Breakfast in Valhalla

Note: I wrote this essay several years ago. At that time a veterans group called the Vintage Squadron met twice a month for breakfast at the local VFW. The breakfasts are no longer held there, but continue at a local restaurant. 

It is 8:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning at the VFW in Kankakee, Illinois, The chairs at the tables in the banquet room are slowly filling until within fifteen or twenty minutes 80 to 100 men have gathered. All once members of one or another branch of the military (a few currently serving in the reserve); all now sharing an hour or two of memories and fellowship. Their experiences range from World War II to Desert Storm, from the Bataan death march to combat in Iraq; from high-altitude streams of bombers over Europe to the last bombing of Japan; from the shell cratered beaches and tropical jungles of Pacific islands to the shooting gallery rice paddies of Vietnam; from the frozen Chosin reservoir in Korea and the landing at Inchon to the D-day invasion of Europe and the Battle of the Bulge; from naval battle groups and carriers steaming westward, to silent running beneath enemy flotillas; from bomber fighter escort to helicopter rescue; from jeeps to tanks, single-engine, bi-wing trainers to supersonic jets; from orderly rooms and supply depots to weather stations and control towers; from base hospitals, guard houses and mess halls to lonely foxholes on the perimeter of hell. Flight One of the Vintage Squadron is present and accounted for. It is breakfast time in Valhalla.

    One of the greatest of privileges is to be among these men. Not that they would ever characterize this breakfast or any of the other twice a month meetings as a gathering of heroic warriors, such as the title of this little essay might indicate. But in the aggregate they embody unwritten volumes of a vast collection of experience, of service and sacrifice to their country for over half a century, some of it workaday, some of it truly heroic, where humor and pathos shade the telling.

    I once sat between two veteran infantrymen of different eras. One had been a platoon sergeant, who survive the December 1944 German onslaught on Bastogne; the other a private trying to stay alive while engaged in an uphill battle on some obscure enemy outpost in Korea. Said the platoon sergeant, it was the replacements, they came in in the morning and were dead by evening, I never had a chance to even know their names. Said the private, I just ran as fast as I could, firing as fast as I could. My gun got so hot that the Cosmoline remaining where I hadn’t been able to clean it out melted and ran down across my hands and blistered them.

    Pilots and crew members of all types of military aircraft recall, sometimes humorously, sometimes with self-deprecating candor, the moments of terror and moments of exaltation during aerial combat. One B-29 pilot and crew finish a record 30 missions over Japan insuring them a ticket home, except that on this final bomb run flack and Japanese fighters knock out the B-29’s starboard engines. The pilot manages a titanic struggle to keep the bomber in the air until it reaches Iwo Jima, where it makes a crash landing on an emergency runway. The crew survives. Tragically, this incident is only a prelude to a second crash two weeks later off Kwajaline Atoll, involving the same pilot and crew, who are flying to Hawaii on another B-29. Minutes after takeoff this aircraft plummets into the water. Three crew members survive—the pilot and two of his gunners. Then there is the story of a crippled B-17 returning to England after a raid on Germany. An inflatable life raft stowed in a compartment is shaken lose and inflates inside the fuselage. It hits one of the waist guns and causes the gun to swivel and fire toward the rear of the aircraft. A round strikes the tail gunner in the butt. Undoubtedly the only aircrew member ever to be shot by a life raft.

    Some men for short periods of their lives held positions of command, made life and death decisions, were asked to lead other men to what Lincoln defined as “the last full measure of devotion.” The dark deeds of necessity on the battlefield are not easily told, very rarely. Only rows of crosses and white grave markers in distant fields remain as silent testaments.

    Occasionally into this venerable gathering comes a young man in spiffy dress class A. Close cropped hair and the ruddy flush of desert tan still garnish his cheeks. Just back, he says. And soon old men recall how they once in military duds stood tall and lean in solid ranks on parade. Memories find voice. Not forgotten the dead and gone. And so the coffee cools, the rosy blush of morning fades, and one by one the men depart. 

    Into this now quiet Valhalla the Valkyries summon members of those legions lost on bloody fields of war. Ghostly banners, flags and ensigns unfurl to mark the eternal bivouac of the dead. Not forgotten! is passed from file to file. Rest easy. Not forgotten, echoes. Not in vain we died. The price we paid to purchase liberty not too dear—was it? Youth cut short, a promise unfulfilled. An honored death. 

    And so Valhalla awaits the next Wednesday morning communion of the tried and tested, brother patriots and men at arms, and those who served behind the lines of battle. They come, as do winter birds to sunny shores, to bask in the warm glow of friendship, to share with aging comrades another breakfast in Valhalla.