Traveling Man
My Father Edson Carl Beck was in the United States Army during World War II. He didn’t talk much about where he was or what he did. The few things I was able to gather were from photographs or items he brought back. He did share that he was stationed in the Philippines as a chaplain’s assistant. I always thought he didn’t see much action or wasn’t near the front lines until he showed me a piece of shrapnel from an exploding bomb that had hit him. He said that it had injured him, but said no more about it.
He did have photos, mostly of black men and women who were naked to the waist with just a loincloth or wrapped skirt. I distinctly remember several of them. One was of a man climbing out of a foxhole or bomb crater covered in mud. Another was of a man suffering from elephantiasis with a scaly enlarged leg and genitals, a disease caused by roundworms creating gross edema of the affected area. I’m not sure where these were taken, but I imagine somewhere in the South Pacific.
Before my dad passed away, he wrote a short autobiography asking me to type it up. Most things I already knew; his parents, where and when he was born, and where he went to school. I was surprised to see that he had visited Hiroshima, Japan. I knew that visit had to be after the bomb was dropped after the war had ended. He was a poor farmer’s kid and that trip couldn’t have happened before the war.
Every so often I am surprised by another fact from my dad’s past. Just the other day my daughter Amanda Yoder called to say that she met a person who worked at Seven Springs ski resort with him. As they talked he told stories of my dad and what a prankster he was. Dad drove bus for awhile after he retired from the Walworth Valve Company. The guy said Dad would wait until another bus would park behind him. He would turn on the interior lights and exaggeratedly make motions of cleaning the bus. When he completed the task he’d often wave a twenty dollar bill so the driver behind could see. The money was from his own wallet, but did it to tease the driver behind. It was December 7th and Dad asked the guy what did he know about the date? The guy said dad told him that Dad was at Pearl Harbor In 1941. He was in the mess hall when the bombs began to fall. That was a surprise to me. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it.