By Linda Lee Greene, Author and Artist
Born in 1920, farmboy Bob Gaffin’s formative years had been
Great Depression years. At the age of sixteen, he had conned his way into the
Civilian Conversation Corps (CCC), passing himself off as the required age of eighteen
to get in. The extra few CCC bucks every month had contributed mightily to his
family’s coffers: they had helped to pay for his brother Bussy’s medical bills,
repaired farm equipment, and purchased lumber for the larger house his father
had been building, a necessary project to accommodate the ten members of his
family. Living in the deep country of Southern Ohio, USA with their large
garden, orchard, as well as forest and farm animals as sources of food, the
Gaffins had kept their bellies full at least, and as such had fared better than
most city folks who had relied on soup kitchens and the Salvation Army for
sustenance during those bleak economic times. Still, Bob had suffered in his
heart over the awful poverty so many of his family’s neighbors and friends, and
even some relatives, had borne with such dignity.
Bob’s two CCC stints had widened his
world far outside of the 586 square miles of his Adams County, Ohio home. He
had been sure that the natural wonders and colorful ethnic cultures of the Northeastern
United States in which he had been immersed had acquainted him with all the
remaining planet had had to offer. But then, Confederate country had loomed on
his horizon and he had breathed in the DNA of the Civil War battlefields on
which he had imagined his grandfather might have fought. Many more new things had
been revealed to him there—not just the ways and means of war he had learned in
military boot camps, but also how white people had lived so very differently
than had black people, and how a flag other than Old Glory had so often whipped
in the hot and humid subtropical air of that Rebel lair.
Who would have thought that Bob
would have sailed the Atlantic Ocean in an enormous ship stuffed shoulder to
shoulder and knees to knees with his fellow G. I.s and come to ground in North
Africa just two months before his twenty-second birthday? How had it been that in
a combined British-American invasion in World War II’s “Operation Torch,” Bob
had entered his baptism of fire among the American troops at Casablanca in
French Morocco? As explained by Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great
Britain, the invasion had not been the “…beginning of the end,” but the “end of
the beginning.” And so it had been for Bob, whose innocence had been shattered
by the explosions and gunshots of that confrontation; as he and his Allied counterparts
had rolled forward into a long and dirty war with their German and Italian
enemies, and as during the muddy winter lull in the fighting, he had observed
in that place overt slavery still practiced, Jews bullied and persecuted with impunity,
and in their flight from the Nazis, terrified and desperate and tattered
European refugees bulging the streets and sleeping on floors of public
buildings.
It hadn’t stopped with North
Africa. It couldn’t have ended there. In Southern Sicily a few weeks later,
which was a barren and arid geographical extension of North Africa, the wheels
and serpentine tracks of Bob’s half-track pulverized the bodies of dead Germans
and Italians lying in the way of vehicular progress, each humped carcass
pitching the half-track up and down like a bucking horse. Tears flooded Bob’s
eyes, and the contents of his stomach gorged his throat. But then he saw the
hollow eyes and bloated stomachs and protruding bones of the children,
gorgeous, innocent, raven-haired Sicilian children lining the roadways of that stingy
Fascist state, their little filthy hands reaching out, their noses running in
anxious beseeching: “Acqua! (Water) Pane! (Bread)”
Never had he seen such destitution.
As he and his compatriots of the 2nd Armored Division captured and
assembled thousands of Italian Prisoners of war (POWs) nose to shoulder, Bob
thought about the soup lines he had seen back home in Cincinnati and
Louisville. Returning to that part of the world was far, far in the future. Wiping
the world clean of these Nazi bastards would be a long and difficult job, but
Bob was up for it. Every step of his journey to that hour had prepared him for
it.
Books by Linda Lee Greene are available at Amazon.com. Her novel of historical fiction titled GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS features a far-reaching look at Bob Gaffin’s childhood and young life.
Image: Bob Gaffin in casual military attire
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