My grandfather didn't go to war in the 1940's.
He volunteered, but was told that he could do more for the war effort by staying home and doing the job he had been doing before the war.
Now I have no really meaningful memory of either of my grandfathers. My mother's father, an old marine, died two years before I was born; and my father's father died when I was four years old.
But as a younger man, before my father was born, with two young daughters already, my grandfather worked in the Oakland ship yards. He and my grandmother also ran a motel in the bay area, and on a few occasions during the war he had the good luck to meet Admiral Nimitz.
Before he died, my grandfather gave my father an old 1880's Elgin pocket watch (he explained that he wanted to make sure my father got it, because he knew that if my aunts got their hands on it, it would end up sold in some junk sale by someone who had no idea what it was). That watch is still in good working order, but after he died my father found another Elgin pocket watch (somewhat newer, and not quite as well maintained) that had also belonged to my grandfather that didn't run.
This watch (which he still keeps) is fairly beat up.
The glass is cracked.
It doesn't run, and my father has talked a few times about trying to have it repaired, though I don't know if he ever will.
See that second watch, though worth somewhat less in actual value has a very special story behind it.
It was near the middle of the war, and repair work was coming very regularly.
And my grandfather (by this time a foreman in the yard) was assigned with a welding and cutting crew to repair a fuel supply vessel.
This vessel had been certified clean, non-flammable and well vented so there was no real concern, but in war, and in a hurry, mistakes can and often are made.
According to my father, my grandfather said he was standing on the other side of the fuel hold, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the fireball expand from the striker when one of his welders attempted to light his torch, and after that he had no meaningful memory for several minutes. So far as they could tell he managed to jump down below one of the keel supports before the explosion reached him, but the next thing he knew he was surrounded by an 'unbelievable amount of smoke'.
According to later accounts my grandfather pulled one, and then another, and a third, a fourth and finally a fifth injured man from the inside of the ship before someone asked him when he planned on taking his turn. That was when he noticed that he had a long gash running down his leg, through the meat and into the bone.
All he could figure was that he must have landed on something when he dove for cover, and with the adrenaline and the stress of the moment, he didn't notice until someone else pointed it out to him.
Bare in mind that this was likely a matter of someone (probably overworked) failing to properly inspect the ship before signing off on the welding work. And with this being somewhat earlier in the war and with the need for moral and such, the censors and the private contractors made sure that the story was kept fairly quiet (not nearly as many casualties as the Port Chicago incident a couple years later, and not a large enough explosion to alert the general population). But that was the day that my grandfather's watch stopped working.
There is no moral to this story, no great ending or symbolic closure or life lesson.
It's just a story about my grandfather's watch, which my father was told once many years ago, and which he told me for the first and only time this evening.
And I want to make sure that it doesn't get forgotten.
Because while I firmly believe that not every action needs to be memorialized, I think the good ones should at least be remembered for as long as we are able.
