Well, Grampa is home and doing well. They had to put a pacemaker in on Tuesday morning, but everything went great.
Saw him yesterday and he's doing well. Already feels a bit better and is confident that he'll have more energy and be able to get out on the golf course and walk a lot better later this summer.
He's still hoping to be able to go to his MacArthur Honor Guard Reunion but is being realistic about it at his point.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Sunday, July 01, 2007
My Grandfather Norm
Norman Smith Sr is my grandfather on my father's side and he's got to be one of the happiest, luckiest and most content people I've ever had the good fortune to meet.
I spent about two hours today visiting him in the hospital. On Friday he felt some tingling in his arms and knew that it was time to get some help. He's had two heart attacks in the past and some pretty major heart surgery over the years. He knows enough to not play games with fate and just be stubborn. Tomorrow he's going to have another round of angioplasty and we're all expecting everything to go well and he's keeping his fingers crossed that he'll be able to be home on the Fourth of July.
I was honestly a little nervous about going in to visit him. Not because I didn't want to see him, but because I'm not good at dealing with situations like this. Luckily for me Grampa is just a master at making people feel easy. We had a great conversation that was honest, deep, funny, and relaxing. We covered everything from how lucky he's been throughout his life to his time in the Army.
For the rest of this entry I'm just going to cover a few of the items so that I will remember them. It was that special a time for me.
My grandfather got drafted into the Army in 1944. I knew he had been in the Army, but I didn't know if he was drafted or enlisted. When I asked him today he said, "Heck no. I was drafted!!" His Uncle Stubb had been in WWI and when he came home he told my grandfather and all the other kids to NEVER willingly go into the Army. The things he saw and such in Europe during and after WWI really put him off from the military. I can't say as I blaimed him.
Apparently there is a good story about the day grampa got the draft notice and my grandmother, but I don't know it. Xan was telling me a bit about it, so I'll have to ask grampa later about that one.
When grampa got to basic training they started training him for combat in Europe. At the time it looked like Europe was still in trouble and that's where he would be sent. Shortly after he started basic the Battle of the Bulge happened. The Allies lost something like 4000 people that first day. As he said, yet another case of how lucky he was to miss that. Luckily after that battle the tides changed in Europe and so their training shifted to jungle warfare for combat in Japan.
The next round of luck ocured when he got moved to a new base for deployment to Asia. I believe this was in California, but I'll have to double check that one. Anyway there was a dentist there checking all their teeth before they left and saw that grampa had only had one of his wisdom teeth taken out. Grampa explained why, but the dentist said it wouldn't be good to have one get inflamed when he was in a fox hole, so they held him back from getting deployed while he had those taken out. That was the next lucky break as the division he was in ended up going to the Philipines on mop up detail.
So next he got sent to Hawaii. There they continued training for an invasion of Japan. They were taking the normal 12 man squads and bumping them up to 20 man squads in the hopes of still having 12 men alive by the time they hit the beach. Not great odds as grampa liked to point out. On his way to Japan the US dropped the two atomic bombs and ended the war. Yet another lucky event for him.
I forget now the city where he landed. There he ended up getting put into a regimental guard where he learned how to run a radio. Through a few different lucky breaks he ended up getting moved into MacArthur's Honor Guard. The requirements were basically that he had to have an IQ over 120 and be between 5'10" and 6'2" and they were only taking guys who were fairly new. (Most likely as they didn't want guys that were due to ship home any time soon.)
He absolutely loved his time in the Honor Guard. He was warned by several people that he was getting transitioned into the "most Chicken Shit outfit in the Army." His thought was that where he was wasn't all that great and if it really turned out bad where he was going he could just get kicked out by screwing up. The assignment he was currently in was crazy as they had to do inspection twice a day with their rifles and you would occasional get some hard ass who would force them to get to full attention with their rifles at their sides and then dock them for getting their rifles muddy. Absolute no win situation!!
So he got to the MacArthur Guard and knew he was better off. For all of the bad and different things said about MacArthur my grandfather definitely has a good opinion of the man. He would always great the guards on duty whenever coming or going. Most officers wouldn't even acknowledge them.
Mac's wife would come and visit them all often and just say hello and ask if they needed anything. I know from previous conversations with Grampa that Mac would often show movies in his house and invite some of the off duty men into watch with his family. He was definitely a man that cared for them men under his command.
Grampa does agree with Truman's decision to remove Mac from command during Korea. He has no doubt that Mac would have used atomic bombs on China if he'd had the chance. That would have caused World War III and a lot of problems.
After his tour of duty was over grampa was done. There was no signing up for reserves or anything like that. They tried like hell to get him to commit, but he explained his reasons and they stopped pushing.
At that time there were luxury cruise linears that were bringing officers and their families over from the US to Japan. On the return leg they were taking officers back from their tours to the US. Around that time Stars and Stripes (the Army newspaper) got wind of this and so enlisted men were allowed to start riding on those cruise linears too. Who was one of the enlisted men on the first cruise line to go? That's right, my grandfather!!
They went to their first mess for breakfast and there was a uniformed (not military, but the cruise line uniforms) waiter offering them menus and telling them they could order anything they wanted. Not a bad way to spend 6 days on the trip back to the US.
When they hit southern California there was another Liberty ship coming in that was full of soldiers. He said they were the dirtiest, sorriest looking group of men he had ever seen. Those guys had broken down in the ocean some place and had run out of water so they couldn't shower, couldn't wash their clothes and apparently had had to resort to drinking their own urine to survive. He said he and his crew decided that they wouldn't bother mentioning how they had returned from Japan. Figured it wasn't a good thing to bring up. (Yet another case of some severe luck for him!!)
The rest of the conversation dealt with a lot of stuff. I'll write more about it later. I'm too tired now and just need to spend some time thinking about what a wonderful afternoon I had with my grampa.
I spent about two hours today visiting him in the hospital. On Friday he felt some tingling in his arms and knew that it was time to get some help. He's had two heart attacks in the past and some pretty major heart surgery over the years. He knows enough to not play games with fate and just be stubborn. Tomorrow he's going to have another round of angioplasty and we're all expecting everything to go well and he's keeping his fingers crossed that he'll be able to be home on the Fourth of July.
I was honestly a little nervous about going in to visit him. Not because I didn't want to see him, but because I'm not good at dealing with situations like this. Luckily for me Grampa is just a master at making people feel easy. We had a great conversation that was honest, deep, funny, and relaxing. We covered everything from how lucky he's been throughout his life to his time in the Army.
For the rest of this entry I'm just going to cover a few of the items so that I will remember them. It was that special a time for me.
My grandfather got drafted into the Army in 1944. I knew he had been in the Army, but I didn't know if he was drafted or enlisted. When I asked him today he said, "Heck no. I was drafted!!" His Uncle Stubb had been in WWI and when he came home he told my grandfather and all the other kids to NEVER willingly go into the Army. The things he saw and such in Europe during and after WWI really put him off from the military. I can't say as I blaimed him.
Apparently there is a good story about the day grampa got the draft notice and my grandmother, but I don't know it. Xan was telling me a bit about it, so I'll have to ask grampa later about that one.
When grampa got to basic training they started training him for combat in Europe. At the time it looked like Europe was still in trouble and that's where he would be sent. Shortly after he started basic the Battle of the Bulge happened. The Allies lost something like 4000 people that first day. As he said, yet another case of how lucky he was to miss that. Luckily after that battle the tides changed in Europe and so their training shifted to jungle warfare for combat in Japan.
The next round of luck ocured when he got moved to a new base for deployment to Asia. I believe this was in California, but I'll have to double check that one. Anyway there was a dentist there checking all their teeth before they left and saw that grampa had only had one of his wisdom teeth taken out. Grampa explained why, but the dentist said it wouldn't be good to have one get inflamed when he was in a fox hole, so they held him back from getting deployed while he had those taken out. That was the next lucky break as the division he was in ended up going to the Philipines on mop up detail.
So next he got sent to Hawaii. There they continued training for an invasion of Japan. They were taking the normal 12 man squads and bumping them up to 20 man squads in the hopes of still having 12 men alive by the time they hit the beach. Not great odds as grampa liked to point out. On his way to Japan the US dropped the two atomic bombs and ended the war. Yet another lucky event for him.
I forget now the city where he landed. There he ended up getting put into a regimental guard where he learned how to run a radio. Through a few different lucky breaks he ended up getting moved into MacArthur's Honor Guard. The requirements were basically that he had to have an IQ over 120 and be between 5'10" and 6'2" and they were only taking guys who were fairly new. (Most likely as they didn't want guys that were due to ship home any time soon.)
He absolutely loved his time in the Honor Guard. He was warned by several people that he was getting transitioned into the "most Chicken Shit outfit in the Army." His thought was that where he was wasn't all that great and if it really turned out bad where he was going he could just get kicked out by screwing up. The assignment he was currently in was crazy as they had to do inspection twice a day with their rifles and you would occasional get some hard ass who would force them to get to full attention with their rifles at their sides and then dock them for getting their rifles muddy. Absolute no win situation!!
So he got to the MacArthur Guard and knew he was better off. For all of the bad and different things said about MacArthur my grandfather definitely has a good opinion of the man. He would always great the guards on duty whenever coming or going. Most officers wouldn't even acknowledge them.
Mac's wife would come and visit them all often and just say hello and ask if they needed anything. I know from previous conversations with Grampa that Mac would often show movies in his house and invite some of the off duty men into watch with his family. He was definitely a man that cared for them men under his command.
Grampa does agree with Truman's decision to remove Mac from command during Korea. He has no doubt that Mac would have used atomic bombs on China if he'd had the chance. That would have caused World War III and a lot of problems.
After his tour of duty was over grampa was done. There was no signing up for reserves or anything like that. They tried like hell to get him to commit, but he explained his reasons and they stopped pushing.
At that time there were luxury cruise linears that were bringing officers and their families over from the US to Japan. On the return leg they were taking officers back from their tours to the US. Around that time Stars and Stripes (the Army newspaper) got wind of this and so enlisted men were allowed to start riding on those cruise linears too. Who was one of the enlisted men on the first cruise line to go? That's right, my grandfather!!
They went to their first mess for breakfast and there was a uniformed (not military, but the cruise line uniforms) waiter offering them menus and telling them they could order anything they wanted. Not a bad way to spend 6 days on the trip back to the US.
When they hit southern California there was another Liberty ship coming in that was full of soldiers. He said they were the dirtiest, sorriest looking group of men he had ever seen. Those guys had broken down in the ocean some place and had run out of water so they couldn't shower, couldn't wash their clothes and apparently had had to resort to drinking their own urine to survive. He said he and his crew decided that they wouldn't bother mentioning how they had returned from Japan. Figured it wasn't a good thing to bring up. (Yet another case of some severe luck for him!!)
The rest of the conversation dealt with a lot of stuff. I'll write more about it later. I'm too tired now and just need to spend some time thinking about what a wonderful afternoon I had with my grampa.
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