Finding My Father Killed during the war, he existed in my mind somewhere between a ghost and a god By Susan Hadler From THE WASHINGTONIAN (OCTOBER '98) Until quite recently, I knew only three things about my father: I knew his name, David S. Johnson, Jr. I knew he was an only child. And I'd been told he was killed by a mine on April 12, 1945, somewhere in Germany. I began my quest for information about my father as my 50th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his death drew near. The explosion that blew him to bits was happening in reverse for me Bits of information about him began falling into my hands, my mind, my hearth. Lomging to know my father kept me connected to him. It was time to transform my longing into knowledge. Once upon a time he was alive, and my mother and father were in love. They were married, and they had a child, my brother, David. Then my father left for the war. I was born in January 1945. On February 15 my father wrote me a letter of welcome. The V-Mail letter is taped into my baby book: "Dear Susan, Yours is a pretty good family as families run. Your dad is a bit on the off side. Your mother is the most wonderful person I've ever known. I've always marveled at my great good fortune to have loved her and been loved by her. If you will follow her dictates and examples, you may expect to meet life in the best possible way, and your path will always be the right one. For me, adhere to a belief in tolerance, a genuine liking for others, and always give to life to the fullest. Your father, Dave." Black on white paper, the words are my father. From them I forge a loyalty and a love. But I long for stories that will bring him to life. I know only one, the story of his death. A six-year-old with freshly cut bangs, I've come to visit Granny, my father's mother. "Daddy David and his two friends were out in the fields, making sure the way was safe for the others to follow," she tells me. "All of a sudden there was an explosion. All three of them were killed." Granny is looking down, stroking one thin hand with the other. There are no words, only godforshaken silence. NOVEMBER 11 -- Veterance Day. Every year I stand with my class for two minutes of silence. I want to tell my friends and my teachers that my father is one of the soldiers we're remembering. I want someone to say, "I'm sorry your father was killed." But i keep my secret safe. What if people have nothing to say? My mother remarries while I am still very young. Eventually there are nine of us, three sisters and two more brothers. Life continues in the new family with few traces of my father. He is rarely mentioned. I sequestered my longing to know more about my father until I left my parent's house. My grandmother was dead. My mother was the only one I knew who knew him. Once, I invited my mother to spend the weekend with me in a city halfway between her town and mine. My mother sat across the table from me in the hotel dining room and told me she'd known my father for only five years. The war imposed on every aspect of their life together, preventing them from sharing ordinary reminiscences from their past. She couldn't give me the details I needed to know about a man who like a god to me. VETERANCE DAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1992. A familiar cold and loneliness spreads through me. I look up a veterans center in the phone book. I feel eager and pathetic -- pathetic that I am nearly 50 years old and so unresolved and needy and isolated as to look in a phone book for someone to talk about an event that happened half a century ago, A man with a voice like a cello answers the phone. I tell him my father was killed in World War II, and I want to begin to know him. "When it hits, it hit hard," he says. He refers me to Ann Mix, a woman in Washington State who has started a network for people whose father's were killed in World War II. She tells me where to send for my fathers military records and shares the phone number of the reunions organization so I can contact men who knew him. MY FATHER'S RECORDS arrive on a wintry Friday. I sit at the kitchen table and open the large brown envelope. Within two minutes I know more facts about him than I've ever known. He was born on July 17, 1919. His birthday! He was five-foot-11 and weighed 140 pounds when he entered the Army on May 22, 1943. He'd majored in history at Carleton College in Minnesota. I learn that my father rode and trained horses. He listed sailing and swimming as sports he was proficient in. I grew up sailing, never imagining he'd sailed the same lake 20 years earlier. By Christmas 1944 the 782nd Tank Battalion was in Camp Kilmer, N.J., preparing to go to Eurpe in the wake of the Battle of the Bulge. They sailed from New York Harbor on Januaryy 3, 1945, aboard the USS Henry Gibbons and landed in Le Havre, France, on January 16. My hands grow cold as I read the entry for April 12, 1945. Under "Incidents, Messages, Orders," someone has written, "Place: Mechernich. Deceased: 2nd Lt. David S. Johnson." Another document lists every item my father possesed at his death, including "20 pairs of socks," a Bible and a wallet with $38.67. The picture of my father is shifting. He isn't a god, just an unlucky guy with lots of socks and $38.67 when he died. I read on. In January 11001 my mother recieved a letter: "It is with deep regret that your Government find it necessary to inform you that further search and investigations have failed to reveal the whereabouts of your husband's remains. Realizing the extent of your great loss, it is with reluctance that you are sent the information that there is no grave at which to pay homage." It seems shameful that there is no grave, no final spot that belongs to my father, to his family. I'M AFRAID to call a man who was in my father's battalion, afraid he won't remember my father. One Sunday afternoon I settle into an armchair and with sweaty hands pick up the phone. He listens to my story, tells me he didn't know my father personally, but he knew of him, and he remembers the "incident." His words are like the song of a meadowlark in the moring. "Your father and two other men were searching for mines when one of them tripped a release, causing the mine to explode. They never knew what happened. These German land mines were designed to put tanks out of action. This mine was apparently booby-trapped with a trip-wire. Most mines were set off when a vehicle ran over them." The man follows up with a letter, enclosing the names, addresses and phone numbers of men he thinks may have known my father. Two months later I call one of them. Yes, he knew my father, he says. "In our outfit only three of the officers were worth a damn, and your dad was one of them. He was a jewel of a person. And were a tough bunch -- wild, young. He was strict, and we needed discipline." The man mentions that after my father was killed, the captain had them all trained to identify the mines and bombs "so that it wouldn't happen again. Your dad did not die in vain. His death saved others' lives." I WAIT A WEEK before I call the man listed as the captain of Headquarters Conpany. He say, "Sure, I knew Dave! He and I had trained to locate, recognize and disarm mines. That first morning in Mecharnich, Dave and three other men were assigned to go on a reconnaissance mission farther into Germany. I was in headquarters talking when it felt like an 88-mm. shell hit the building. It came from the direction we'd sent Dave. We ran over there. The jeep driver told me that Johnson said, 'I'm going to cut this wire. If it fizzes duck.' Nothing was left of him. The mine was a yard long, six inches deep. It would explode if you picked it up or cut it. He forgot that in the midst of things." Shame and panic sweep through me. Did my father make a mistake and cut the wire, costing his life and two other men's lives? My father, who was a god, is now an eager, reckless kid who made a fatal mistake. The captain continues: "Do you know what scrounge means? Your dad could scrounge. He persuaded the mess sargeants to give him bread and chees. Then he made grilled-cheese sandwiches for everyone over little wood-burning stoves." The captain laughs. "Dave was lighthearted, carefree," he says after a pause. "Nothing bothered him. He enjoyed everyone and everything. He joked and laughed. I judge he'd have been a pretty good dad." I DECIDE that I want to follow the battalion's route across France, through Belgium and into Germany. I want to see the view my father saw in his last days on earth. My husband, Jack, and I enter Germany and settle imto a hotel in Aachen, where my father spent his last night. The next morning we drive to Mechernich. We find a local policeman who speaks English and show him a copy of a 1949 investigation report. I share with him the three clues I possess about the place where my father died. His military records state: "Remains of deceased taken to Cemeter at Ittenbach." The second piece of information came from the Graves Registration Command: "The area in which the accident occurred was in a wooded section just outside of Mechernich." The report states that the area had been used to store ammunition. The third clue is from a note the captain sent me: "Your dad was killed about two miles out of Mechernich on the road to Euskirchen." Reaching up to the wall, the policeman pulls down a large map of restricted areas around Mechernich and describes where an ammunition dump once stood. The man hands me the map. I remember the two German words my stepfather taught me: Danke schon. THE ROAD OUT of Mechernich reminds me of rural Wisconsin, where my father grew up. Rolling, greenish-gold cultivated fields lie on one side of the road, rock formations and pine trees on the other. I'm comforted that my father's last journey might have been familiar to him. Signs warn that the area is closed to the public. We enter anyway. We come to a meadow. To the left is a small brick structure; past it is a clump of trees. I tell Jack, "That's it." I walked down the neglected road and eventually come to a place surrounded by barbed wire. Below me lies a bowl-shaped crater, where the earth has been carved out. I sit down cross-legged and look into the crater at the spot where my father died. I read a poem, and Jack says a prayer. I talked with my daddy for the first time. I tell him that I love him. I tell him about his grandchildren and Jack. I tell him about all the people who helped me find him. My eyes are drawn to a white birch tree on the far hill, which has become radiantly beautiful. A white-gold light shines from the center of it. Heaven has opened. My father is alright. I sit there and watch the light dance with the trees until darkness begins to enter the grove. I say goodbye. Slowly I walk back to the car, away from the place of violence, beauty and holy light. I ALWAYS PICTURED Mother, my brother, David, and me laying flowers at my father's grave. When I called the American Battle Monuments Commission for confirmation that there was no grave, they said the government would provide a marker for anyone whose remains were unrecovered. On July 28, 1997, the day of my father's funeral service, I pick up red roses -- red for his blood, shed for freedom, red for his life, red for the blood of our family -- to lay at his memorial marker in Arlington National Cemetery. The military doesn't stint on ceremony. Three soldiers on horseback lead three riderless horses -- and I think of all three men killed in that explosion 52 years ago. Smiling, I imagine that my father would like this day: the horses, the soldiers, family and friends gathered to honor him in this quite place with tall trees. As we line up behind the flag-draped caisson, the band plays "Amazing Grace." I think I should feel sad, but I feel triumphant walking down the road behind the soldiers, with Jack and our two children beside me. In an odd way, my father has come home. He is no longer lost "somewhere in Germany." After the dedication of the stone, seven soldiers fire three rouds of shots. As silence returns, the slow notes of taps drift up from the bottom of the hill. Then, while the band play "America, the Beautiful," the soldiers fold the flag, each one touching it softly with white gloves. One holds it to his heart befor passing it to the chaplain, who presents the flag to us. Mother, David, and I lay our flowers at the marker. The journey to find my father ends here. In Arlington National Cemetery we are together for the first time remembering the eager young soldier who was my father.