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Gray Matter
Remembering Our Warriors
They truly are our nation’s heroes: women and men who fought, and died, throughout World War II,
that long, bloody crusade in the name of freedom.
These warriors came home to add validity to our ear-pleasing cliché: “The Greatest Generation.”
Now, they’re making news again. For, they are dying; yes, marching away in a final parade. They are
deserving of a last salute.
Let us now spend a few moments with a former paratrooper, a veteran of the island war in the
Pacific. He is Edward Jerome Callahan, wounded, decorated, and a patriot, meaning someone who loves
his country.
I came away from our meeting with nine pages of scribbled notes, along with images: core memories of
what Callahan recalls as: “confusion, fury, and the bloodshed that is combat.”
Here is a piece of this 85-year-old’s narrative: “At times, it was a ‘Take no prisoners’ war, a
terrifying war. Put yourself back there, with a lead infantryman moving along a jungle trail in New
Guinea--or later, in The Philippines. You’re in search of Japanese, the enemy. You move with an all
but overwhelming fear for your life. You just know, from experience, that an enemy machine gun is
hidden, somewhere, just up ahead.
“This Jap killer, possibly starving because of short rations, is waiting…waiting for you. One time I
noticed a small rise in the trail. My guardian angel whispered, ‘Crawl; get down.’ Sure enough, a
burst of machine gun fire suddenly began chopping bush just above where I had been standing. My
angel’s warning saved my life.”
Callahan, whom I had met through a writing course I taught, was sitting, comfortably, in a
wheelchair at his home in suburban Atlanta. His right leg had been amputated just below the hip
line, due to a 1945 combat wound sustained on Corregidor Island, The Philippines. I wondered: “Was
he bitter?”
The old soldier handed me a 50-page (typed, single space) personal history in which he writes, “If
one is to serve, then let it be in the ‘killing zone’ of the war. That’s what soldiering is, and I
am proud to have served in the Combat Infantry.” As an afterthought, Callahan adds “And, I am glad I
survived.”
Survived? Barely, according to the official history. “Our primary goal was to allow General Douglas
Macarthur to fulfill his famous promise (‘I shall return…’) and retake The Philippine Islands, and
in particular: The Rock, which was Corregidor Island.”
Here, were days of what Callahan calls “fierce fighting,” with Japanese soldiers hiding deep into
caves, even blowing themselves up to defeat the American pursuers.
“Finally, we were victors,” says Callahan, but continues: “Then it happened.” One more cave
exploded, with shrapnel from the blast killing some GIs and wounding others, Ed Callahan among them.
“I next remember lying in an Army pickup truck,” Ed says, “and knowing my rifle had been lost. ‘Does
anyone have a gun?’ I asked. Soldiers on both sides of me answered no. I remember that particular
moment as the most frightening of my life…being on that killing field, without my weapon…”
In truth, Callahan, who had enlisted and thereafter served more than six years, no longer would need
his rifle: the once “constant companion.” His right leg was shattered and he’d spend the next two
years in Army hospitals. The leg was spared for some 60 years but then the threat of gangrene, in
the summer of 2005, led to the extreme, disabling amputation.
Historians have written that World War II was “the greatest paroxysm to ever seize the human race,
an event so enormous and so tragic as to defy our imagination…” Ed Callahan has no problem defining
his wartime experiences; he merely has to thumb through a box of medals and ribbons. Here, he finds
two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart, the Pacific Campaign Medal with Arrowhead (for an assault)
and four campaign stars, and the World War II Victory Medal. He is entitled to wear the Combat
Infantry Badge, the Parachute Badge and in 1994 was inducted into the Officer Candidate School Hall
of Fame, at Fort Benning, GA.
“I’m no hero,” says the ex-soldier.
Perhaps, but to borrow from historian David McCullough, all heroes are teachers and the lesson this
infantryman/amputee delivers is a reminder to us of how brutal and dehumanizing is war—yet, haven’t
we been blessed to witness, and benefit from, this generation of Americans so committed, so
unyielding, and so willing to give of themselves.
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Outrageous Associations
