoulders and
nudge it towards its freedom? How did you ever find the softness to harness the miracle of a firefly or the
metamorphosis of a caterpillar?
How did you, so seamlessly, so unassumingly, turn the beaches of France into our childhood sandboxes, the
dog-tags of your brothers into your daughters' necklaces, the helmets of protection into our winter caps, and the
rifles of liberty into the weapons of Daniel Boone? How did you transform a Sherman tank into a 1954 Chevy,
an army cot into a baby's bassinet, a blueprint for bridges into an erector set on Christmas Day? How did
military rations become Thanksgiving abundance, purple hearts become Girl Scout badges, and the complexity
of a minefield become the simplicity of an HO train? And how did you ever say goodnight to so many, many
soldiers through death, only to say good morning to all of us through life?
Furthermore, how can we ever fully thank you for all of that? To be honest, I don't know that we ever could,
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. So if you are lucky enough to have come with a World War II veteran
today, reach out and take his hand in yours, and feel the history and bravery and dignity and fortitude that run
through his flesh. And for those of us whose fathers and husbands and uncles and grandfathers are not with us
today, reach out anyway -- because you never know. And now as we sit or stand or lie in one visible, and
invisible, and uninterrupted circle of hands, I say to my father, and to all the veterans with him, and to all the
veterans here today, "Thank you."
Thank you for being willing to defend the honor of your country. Thank you for knowing that all people
deserve to share in a common liberty and that not everyone can just sit back and wait for others to answer the
call. Thank you for your modesty, your dignity, and your selflessness as you opted, in droves, to set aside your
own safety for the good of humanity. Thank you for having a courage that was stronger than your fear, and
thank you for having a vision of what should be that was stronger than what could have been. And thank you,
thank you for coming home.
And if we ever did not understand your occasional intolerance with what we perceived to be suffering, we
understand it now. And if we ever did not appreciate your need for solitude and remembrance, we appreciate it
now. And if we ever took for granted the sacrifices you made for us so that we could live in a world free from
tyrannical rule, we do not take them for granted now.
And if we failed to marvel at your capacity to secure a vast spectrum of freedom -- at one step doing it at the
end of a rifle and at the next step doing it through the tender liberation of a ladybug, we marvel at that now.
And if we neglected to tell you that you were good fathers and good men who always sought to do the best you
could, we tell you now. You were and are good fathers. You were and are good men.
And if we never revealed how much we all still yearn to slip our childhood fingers inside your hands once again,
we reveal that now. We yearn for that. We all yearn for that. We yearn to reach up, up, up and into that
strong and simple shelter, and to stay there in your grasp, enclosed, protected, and safe, just as the entire world
did, exactly 65 years ago today.
all may bask in the light of true freedom and equality. In the 18th century, the Revolutionary War was such a
war, as it liberated the colonists from the hook of British tyranny so that they could create an idea that became
America. In the 19th century, the Civil War forced a people to stop slavery from spitting in the face of our
most sacred creed: that all men are created equal. And in the 20th century, World War II was such a war, as
America and her allies brought to a halt Hitler's premeditated and systematic mission of annihilation before he
had reached his inconceivable goal.
For good reason, our Founding Fathers, the members of the Continental Army, and the soldiers of the Civil War
are heroic figures in our country's history, as we know they risked their lives to imagine a country and to bring
to reality a country that is based on possibility, hope, and fairness. The veterans of those endeavors have long
since passed on, but in their places stand you, equally heroic figures, who carried our American ideal to the
shores of distant lands. How honored we all feel that you remain with us and that we are among you once
again -- as you are living reminders of how service, duty, and pride merge, often without much fanfare, to
preserve the inalienable rights that are synonymous with America.
Many people believe that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and we certainly understand why. When we
look into someone's eyes, we see a composite of what has passed before that person's gaze: birth and death,
achievement and failure, company and solitude, safety and risk. I believe that hands, too, are windows to the
souls, as each hand is unique, and each palm and finger tells the story of a person's life.
The wartime stories your hands tell, the hands of the 297th Combat Engineers, are similar, aren't they, in that
during the war all of your hands wiped from your foreheads the splashes of The English Channel. All of your
hands pulled pins from grenades and hauled Bangalore torpedoes beyond the shadows of Pointe du Hoc. All of
your hands secured helmets against enemy fire, dug into the sands of bloody Omaha, and removed the dog-tags
of fallen soldiers.
As those who have never been to battle, we can only imagine that your wartime hands must have been
hardened, coarse, and too seasoned for their modest years. Your 18 year-old, 21 year-old, 24 year-old hands
had already seen so much, too much. Your fingers tell a story that only you can understand, and we can
merely try to follow the permanent traces in our flesh -- traces that underscore your willingness to embrace the
American charge of freedom for all, not freedom for few.
By the time I met my father, Joseph F. Cummings, Jr., 13 years after the end of World War II, his hands had
softened a bit, and perhaps all of yours had, too, as they had turned to gentler tasks. The first time I remember
slipping my fingers into my father's, I was aware, instantly, that his hands seemed giant to me, and strong. I
lost myself inside his grasp, which fast became a zone of shelter and security. The hands of the fathers we
knew were only the hands that rocked us to sleep, slipped wedding rings on our mothers' fingers, and helped us
build tree forts. The hands we knew were the ones that read newspapers, drove the family to church or temple,
mowed the lawn, and planted rows and rows of summer corn. The hands we knew were the ones that touched
our cheeks when we made our fathers proud, wiped our tears when we scraped our knees, and opened the
doors to our college futures.
As children, what we didn't know then was that those were the same hands that had touched the translucent
skin of Holocaust survivors and the same hands that had walked those skeletal remains to their first sips of fresh
water and their first bites of hearty food. They were the same hands that directed the flow of the war by
blowing up strategic bridges in one zone only to build them in another. They were the same hands that
navigated the hedge-rows of northern France, and the same hands that made their quiet way to pounding hearts
and family photos as The English Channel inched closer to the coast of Nazi domination.
Throughout our childhoods, you managed to keep that version of your hands hidden from us, and we all know
why you did. Your own youth had been interrupted by a calling -- a call to end hatred, and
narrow-mindedness, and a mindset based on a fear of difference. Your own path had been hurried along,
transported forward at lightning fast speed, so that you could save the world from calculated viciousness.
I trust we all know why you did what you did -- why you protected our generation from what you saw and
lived and smelled and tasted on the battlefields of Europe, but I do not know that any of us knows how you did
what you did. After seeing what you saw on that unprecedented, unparalleled undertaking of June 6, 1944,
how did you ever manage to return to a gentility that allowed you to brush a ladybug off our shoulders and
nudge it towards its freedom? How did you ever find the softness to harness the miracle of a firefly or the
metamorphosis of a caterpillar?
How did you, so seamlessly, so unassumingly, turn the beaches of France into our childhood sandboxes, the
dog-tags of your brothers into your daughters' necklaces, the helmets of protection into our winter caps, and the
rifles of liberty into the weapons of Daniel Boone? How did you transform a Sherman tank into a 1954 Chevy,
an army cot into a baby's bassinet, a blueprint for bridges into an erector set on Christmas Day? How did
military rations become Thanksgiving abundance, purple hearts become Girl Scout badges, and the complexity
of a minefield become the simplicity of an HO train? And how did you ever say goodnight to so many, many
soldiers through death, only to say good morning to all of us through life?
Furthermore, how can we ever fully thank you for all of that? To be honest, I don't know that we ever could,
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. So if you are lucky enough to have come with a World War II veteran
today, reach out and take his hand in yours, and feel the history and bravery and dignity and fortitude that run
through his flesh. And for those of us whose fathers and husbands and uncles and grandfathers are not with us
today, reach out anyway -- because you never know. And now as we sit or stand or lie in one visible, and
invisible, and uninterrupted circle of hands, I say to my father, and to all the veterans with him, and to all the
veterans here today, "Thank you."
Thank you for being willing to defend the honor of your country. Thank you for knowing that all people
deserve to share in a common liberty and that not everyone can just sit back and wait for others to answer the
call. Thank you for your modesty, your dignity, and your selflessness as you opted, in droves, to set aside your
own safety for the good of humanity. Thank you for having a courage that was stronger than your fear, and
thank you for having a vision of what should be that was stronger than what could have been. And thank you,
thank you for coming home.
And if we ever did not understand your occasional intolerance with what we perceived to be suffering, we
understand it now. And if we ever did not appreciate your need for solitude and remembrance, we appreciate it
now. And if we ever took for granted the sacrifices you made for us so that we could live in a world free from
tyrannical rule, we do not take them for granted now.
And if we failed to marvel at your capacity to secure a vast spectrum of freedom -- at one step doing it at the
end of a rifle and at the next step doing it through the tender liberation of a ladybug, we marvel at that now.
And if we neglected to tell you that you were good fathers and good men who always sought to do the best you
could, we tell you now. You were and are good fathers. You were and are good men.
And if we never revealed how much we all still yearn to slip our childhood fingers inside your hands once again,
we reveal that now. We yearn for that. We all yearn for that. We yearn to reach up, up, up and into that
strong and simple shelter, and to stay there in your grasp, enclosed, protected, and safe, just as the entire world
did, exactly 65 years ago today.
| 297TH COMBAT ENGINEERS WORLD WAR II |
| THE HANDS OF OUR FATHERS World War II 297th Combat Engineers Reunion Weehawken, 2009 Appeared in Army Engineer Magazine, Sept/Oct 2009 Copyright 2009 Martha T. Cummings |
| My father, Joseph F. Cummings, Jr. |
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