War medals and what not

So today was a very rainy day. I had planned on working outside, but that didn’t work out. (Was that bad English?)

So we’re trying to clear out one of the many desks in this house to give to Dad for his bedroom so he has a place to sit and do stuff.

So we identified the desk.

So I decided to spend the morning emptying out the (only two) drawers in this desk and clear the crap away so he would have a couple of drawers in which to put treasures.

So I opened Drawer #1. Inside were peach pits. Very old peach pits. Lots of old business cards and other cards that certified my father’s memberships in professional organizations as well as the I Love George Bush Club.

Old pencils. Old pencil leads for mechanical pencils. Rubber bands so brittle they broke when I picked them up. Negatives of photographs on those little 110 pocket camera film which no one under the age of forty even knew existed. A Spanish postcard with a naked woman on it. Letters from my uncles. Flag pins with the Cross of Christ superimposed on them.

I looked at all of this and dug in. I had a stack of old business cards, including some of them wrapped in one of those brittle rubber bands with a piece of paper labeling them as “Obsolete Cards.” Glad we kept those. Anyway, I put them all together, a stack about six inches in length, and carried them upstairs and said “Dad, I have a project for you. Why don’t you go through all these cards and throw away the ones you don’t need anymore.” He said, at one point, “There’s a lot of memories in those cards.” My point exactly. Going through them would be so much better than just throwing them away, which he eventually did – to most anyway.

But while I was speaking with him, Dan came upstairs and was in the kitchen fixing lunch. I walked in and he said to me, “Why was your father decorated as a war hero by the Nazis?” WTF? “What?” I said. “There’s a medal down there with a swastika on it.” WTF? “What?” I said.

So I go back down and look in the pile that is still in the drawer, and lo and behold, there is a medal, complete with ribbon, and a bronze cross with swords and a swastika right in the middle. I grabbed it, went back upstairs, and said to Dad, “WTF?” Well, not really. But I did say “What the hell is this?”

Dad’s brother, as indicated earlier in this blog, was in Patton’s army in WWII. Evidently he picked up this medal – let’s not go to a discussion of how or where from – while he served in Europe. And he brought the medals home. Dad said he gave it to their mother. Most of her belongings are STILL in this house. So that made some sense.

Some quick internet research betrayed that this sucker is a Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross, a minor yet somewhat rare decoration given to individuals “for exceptional service in battle above and beyond the call of duty” by the German Army. There are variations on the medal, but that appears to be what this one was for. Also, evidently, Hermann Göring wanted one, but Hitler wouldn’t give it to him.

But I’ve got one sitting in a desk drawer.

I shared all of this with Dad and then had some lunch.

Afterwards I attacked the drawer again. More garbage. Cards. Scraps of paper with out-of-date addresses and phone numbers. A plethora of those silly little return address stickers from countless not-for-profits. And then…another medal.

This one was for women. Specifically women of Aryan descent. Pure women. Pure women who were doing their patriotic duty by having lots of pure Aryan children. They come in three varieties – bronze, silver and gold – depending upon the number of children a woman had. Need I say more.

These things are clearly, in a way, keepsakes. But it creeps me out that they are in the house. I said to Dad, “We won’t be displaying these in the china cabinet.” No. But pulling them out of a drawer of crap and putting them in a safe place seems to make some sense.

The family home as an archaeological project. It never ends.