My immediate impression was that it had been staged in anticipation of my arrival. Maybe it had. I entered and was struck by the scene of my father in his living room, dressed in his blue bath robe and plaid pajama pants, sitting cross-legged, as if striking a pose. He greeted me with his usual bubbling enthusiasm. My father greets each and every soul with a broad, infectious smile. I have never seen him do otherwise.

As seriously ill as he is, my father practices the mitzvah of hachnasas orchim, providing hospitality to guests. Although he is unfamiliar with the expression, he is the sort of person for whom it is of the utmost importance that no one feels bad just because he does not feel well. It’s his nature to be this way.

In its own dialectical fashion, the reality of my father’s illness has afforded me a special opportunity. In and out of the hospital during the last several months, I have come to know my father as a caring and responsible adult and parent. Even more enjoyable is the sight of my father’s participation in creating his autobiographical legacy. I was excited about the prospect of today’s story. I hoped to glean at least a partial understanding of who my father had been in the war years.

“You know, Alan, I’ve been thinking. Do you remember the story about Uncle Hirsh? Have you written about that yet?” he asked eagerly. I find his attitude encouraging. He has taken a real interest in my stories especially since I handed him a copy of the rough draft. I know he’s read it because he has offered several factual corrections, a sign he is assuming a kind of editorial ownership of the work.

“No, Dad, I have not.”

My father is referring to his younger brother, my Uncle Hirsh, who, as an eighteen-year old U.S. Army infantryman, nearly died when a German submarine lurking in the English Channel torpedoed and sank the troop transport ship he was aboard. “Your Uncle Hirsh survived that day, on Christmas Eve, as a matter of fact,” my father began to recall. He appeared reflective and sounded lucid. Though he seemed to me a little foggy on the details, he managed to hold the story together. Uncle Hirsh later confirmed the accuracy of most of what my father had said.

“My father, your Grandpa Louis learned of Hirsh’s near calamity (whenever my dad spoke to me of his father, he would always say:”My father, your Grandpa Louis” as if to remind me who Grandpa Louis was. I was only two years old when he died in 1955). The news had gotten back to Chicago, even appearing in the Chicago Tribune. I received a letter from my father two weeks later. He said I had to find Hirsh-no matter where he was-and get him out of the infantry. Not an easy thing to do! Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, your uncle was being treated in an English hospital in Southhampton, I think, for hypothermia and a displaced shoulder.”

“How were you going to do that?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“Get him out of the infantry.”

“That’s what I wanted to know too, Son. I was really afraid of my father who, when he told you to do something, you did it,” he said. I had never before heard him characterize his father like that. My attention was piqued.

“Hold on, Dad. Let me understand this. Here you were, a corporal, I think it was, right?’

“Yes, a lowly two-striper.”

“Okay, a lowly two striper, told by his father to find his younger brother somewhere in an English hospital and do whatever had to be done to get him reassigned out of the infantry. Is that correct?” I reiterated polemically, hoping to get him to reveal the really good stuff.

“Yes, it is. You see it wasn’t the army I feared, but my father… when he became angry …he could be a violent man and, as the older son, he blamed me.”

“So, you … ?”

“ ... went AWOL. That’s right, son. I had to find my brother for my father’s sake and mine.”

“You went AWOL in war time! They could have thrown you in jail.”

“Like I said, Son. The army didn’t scare me, but if your grandfather told me to find my brother, I knew what I had to do.”

So there it was. The truth came out … my dad whom I had hoped might turn out to be another “Audie Murphy” or among the liberators of the death camps … turns out he went AWOL during wartime to get his little brother out of the infantry because his father had so instructed him. I felt kind of disappointed that my boyhood fantasies about “My Dad the War Hero” didn’t quite work out, but I held on to the story. My father had not finished.

“Where were you at the time?” I asked.

“Well, not sure really. I think I was in France, so I guess I caught a ferry across the Channel.”

“Dad, for how many days were you gone?” I asked incredulously.

“Oh, seven or so.”

"You’re telling me you were gone for seven days and nobody noticed your absence?”

“Son, I paid off the roster clerk. Cost me a hundred bucks. If your name is on his list as “present”, then you’re present. Get my meaning?”

“Even if you’re not,” I followed along.

“That’s right,” he said smilingly,”even if you’re not.”

“Well … maybe not an “Audie Murphy, but “chutzpa”? My dad had plenty of that!

“So I landed in England by myself looking for my brother, didn’t know where to go or who to speak to … you follow?”

“Yes Sir.”

“But I saw some of our guys so I figured I was close to an American base.”

“Yea…?” The tension was building. I could see how much my father enjoyed retelling his story.

“So I walked on over. I started chatting, trying to fit in but I guess it wasn’t good enough.Two burly MP(s) approached. “Take it easy,” I said to myself, “easy does it.”

“Corporal Busch?” asked the senior MP, staring at my name tag. Kinda gruff looking fellow, staff sergeant, I think he was. “May I see your orders, please?” I told him that I didn't have any. “What did he do next?” This was getting’ good!

“They drew their weapons and cuffed me.”

“Sergeant, please we’re on the same side. I need to speak to your captain.“

“And you know what?” my dad asked with incredulity some sixty- four years after it had happened, “and I still don’t get it, but he believed me.”

“So he did it? He took you to the captain?”

“Yes, he did, to one Captain Sidney Finerman.”

“Finerman?” I asked incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope, I’m not, So I told him my story about my dad and Hirsh.”

“And he let you go?”                                                       

“Not only that but he made a few calls to find out where Hirsh was.”

“Corporal Busch, we never had this meeting, do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir. Thank you.”

“So what did he tell you?”

“He told me I was dismissed. I saluted him sharply and turned to leave and was just out the door when …

“Corporal Busch, just a moment.”

“Yes Sir.” I ‘gotta’ tell you. I was shaking.”

“Be seated corporal.”

“Sergeant O’Malley,” he called his chief clerk on the office intercom.

“Yes, sir.”

“Draw up a letter of transit for Corporal Albert Busch. That’s right, b-u-s-c-h, Albert.”

My heart was pounding. I just sat there, speechless. Grateful but speechless.

“This document will exempt you from any molestation by military police. Understand? For one week. After that, corporal, you’ll be on your own.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, but … but …?”

“My kid brother was killed at Omaha beach," Finerman explained. "When my father received the telegram, he collapsed on the floor and died right there on the spot. Do you have a weapon, Corporal?”

“No, Sir.”

Captain Finerman reached into his drawer and drew out a holstered 45 … with two extra clips.

“Here, I’ve an extra. You may need it for persuasive assistance, get my meaning?”

“Yes Sir, I … I.”

“You’re dismissed, Corporal. Oh, by the way, that weapon ... you took off the body of a dead lieutenant, got it?”

By this point, Son, it was very clear to me that this captain was an angel sent to direct me along the way. I think he knew I was a Jew.”

“Sounds like it,” I responded. My father looked as if he still could not believe the story himself.

"Well, with the information he gave me about your uncle’s whereabouts and the procedure I should follow, you’ll never believe who I stumbled across in charge of personnel transfers ..”

Who?” I asked, maybe about 50% sure I had heard this before but at the moment I drew a blank.

“Ben Burack. Remember Ben, Uncle Sam’s brother?"

“I sure do,” which, in fact, I did. Ben was my Aunt Hynda’s brother in-law who was often at her house when I was there. A bit of an eccentric, he never married and worked as a professor of psychology at Roosevelt University forever.

“You’re kidding, right. Ben?”

“That’s right. So I told him about your Uncle Hirsh and how my father had told me to get him transferred out of the infantry into a safe job."

"What did he say?”

“Oh, I remember his response like it was yesterday,” he said. I was at this point clinging to my seat. “Yea, yea, so, so come on what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Albert’, I don’t think I can do that.’ I asked him to repeat that, and he said ‘Albert, I don’t think I can do that.’

I sat there laughing with gleeful excitement. “Okay, okay, what did you do?”

“What did I do?”

“Yea, come on Dad!”

“I opened the left side of my uniform jacket to reveal the shoulder holster packin’ the 45 that Captain Finerman had given me. Remember that?”

“How could I forget?”

“And I said, ‘Well, Ben, in that case, I’m going to have to kill you.’”

“You said that, really? What did he do?”

“He fell back into his chair as if I had shot him, completely stunned. ‘I’ll be back in three days to visit Hirsh, understood?’ He nodded.

Three days later I returned to the hospital. Your Uncle Hirsh greeted me excitedly.

“Albert, Albert, you’ll never believe this but I have been transferred to the Air Courier Corps! I’m to report to the military postmaster general in London as soon as possible.”

I looked at my father with what must have seemed like absolute incredulity. "He pulled it off, he really pulled it off!”

My father sat opposite me smirking, relishing the moment.

Alan D. Busch

4/1/09