To all wives, children, descendants, and friends of Veterans.
This story is my birthday gift to my WWII buddy Arnold Mathias, Tank Commander, 16th Tank Battalion, 13th Armored Division. You are in it in many ways, and like my children, are what we leave behind. You are all the very best, and we rely on you to carry on whatever good we have done.
We love, and are so proud of you…
Please work with each other to keep those connections we made when back we came together as a country in the 1940’s. A time of need – much like now. This website has some substantial tools and abilities that can put our stories in place here for all to read. I have made some contributions, as have many others, including the late Jack Campey (Halftrack Driver – 16th Armored Infantry Battalion). They are our way of showing our love of our country and families for those who follow.
They are thoughtful stories of actual happenings. Stories of truth and devotion. Stories to be told in a sincere setting, away from those that observe and even promote dissention. Stories that resonate America. They need to be shared on Relighting Us.
I am about to share the scenes of my revisited 13th Armored Division memories this October at our divisional reunion. Not so much to tell what happened in WWII in 1945, and in the Bosnian war (1992-1995), as to tell how those places and their people fared afterward. I will be accompanied by a Veteran of Afghanistan and Bosnia, by the name of Steve McAlpin. He will, in his part, be doing the Bosnian war, as we will revisit Bosnia as well. I have invited him to by my guest at our 13th Armoredl Reunion this Fall.
Our stories will also be posted on Relighting Us.
Going back and revisiting the good we left behind is one way to help see that it is honored and continued.
God Bless…
Bob Whelan, President
13th Armored Division Association
Happy 95th Birthday
to
My Buddy Arnold
from
Bob
Life is a book that we study
Some of its leaves bring a sigh
There it was written by a buddy
That we must part, you and I
Nights are long since you went away
I think about you all through the day
My buddy, my buddy
The music was written by Walter Donaldson, the lyrics by Gus Kahn. The song was published in 1922
These are lyrics from a song written after WWI, but I always took them as being a part of that war. At least, I remember hearing it as a child, and associating it with that war. The words resonated without me understanding what was behind them, and as music does, it plays from the heart, and it moved me.
The heart is where we connect. Not the brain, the heart. The brain thinks too much. It finds reasons why we should not connect, or even disconnect. The heart knows other hearts. This story is about that kind of a connection. My heart was broken when my wife of 62 years passed away in 2013. I was completely disconnected, and desperate in need of support connection, any kind, to fill that hole.
In that desperation, I responded to an ad in the VFW Magazine about a reunion of my WWII, 13th Armored Division in Texas. I needed a buddy badly. Where could I go?
It was that quandary that enveloped me. Maybe my recollections of support from those desperate days was what I needed. A somewhat sketchy maybe, but a maybe worth a shot. What would I have to lose? My spirits couldn’t be any lower, and who knows, a miracle might happen.
Guess what? It did. And here’s the story:
I flew down and arrived in Austin, Texas on a hot September day, checked in at the hotel where the reunion was being held. Took a shower, changed my clothes, and took an elevator to the hospitality room where the 2013, 13th Armored Division reunion was being held. When I opened the door, two gracious Texas sisters greeted me. One was impressed by my Western New York accent, as her sister’s husband happened to be from Geneseo (a town nearby to my Rochester). No sooner than that expression of amazement had occurred, their father appeared on the scene. He was a Veteran Tank Commander from Texas by the name of Arnold Mathias.
When his daughters introduced me, his first word was “Damyankee.” In the early 1940’s when I began my WWII military service in Texas, those were “fightin words” or at the least, insult. This Damyankee was spoken in a friendly, almost musical voice, and I knew right away, we were going to be good friends.
What happened the next morning incased it in concrete. Our group, Veterans and their families were on a long bus ride to Fort Hood, Texas, where I had taken my basic training. I remembered it well. They were not fond memories. And, guess who was in the front of the bus with a microphone as we rode along – Arnold Mathias.
He
was telling about how the government had appropriated his father’s farm and built Camp Hood (now Fort Hood) upon it, and on a lot more land adjacent. He went on to describe lots of his growing up there, including adventures in a nearby Honky-tonk – with a distinctly Texas-like name – the Rattlesnake Inn. I was fascinated.
In between his descriptive episodes, I was having an extended conversation with a man and his wife who sat behind me. His father was a Master Sergeant who was killed in the biggest battle our Division experienced in the Ruhr Pocket Campaign of April 1945. Not only was his father killed in a place where I was at the same time, but he was born when his dad and all of us were together on the high seas on our way to Europe. He came to our reunion to be with those who were with his father when he was killed. In a sense, all of us who survived became his father. He came to reunions to be with those who were supporting his dad. That message of support was beginning to resonate in my mind.
Fatherhood is more than just ten letters. It is an immense, unfathomable power and influence. It is ultimate support. Far beyond our ability to completely comprehend. It was, as a result of the first happenings of my long-delayed reunion, beginning to move to a front centered rank of importance in my consciousness.
Before that reunion concluded I had just one set of revelations after another to almost an overwhelming extent. The next occurred that same evening. It involved storytelling. Storytelling of a kind I never wanted to participate in in the past. My mind had been gracious enough to allow me to recover from the war experienced horror of men violently killing men. Today it is referred to as PTSD, and is recognized as bringing on a serious set of damaging blows to the brain. In 1945 some had named it “Combat Fatigue,” but no one in those days did much to understand or do much about its effects. We were mostly on our own to get it out of our consciousness. Most of us did not even discuss it, much less want to remember.
That evening I had the opportunity to sit on a balcony with Arnold and swap stories. Stories to which only he and I could relate. Interestingly enough, in our storytelling, we both, almost instantaneously came to the same conclusion. Nobody else would know what we were talking about.
The rest of the reunion was filled with an amazing variety of happenings that added to my restoration, including the aspect of family support from those who are involved in our journey.
Many of those stories are posted on a website my daughter Patty manages called “Relighting Us.” They are designed and offered to all who would choose to tell stories and share pictures of the kind of heart stories that bring about brotherhood – “Buddies,” if you will.
I will conclude this story with an event that happened during our closing ceremonies. As our flag was being ceremoniously honored, “Taps” was played. I had never heard it played with the emotion of love so embedded. I looked to the back of the room and the young (to me) man who had lost his never known father, was playing with such feeling that the notes brought tears. They ran down my cheeks.
I heard the deep music of fatherly love.
Fatherhood…
Brotherhood and Fatherhood so much displayed and experienced in that 2013 reunion, and for those who keep their stories in their hearts. Stories that when shared and relighted show us the way to find what is good about family.
Individual Family.
13th Armored Division Family.
United States of America Family – the Human Family – All Family…