From Basic to Bastogne

"Now ya might not wanna put this'ne in that book," Uncle Dub would say before he confessed one of the eyebrow-raising tales in which he starred. But I'd heard that warning before, just as I'd heard many of the stories before. He told them repeatedly, almost verbatim. It was obvious to me he'd been mentally constructing this book since the ship brought him home from the war more than fifty years earlier.

A couple of the stories still had the power to move him-and me-to tears. At times I was astounded he didn't have more to say about an incident so horrific, he didn't fall apart on the spot. At other times, the stories revealed cruelty in him so unlike the man I'd grown up knowing and loving, I wondered if his memory had failed altogether or if the actual happenings had been massaged into something with origins from the silver screen. Truth is absolute, but it's what we do with the truth that shapes who we are; and Walter Green Presley did well with his truth. He was a good man and I miss him terribly. Uncle Dub died November 6, 2002.