The following is an edited excerpt from my recent book, IS THAT YOU, COOLIDGE? The book is a memoir of the life of my father, Coolidge Sims, and of my relationship with him. In a conversation with him during the last days of his life, he recounted for me a story from his time in World War 2– a tale that I had never heard. It revealed the real story behind an odd wartime photograph that I had questioned him about.
“It was toward the end of the war in Europe, after we had won the Battle of the Bulge, a buddy of mine and I got a rare seven-day furlough pass. It had been a tough winter so we decided to go to Paris for some R and R. We hitchhiked on troop trucks back across the Rhine and all the way to Paris. My buddy and I, Dunwoody we called him, were crossing the Champs Elysees (the main boulevard in Paris) when we saw one of my high school friends from Ashland—Billy Saxon!”
“Out of two million American servicemen in Europe, I ran across one of my best friends from a small Alabama town of 2000. Unbelievable! And we had the best reunion you can imagine, right in the middle of an intersection in the center of Paris, France. The Arc de Triomphe was on one side of us, and the Eiffel Tower on the other. Billy was an MP and was directing traffic at the time—we’re lucky we didn’t get run over! Dunwoody and I stayed with him for a couple of days in Paris, and then we decided to go to London. By the time we got across the English Channel and to London, our week’s furlough was almost over. But then something totally unexpected happened.”
“You see, Dunwoody was a big guy and had a pretty hot temper. He got into an argument with an American MP and got so mad that he punched him in the face and knocked him to the ground. And before the poor guy could get up, Dunwoody started running, with me following right behind him. Neither of us wanted to get locked up in the military brig, so we ran like scared rabbits.”
“There was a train station right around the corner from where we were, so we jumped on board just as it was about to leave. During the war servicemen in uniform didn’t have to buy a ticket, so we just took a seat and assumed we were heading back to the coast where we could get the ferry back to France. But we quickly learned the the train wasn’t going south, but north—to Scotland! We decided that since we were already going to be late, we might as well be really late and enjoy it. So we had a great time being AWOL in Edinburgh, Scotland.”
“I’ll never forget when that picture was taken. The photographer was outdoors on a windy balcony. My knobby little legs were freezing wearing that man-dress, and it took him forever to take that photo!”
“Our fathers never leave us…. ever.” Brad Meltzer
