On Veterans Day, Nov. 11, most Americans who did not serve in the military reflect on our friends, loved ones and colleagues who did serve in the U.S. armed forces.
For me, the iconic veteran will always be my grandfather, Frank “Buster” Redfield.
Many veterans, especially those who served in World War II, are quiet about their military service for scores of reasons.
My grandfather was by nature a quiet man, I think, in part, because my grandmother did all the talking for them both, and he loved the sound of her voice.
His quiet stoicism was terrifying to me as a boy because he only spoke when necessary and always with a weight of words that demanded attention. I have a performance slam poem about how he could move mountains with his silence — I am still convinced eastern Montana is so perfectly flat in fear of him.
But when asked about his military service, he always told us grandkids a story. I think my grandfather was open about his military service in part because its direct relevance to his career after the war. Primarily a wheat farmer in northeastern Montana, he also built kit airplanes and ran a crop-dusting business. Our family farm still has a hanger and airstrip from which he flew small aircraft well into his 70s, taking his kids and grandkids on trips across the state or just above the farm when we insisted on a flight with Papa.
Buster joined the U.S. Navy at 17 shortly after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was trained as an airplane mechanic on the USS Princeton, an Independence-class aircraft carrier. Japanese aircraft in the Philippines sank his carrier during the Battle of Leyte Gulf on Oct. 24, 1944, and Buster was one of 1,361 sailors rescued from the sea by other American warships. For me and my cousins raised in the rolling seas of Montana fields, the vast ocean was a faraway place we could only imagine.
After his Navy service, he joined the U.S. Army and served as military police in North Africa and Europe. When I was about 12, after he taught me how to shoot a .22-caliber rifle for the first time, he showed me a German Luger pistol he had taken from a dead Nazi officer and taken back to the United States after the war. A small swastika was carved into the side of the barrel — a symbol about why my grandfather and those of his generation went to war and why they fought to end the fascism and nationalism that was tearing the world apart.
Buster met my grandmother at the USO after the war. It was his first time visiting and her last time volunteering, so she gave him her number — which she never did before — figuring he would never call. He did the next day, calling so many times my grandmother’s sister just said to come over. They married after she earned her degree from Bucknell and the raised seven children, one of whom was my mother.
When the cancer became terminal, I visited him at home one last time, knowing it would be the last chance we would have to ever talk. He spoke more to me in those few hours then in all the years I had ever known him. I realized I was more like him — stubborn, stoic and a wicked sense of humor — than I could have imagined.
When my grandfather died, my uncles and cousins served as pallbearers, burying him at our family farm, while seven old men from his local VFW hall, dressed in the best uniforms they had, fired a 21-gun salute to honor their friend, their brother-in-arms and the best man I’ve ever known.
We lost grandma this July after a brief bout with cancer, but among my 3-year-old daughter’s many middle names is hers: Sylvia. This June, they met for the first and last time and my daughter’s memories are of the vivid woman my grandfather couldn’t help but fall in love with.
We also visited Buster’s graved, prompting my daughter to then ask why he was buried there and if he was going to come out.
Well, she clearly has his sense of humor.
Our veterans are our connections to our history, both as a nation and as a people. Their stories are worth every moment because they can tell us who we are and why we still believe in our ideals.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
