Words from the Heart

My Dad's Boot Camp Cohort - Great Lakes John Henry Neas, Jr.  My Dad survived WWII, returning home after the Japanese signed the surrender. He saw service in both sides of the globe.  First, in Normandy, and then in the South Pacific. Dad didn't talk much about the war. Like most veterans of his generation, the stories didn't come to light until their elder years, and then, usually when around their shipmates and comrades in arms. I've written before of the stories Dad told me. Some tear at your heart and others make you laugh. The photos below are of his last ship, the USS Hyman. This was the ship that he was aboard during the kamikaze attack in which he barely escaped death.  This is the ship where the surrender was signed for the small Pacific island of Pohnpei.   Pohnpei is where the missionary wife sewed an American flag under the noses of her Japanese captors, believing with all her heart that the allies would liberate the island. The...

The prompt yesterday for Poem-a-day was to write a historic poem, then today, we were to write a poem about a moment. This is my combination of both.   At the Turn of a Dime    Pacific blue held them as the day at sea began like so many others. Each man had duties to preform, each holding tomorrow dreams within. In a flash of airborne light, their reverie cracked, like their ship, as bombs and planes came raining down upon them.    My Dad, the greatest hero of my life, stood at his station when his CO, a young man, barely old enough for war, ordered him to help put out a fire at the bow. Snapping to in rote military fashion, Dad ran down the deck to the fire hose. As he turned to douse hell’s fury on the deck, a kamikaze slammed like an errant meteor full force into the destroyer steel of his station. From the bow, he turned to see the crumpled iron; where he had stood moments before lay torn open as if th...

Momma, Daddy and Me - 1953 Today would have been my parent's 57th anniversary. The joke was that it made it easier for Dad to remember. Dad, you see, was a sailor. Dad always observed Veteran's Day. He was a member of both the Disabled American Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. As far as I know, he never missed a Veteran's Day memorial. Yet, he seldom spoke of his experiences as a wounded survivor of WWII. In fact, in all the years before his death, I only remember him telling three stories about the years he spent in the Navy. Two had to do with kamikaze attacks and the other was about the liberation of a tiny South Pacific island - Pohnpei. Dad served in both the North Atlantic and the South Pacific. He went into the service as a blond haired, blue-eyed boy, according to his enlistment records and returned a black haired, green-eyed man. His finger prints had to sent to Washington before he was released from service because they did not believe he was th...

But for the grace of God... Some sixty years ago, my Dad was aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific dodging incoming kamikazes. He was told by his CO to run down the deck for the fire hose. He went immediately, reaching the hose just as a plane crashed into the deck exactly at the place where his CO and he were standing minutes before. They never found the CO's body. In those few minutes, the lives of my Dad, his children and his children's children - ad infinitum - could have been lost forever. The first time I realized how tenuous this life was, was the Memorial Day when I was around 10. Mom told me this story for the first time. Dad didn't talk about the war, much. But, on this day, he added details that made my young mind grasp the enormity of the situation. Had he hesitated to obey orders, if his CO had ordered one of the other men, if the pilot had moved the throttle a hair one way or the other, I would not be memorializing my Dad on my blog. I would not be here...