Dad's War Diary

"If the house is ever on fire and you can take just one thing, grab this," my father once told me, as he pointed to a big metal case in the closet by our front door.

Inside the box were reels of 8 mm movies. Birthday parties, summer vacations, Christmas mornings.

Our memories.

When no one was looking, I'd head to the closet to try to pick it up.

The weight of that box was enough to keep a scrawny girl awake at night, picturing herself incinerated as she struggled to drag home movies to safety.

My dad laughed when I confessed as much years later.

"Geez, I didn't know you even thought about it," he said with an amused smile, wondering how he'd raised such a neurotic kid.

Today I have my own list of things to save in the event of a conflagration. Letters. Kids' art work. Photos. And my dad's war diary.

There's no issue with size. It's small enough to fit in my pocket.

Growing up, my dad never mentioned a diary. I found it in 1998, the year both of my parents died. It covers the last year of World War II. If there were other journals, from his earlier years at sea, they're lost.

My dad's war experiences weren't the stuff of movies. He didn't liberate France or fly a plane. He never won a medal or saved anyone's life. His service entailed lonely missions on endless seas.

My father was just a guy like millions of others, whose young lives were interrupted by a war.

He was eager to enlist. At 17 my father and his best friend tried to join the U.S. Marine Corps.

My dad was rejected because of his complete colorblindness. His vision kept him out of the other branches, too. Later in the war Army intelligence came to his parents’ house looking for him. They’d discovered a use for the colorblind: Turned out they couldn’t see camouflage.

Too late. By then my father had joined the merchant marine and was somewhere at sea. He spent four years on Liberty ships and tankers, dodging German U-boats in the North Atlantic and Japanese torpedoes in the Pacific, to bring ammunition, supplies and fuel to the troops.

It was dangerous duty. According to some accounts, more than 1,500 merchant ships were sunk. Merchant marines died at a rate of 1 in 26. The highest rate of casualties in any branch of the military. Yet it wasn’t until 1988 the men who served were recognized as veterans of World War II. I’m glad my father lived long enough for that honor.

Back to the journal.

My father was a disciplined diarist. He wrote a few lines every day. Each scrawled in black ink.

In his account of the war, baseball scores compete with international news to fill the pages. Anecdotes about card games, liberties and pretty girls soften the terror of moonlit nights and close calls on the open seas.

From what I've read, my dad and the men who served with him spent much of their time sunburned, seasick and homesick.

His final journey took my dad - who had never even been south of Delaware or north of New York before the war - to Gibraltar, North Africa, through the Suez Canal to the Indian Ocean, and finally to the South Pacific. No matter how exotic the locale, every one of his entries aches for home.

On the 1st of December, 1945, my father arrived back in New Jersey. He and my mother married two years later.

I don't know if he ever told her about the diary. I found it buried in his papers.

All I know is my father gave four years of his life for my country. Seems the least I can do for him is keep his diary safe. And read it from time to time - especially on Veterans Day.

Should my house ever catch on fire and I can save just one item, I'll reach for that little leather history book I keep on my desk.

The weather-beaten journal with the rubber band holding the pages together.

One young man's piece of a very big war.

August 14, 1945. “The war is finally all over. Thank God. President Truman announced officially that Japan had accepted the terms. I can see Mother now.”

A version of this story ran in The Virginian-Pilot on November 11, 2008.