Advice from a 93-Year-Old Veteran

Advice from a 93-Year-Old Veteran

May 31st of this year is Memorial Day in the United States, a day of remembrance for those who gave their lives in war. I visited my father this weekend, who is 93 and as lucid as a much younger man, and our conversations ranged from our family to his career as a psychiatrist to his experiences as a doctor in the US Army during World War II. He pulled out an envelope he had prepared and asked me to give it to one of my own children, who recently returned from a military combat deployment abroad. It contained letters he had sent home and several photographs of him during the bloody Italian campaign of 1943-1945, during which there were 320,000 allied casualties including 50,000 dead. It was the most lethal campaign in the World War II European theater.

My father considers himself extraordinary lucky: He survived several years of ferocious combat as a front-line medical doctor in Italy with the US Army’s 34th infantry division. While many others died, he survived. He survived landing at the beach in Salerno, Italy, while under fire; the second landing wave at Anzio, north of Rome, under worse fire; Monte Cassino, where, he will tell you grimly, his battalion started with 30 officers and was left with only five standing at the end; and finally being stuck on the Gothic Line near Bologna, during the horrifically cold winter of 1944 when the Germans pinned the allies—and his division—down for months in the snow. He eventually ending up walking (yes, on foot) from Rome to Turin with his unit while supervising a team of medics, getting awarded the Bronze Star for saving a man’s life during an artillery bombardment, and being promoted to the rank of Major. He is self-deprecating about his Bronze Star (“I don’t quite know why I did it—it was really stupid—running out of that church into the square where a soldier lay wounded, with artillery shells falling left and right, and dragging him inside…”); nearly incredulous that he lived while so many of his fellow soldiers died (“I’m a very lucky man to be alive today”); and proud of his service as a medical officer (“I took the Hippocratic Oath,” he told me once, “and so I never carried a sidearm even though I was required to”). While on the front lines in Italy, he noticed how the constant exposure to combat wore men down, and he wrote and published the seminal article on what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he entitled, “Old Sergeant’s Syndrome.” 67 years later it is still quoted in psychiatric and sociology textbooks. The article earned my father promotion to the post of “Division Psychiatrist,” the first such appointment in history in the US Army.

He came back safely, as did recently my own son. But many made the ultimate sacrifice and did not return to their loved ones.

A sampling of assorted wisdom I’ve collected from my dad over the years;

On preparation: “There is no substitute for genuine lack of preparation.” (This was printed in a book on aphorisms and witty sayings).

On being careful about whom you mouth off to: “Never talk back to a General. I did, and I lost a cushy job riding a medical supply train in Northern Africa and was sent to live in a foxhole on the Italian front as a Battalion Surgeon” (true story).

On getting along in a foreign country: “You only need to know a few well-chosen words in a foreign language to get along. The first word I learned in Italian was ‘cipolla’ which means ‘onion.’ As we marched through the Italian countryside we would yell out to the farmers, ‘cipolla?’ and they would give us some onions that we would then chop up and put in our c-rations, which were so bland.

On your convictions: “Sometimes you have to act on your beliefs. I had tuberculosis in medical school, and so I was classified 4-F by the Army. 4-F is medically unfit for service. I read widely at the time, however, and I understood how evil the Nazis were. I was Jewish, too, which gave me even more reason to serve. So with help from my father, I made contact with the selective service board, and they arranged for me to sign a waiver in order to enlist.”

On giving people bad news: “If you know you’re going to have to deliver some bad news, tell people as far in advance as possible—this enables them to process it before the actual event. If you’re going to miss a day of work in a month, tell your boss immediately. He may be upset when you tell him, but by the time the day finally rolls around he will have already processed his anger and he’ll be just fine with your day off.”

On being careful about taking on others head-on: “Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk.”

On setting aside your worries: “At the battle of Monte Cassino, we were under constant artillery bombardment, and we slept in deep foxholes surrounded by sandbags. If your foxhole took a direct hit during the night, and many did, you would not wake up in the morning. So before going to sleep I would do everything I could to ensure I was as safe as possible: I would rearrange the sandbags, dig a bit deeper into the foxhole, organize my personal belongings, and so on. Then I would stop worrying and go to sleep.”

On getting one of my children to do their homework in 9th grade: “When you stop caring so much about their homework,” he told me at the time, “they’ll start caring about it themselves" (why didn't I listen?)

I personally hope we never have to fight a war with anyone, anywhere, again. In the meantime—spare a thought, meditate, say a prayer, or whatever you prefer—on Memorial Day.

From Andrew Sobel's Blog. Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on the skills and strategies required to build clients for life. Andrew's new book is All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships. For more info go to www.andrewsobel.com.