Authors:
Historic Era: Era 7: The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)
Historic Theme:
Subject:
November 2000 | Volume 51, Issue 7
My Grandfather’s War
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
My grandfather spoke to me about his experiences in the first World War only once, and that was abruptly and in anger. As young boys, my brothers and I would spend part of our summer vacations with my grandparents. One sweltering August night I climbed down from the attic guest room to ask my grandmother if I could sleep on the screened porch. She helped me gather up my pillows and sheets, and as we were rounding the second-story landing, my grandfather appeared unexpectedly. “What are you doing?” he demanded of my grandmother, who explained that I was going down to the porch, where it would be more comfortable. “Comfortable?” he snapped, wheeling on me now. “Comfortable? Do you know, boy, that when I was in France, we slept on rocks, and I never once complained.” With that, he retreated back to his room, glowering in disgust. I stood there mute and uncomprehending, not knowing what France was or what I had done. I did not think of his outburst again for almost forty years, and it is only now that I am able to understand it.
I am a painter in large part because of my grandfather, Edward H. Freedman. His enlistment record states his vocation as “artist,” but by the time I knew him, he had pretty much given up fine art and resigned himself to being an illustrator and art teacher to support his family. He was a perpetual instructor, always willing to sit down and show me how to draw something. I remember with absolute clarity the feeling of entering his studio, smelling the turpentine, and seeing the dizzying array of colors in his paint box.
A few years ago, I had cause to think of that childhood encounter when, going through a trunk in my parents’ attic, I discovered a tattered miniature book that turned out to be a journal my grandfather had kept during the First World War. As I was growing up, I pieced together that he had fought with Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force, but he never spoke to anyone of his experiences. His witnessing of the horrors of trench warfare, his grueling labor in the 52d Pioneer Infantry, marching through the moonscape that was eastern France, filling in shell holes and burying horses and mules, the death of his beloved older brother, Isaac—these things were unknown to me until I happened upon that small book.
His journal had to be small; it was competing for very valuable real estate in his knapsack. He gave it a title, “The Great War and Me.” Severely dog-eared and yellowed, it began to disintegrate the instant I touched it. I worked with the greatest care to separate its Bible-thin pages, cemented together by rain and mud.
The journal turned out to be only part of what I found. There was a beautiful Waltham wristwatch that had belonged to my great-uncle Isaac,