Frank Josserand Italy 1942
My son, my husband, my brother escaped war due both to timing and opportunity I suppose, college bound and cherished by mothers with different plans for their offspring, and the power to make their peaceful lives possible. But my son’s grandfathers were warriors. One, the eldest, died last week, a gentlemanly professor of history and lover of opera grown conservative with age, but always kind and generous. Frank had beautiful penmanship, and he knew how to write a letter – gracious, self effacing and humorous, but always with a cool, formal intimacy, if such a thing is possible. My father, George, is alive and kicking and like his counterpart follows a strict health regime that should carry him well into a three digit lifespan. Frank should have had that too, for he was 88, eating right and light and nimble of movement, still cruising and dancing regularly with his thrifty wife Jean, enjoying the world from the prow of an ocean liner until cancer caught him last spring, and took him early this fall. Years ago he wrote two memoirs, Growing up in Galveston and Winning the War, so I took them down today for my son to read, for he was too young to appreciate the books when they were first published. My father has his war story commemorated in a book entitled Delayed Letters from Korea. In his case, like Frank’s, it is decidedly in his voice, but taken from a recorded conversation with the author. He sounds a bit like the tough steet thug he was then, which we never saw as kids. When I think how young they both were it amazes me. And thin too! Frank writes he was 5’ 7” and only 123 pounds when he was called to serve after Pearl Harbor in the spring of 1942. He was only 19 years old. My father was even younger, as he lied about his age and joined the California State National Guard when he was 16 for the extra income. Imagine his shock when enroute to the beach he stopped by their Los Angeles office one day to respond to a letter, only to discover they wouldn’t let him go play in the surf, and sent him to Korea instead. By the time he was my son’s current age of 17, he was an experienced warrior, blooded and wounded and ready for disability. He too was unbelievably thin, about 145 and six feet tall – with a nearly hairless chest. I remember fingering his scars as a child, all now hidden by his mat of silvery grandfather-fur these days. The monthly disability check of I think $120 paid our mortgage every month. 
I took his purple heart to show and tell at school, and though he rarely talked about his war experience until he was much older, I could recite the event of his wounding to my friends by my early teens. It consisted of something called a ”V” formation and he was the “BAR” man on the left point of the V and last to exit in order to defend his patrol. His sergeant, Mel Gurney, came back and rescued my Dad when he was hit by a grenade – threw him over his back and made all five future Dufresne kids possible, thank you very much. Frank was a less rash youth at 19, more well behaved than my temperamental father, although Frank was an admitted skirt chaser, and his role as a bombardier in a B- 26 over Italy attracted the ladies. I don’t know how many campaigns he flew, 44 or 45, but no matter how conservative he became, he never glamorized war and was always against sending young men to fight whether it was Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Alongside pictures of planes and POWs Frank includes pictures of the opera house and programs of the operas he attended in Italy in his book on his war experience. A passion for music was one good thing that came out of his WWII duties, although it was German music he wrote about for his book entitled Richard Wagner: Patriot and Politician after he went to college and earned his PhD on the GI bill. My dad never finished high school, but none the less is regarded by all as a very intelligent, albeit passionate, man. His literary effort includes many Letters to the Editor in defense of all things democratic, a political opporiste of Grandfather Frank. Although they never met, neither romanticised war, and avoided discussing their battlefield glories. I believe they both felt that such experiences damage one for life, and a lifetime of good works barely supresses those dark deeds.
Today I am reading a novel about another warrior, Aeneus, in a book entitled Lavinia by U.K. Leguinn. Lavinia is the 2nd wife of Aeneus, a local princess secured after he escaped burning Troy, finding refuge in Italy (after his desertion of poor Queen Dido!). Warriors, ancient and contemporary are on my mind today. I will spew no patriotic drivel about their sacrifices for our country, for the circumstances of war are usually to make someone richer or feed their need for control and power. That we are a violent race, aggressive by nature sayeth Freud, and that war has often been necessary at the very least to defend one’s family, and by extension, country, I do not question. I would that it were not so, and I have no such dreams of glory for my son. Let him play war games on his computer only, and I will be content. Women who cherish their sons now work for a more peaceful world, and I pray we are more successful than Lavinia’s generation. But I must admit great admiration for these two warrior grandfathers of my son, scarred, courageous and heroic, a race of skinny giants, of an age I hope has finally passed for once and for all.
