Technical Sergeant Salvatore Joseph Salemi

November 30, 1945 fell on a Friday. It was the second "good" Friday that year for my grandparents and for the rest of my father's family. At Fort Dix, New Jersey on that day, after three long years and twenty three days, Dad was honorably discharged from his service in the United States Army.

What happens to a person after three years? When advancing from the age of twenty nine to that of thirty two, changes are often nearly imperceptible in normal times and circumstances. Clearly, the greatest event in human history, really the hugest cluster of cataclysmic and violent man-made events ever and collectively known as World War II, was anything but a normal period in human affairs. Though thankfully, no one could nor did personally experience all of the horrors and atrocities that befell all of Europe, Russia, the Pacific, most of the Far and some of the Middle East, North Africa, the North Atlantic and other outposts of Allied and Axis interests, still, one individual, particularly a combat soldier, could easily absorb enough of the global maelstrom within his relatively little corner of the world for thousands of lifetimes over. In the case of my Dad this was true; he "saw his share" of "man's inhumanity to man" and the inevitable fruit from this poisonous tree of mankind's transgressions against nature as well as himself, were a kind of produce my father could not ignore but which he chose not to taste (and which was most terribly foreign and repugnant to him compared to the literal produce that in peacetime, as a fruit and vegetable vendor, he lovingly presented to his customers). Gratitude, not bitterness, were so much a part of Dad's character, and abominations of the battlefield and the tribulations of innocent civilians caught up in the vicious crossfires in the places where he fought and served: North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Southern France, again in Italy and Austria: all these experiences seemed to deepen his natural compassion and afforded him so many opportunities to express it. Whether humanely interrogating a captured Italian enemy soldier or helping to feed some of the monks in the destroyed abbey at Monte Cassino, Dad, though his stock in trade as a soldier was death, his focus was, in the particular, to alleviate pain and suffering and ultimately to accomplish the same unimpeded, once the monster of Nazism was slain.

Change was inevitable. He and the world were never to return to the old order once victory was declared. Immutable scars, both seen and unseen, made him, though still a young man, wise beyond his years. Together with all other G.I.s, adjustment to peacetime and a transformed America, though eagerly looked forward to, would result in widely varying degrees of success, depending on the spiritual wealth of each individual, and usually hinging on the loving support systems of families and friends back home. Once again, and in this regard, dad was lucky: as lucky as he had been during the war. There was so much worth fighting for and the fact that it was intact, like a lovely homestead in a hurricane that one feared for while so far away…. a place one delightedly rediscovers untouched by an evil fury, an incredibly beautiful flower that silently but fairly shouted its affirmation of life over death: all this was a special gift. My mother was waiting for Dad as well as for her brothers and other family friends to come home safely, but she was not consciously aware that her life would change forever in eighteen months. Dad may have not envisioned their union at the time either. Though she was "the girl next door" nearly literally, theirs was a platonic friendship, but most importantly, it was a true friendship that timeliness and the hand of God or fate, if you will, helped to grow like an offshoot of that aforementioned beautiful blossom of our preserved nation, watered anew by a hard won peace and the deepest aspirations of the welcomers and the sorely missed welcomed.

My brother, and then I, in about two and four and a half years respectively, were the new fruits of a new wife and her peaceable husband, a fruit and produce man returned to the livelihood that his father had taught him and to a land that still holds the greatest promise for a world that yet longs for freedom while it remains, seemingly forever tempted by the seductions of the totalitarian and enslaving mindsets. Of my Dad, I can only say: like "Abou Ben Adhem" (the title of a poem he loved), and like all the Forces of Light, "may his (their) tribe increase."