Michael Swickard
“Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana…” – Merle Haggard lyrics
My father was one of the “Quiet Generation” who went to do their duty, came back and did not talk about it. He was a high school senior when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor so he forfeited that last semester and entered military service in early January 1942.
You had to hear that from family members since he never spoke of it. He also never spoke of his high school dreams the war extinguished.
Over his 25-year career in the military, my father served on the front lines of three conflicts: World War II in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, including Anzio. Also there was Korea and Viet Nam. I still have his Zippo lighter with “Swick – Anzio” inscribed on it, but I have no stories about that time in his life.
Even though I lived with my parents for the first 18 years of my life, I still do not know hardly anything of my father’s dreams. He was the quintessential strong silent type of man. I have precious few stories of what he saw and thought while in war.
A dream in his soul
One day out of the blue my father mentioned that the song currently playing on the radio was his favorite song. It had the above lines about, “Turn me loose…” I knew my father was born in Montana but preferred a climate without snow. Upon questioning he did not disclose anything more than he liked the song, but I had the feeling then and now it was part of a dream in his soul.
I suspect his dreams were almost like the series of dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., the most famous “…that his four little children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.” My father left a treasure-trove of photos when he died in 1993, which was his currency since he was a combat photographer. He also left almost all questions unanswered, as did his own father, Horace Swickard, a First World War combat veteran.
Horace came to New Mexico with the Montana National Guard and chased Pancho Villa and then went to France with Pershing. He was wounded twice and was a life member of the Disabled American Veterans.
My father and grandfather were similar in their desires for a very small, quiet life when they finally got home from war. Neither wanted any public role or even recognition. Both spent their time with fellow service members. Both were in their heads much of the time. My father, who had documented the violence of war, never had any interest in any kind of violence.
Dreams of leaving our country better off
This last week I have been thinking of the dreams of my father and his father. I feel they both dreamed that the sacrifices they and their comrades made were for a good cause, a just cause, a cause that would last our country a long time. They dreamed they left our country better off than when they were born.
What thoughts of their dreams did my father and grandfather leave? None at all. They died with those dreams firmly in their minds and not outside. All they left was a country that was free, a country that rendered freedom to its citizens and fostered freedom to other countries. Ours is a country with an ideal of freedom above all else.
If either my father or grandfather were alive today I suspect they would say that the only way to keep this nation’s freedom is for each subsequent generation to value the freedom that they had purchased in blood and sacrifice in their world war conflicts.
Most people in our nation today do not have these values because we do not teach what it means to be an American. Many things central to the American spirit are left unsaid, untaught and for the most part completely unattained.
After watching the encroachment of socialist agendas where people are subservient to government rather than the other way around, I find myself thinking about those Merle Haggard lines, “Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana…”
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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