A soldier's final silence and a grandson's struggle to understand

Life’s timing can be uncanny. Shortly after my grandfather passed away, I first saw the “Band of Brothers” miniseries, a story of men changed by their experiences, friendships, suffering, and the horrors of war. Through the show I came to see my grandfather in a different light. There was a story behind his service, but apart from the bits and pieces I picked up over the years, that story is lost forever.

Private First Class Mario DiGrazia did not serve in the 101st Airborne or storm Normandy’s beaches. To my knowledge, he could not claim any remarkable acts of combat heroism recounted in history books or Hollywood movies. His dress uniform bears the emblems of his units, a combat infantry badge, campaign medals, a decoration for good conduct, and the ruptured duck. From these I know he served his country faithfully, saw combat, and was honorably discharged. His service, like that of most men who fought the Axis, was quietly ordinary.

Sadly, any additional information vanished as most of Mario’s service records were among those lost in a 1973 fire at a National Archives facility. Only his final payroll accounting remains. In return for hardship and sacrifices, he mustered out with a small paycheck.

The G.I. Bill provided Mario a university education in metallurgy and engineering. At Bethlehem Steel he worked his way up from the blast furnaces into the laboratory. After retiring, he watched the steel industry all but disappear overseas. He understood that service employment could not sustain our nation’s quality of life for long and he was skeptical of the “information economy.” The world he knew had largely slipped away and he struggled to understand its replacement. Perhaps, knowing his days were numbered, he saw no need to try.

He died at home, working in his garden, as befits a man who toiled endlessly on a once fertile plot of land. By his end, little remained but grass and shrubs. Like him, the soil was exhausted.

The years since his death have not given me the words to describe the loss. Knowing he died alone, his body discovered more than a day later, still gives me pause, and I am haunted by an unshakable sorrow, born of regret that I failed to ask so many questions. I want to hear his stories, listen to his recounting of his travels in Europe, the friendships he formed, and the pain of comrades lost in combat. I want to know how he encountered the unspeakable when his unit liberated a Nazi death camp.

Only my memories and his objects now remain. The memories are unclear and fading, while the things yield no more knowledge or meaning. A box full of photographs from the 1940s, for example, perhaps once rich with significance to my grandfather, is now a box full of mysteries. Aside from the occasional scribbles on the back, I can only guess at the places, and the names and stories behind them will forever elude me, entombed with him. Over that tomb lays Mario’s final marker, courtesy of the army in which he served. Made of bronze and resting upon granite, it will outlive his progeny and likely the civilization he defended.

Too often we succumb to the temptation of lionizing the dead. A man dies a mortal but is remembered as a saint. Such has not been the case for my grandfather. We at his burial were keenly aware of his shortcomings. They drove me away from him at times; they drove others away permanently. Instead of a funeral Mass and sermon of canonization, his was a simple graveside service per his own last wishes that there be naught but a short ceremony beside his final resting place on earth.

On a warm July day, the U.S. Army sent a detachment of soldiers to that resting place. At full attention, they stood watch beside an open tomb awaiting the flag-draped casket. The bugler sounded the eternally mournful “Taps.” Day is done, gone the sun.

While the bugler’s notes still echoed across the grounds and the soldiers gave my grandfather his final salute, a tear ran down the face of the young man overseeing the detachment. Surely, I thought, he had discharged this duty many times over — it must have turned routine. But perhaps it would never become routine to honor a brother in arms, though born in the battles of a different generation, laid to rest at last.

Those soldiers gave Mario’s burial a special dignity. They shared a bond with him that I can never understand, for I am a soldier’s grandson, but not a soldier. As I fought back tears I confronted a painful truth: I knew the man and they did not, but as fellow combat veterans they knew far more about his experiences, and thus about him, than I ever could — or ever will.

And I envy them.

John Barnes lives in the Helena area, where he works in Catholic philanthropy.