It’s the week of the Fourth of July and my thoughts turn toward our veterans and active duty military.  I am so appreciative to what they do and what they have done for our country.  It’s always a tradition at Kingwood Church to honor them on the Sunday before Independence Day.  It brings tears to my eyes every time.  And I can’t help but think of my father, Coolidge Sims.  He was a veteran of World War 2, and my personal war hero.  But “hero” is not how he described himself.  The following is a conversation I had with my dad in 2012, not long before he made his journey to heaven.  It is an excerpt from a book I am presently writing about his life.  

I had joined him for supper one evening in the dining hall of the assisted living center, and randomly we were talking about the fear of death.  He recounted a wartime story that I had never heard before.

“When you were young, Dad, do you remember a time when you thought you might die? I asked candidly.

“Not really, at least not until I went in the army. It was during the Battle of the Bulge, the winter of 1944, the Germans had counterattacked and pushed our lines back.”

“What happened that was so scary?”

“Some Nazi paratroopers had landed in our area and we were on high alert for over a week. At nighttime we took turns on guard duty for several hours on a road spanning about a mile. I was scared to death, and it was exhausting. We were soldiers running an army hospital, not infantrymen.” Dad slurped a couple of mouthfuls of tomato soup out of the oversized spoon in his right hand, followed by his left hand shoving an entire saltine cracker into his mouth.

“That would send chills up the spine of any twenty-one year old!” I commented.  Still re-living the moment, Dad took a quick sip of milk and continued,

“There was this one particular night when it was cold, really cold, and I had sentry duty in the middle of the night. I was bundled up the best I could, but I had no gloves. That cold rifle I was carrying made me feel like my fingers were about to freeze and shatter onto the ground. And it was dark that night; so dark, with cloudy skies hiding the moon and stars. Of course, it was my luck to be assigned sentry duty in the eighth of a mile farthest from the unit. The whole time I kept thinking about the report we’d received the day before about an ambush incident not five miles away from us, and Son, I’ll tell you now, I was praying like a sinner with one foot in hell. Dad’s eyes were fixed straight ahead but focused on nothing particular. He resumed his story,

“’Who goes there?’ I barked when I thought I heard something in the shadows. I can still feel the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. ‘Who goes there,’ I said a second time, squinting at first and then opening my eyes as wide as possible, trying locate movement in the dark. I remember thinking how scared I was—not feeling the least bit brave. A few seconds later I heard something—a faint cracking sound, like someone trying to walk lightly on the graveled road, but I still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I just knew that whoever it was could surely hear my heart pounding like a drum. I could feel it too, like it was about to come right out of my chest. I imagined a German paratrooper sneaking-up on me, and then pictured in my mind’s eye several of them coming from every direction. Then I heard it again, only this time from behind me. I spun around and clutched my loaded rifle, on the cusp of firing a warning shot into the air. ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot,’ I yelled.

“Hey, Hey Peetey!” A familiar voice pierced the darkness. It was too late to stop the adrenaline rush through my body. I felt my once frozen finger suddenly become warm as the blood coursed through my veins and into my hands. There was only one person in the world that ever called me Peetey.

“Johnny Wise,” I ought to shoot you! You scared the living devil out of me.”

“It’s two o’clock, I’m here to relieve you,” Johnny said, clueless of the terror I had just endured.

“I said, ‘Who goes there?’—twice! What’s wrong with you, fool!”

“I guess I didn’t hear you. I was looking for my cigarettes,” he muttered while lighting-up a Lucky Strike. “You can get some sleep now, Peetey.”   Still irritated I popped back,

“Thanks to you Johnny, I won’t be able to sleep for three days.’ I made my way back to my tent and stayed awake the rest of the night.”

That night we talked about a lot of things over tomato soup and crackers.  Dad explained why he cringes when people call him a hero. He didn’t think of himself as a hero, but as a young American doing his patriotic duty.

“We were all the same,” he said. “I didn’t do anything special. I was as scared as the rest of them.” Recognizing his innate modesty, I replied,

“It all sound pretty heroic to me.” We were the last to leave the dining hall. On the way back to the room I asked,

“Why in the world did Johnny Wise call you Peetey?”

“I don’t know. He just did. He gave everyone a random nickname. Back in the day a lot of people did that. My Grandpapa Sims gave all 13 of his children nicknames totally different from their real names, and a few of his grandchildren too. And some of them stuck for a lifetime, like your uncle—Hop Sims. “Hop” is not really his name.”

“Wow. Are you kidding! What’s his real name?”

“I have no idea,” Dad said with a chuckle.

A Father is a son’s first hero; a daughter’s first love.