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Joined: May 2003
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I've posted this piece every year on Memorial Day for the past decade. It's time to retire it. So here it is for the final time:



One Fewer

I first saw him hobbling down the aisle of a small gun show. He was obviously of advanced age: white-haired, frail and walking with a pronounced limp, his bony left hand grasping one of those spiral thornwood canes that look like a kudu’s horn. It was that cane that caught my attention – without it, the man would have been invisible.

His pained but determined pace picked up when he neared a table only two away from mine. The table’s owner displayed military battle rifles. The old gent stopped there, but I became distracted by customers of my own and did not notice him again.

The promoter held two shows a year in that small town, and I became a regular vendor. After that first time, I started noticing the old gentleman at every show. He always carried that magnificently polished, deep brown cane. He always went steadfastly to that same dealer’s table. He always came on Sunday morning when the crowds were thin.

Clearly not well off financially, the old man’s clothes never varied. His shoes were of brown leather, the toes curled up from age, deep cracks at the toe bend and the heels worn to a smooth curve; but they were always carefully brushed to a soft luster. His slacks were khaki cotton, a semblance of a crease still showing down the front of each leg, with an irregular outline on one thigh that bespoke of a liquid stain long ago acquired. His sports jacket was dark brown wool, its herringbone pattern all but obliterated by age. Its pockets sagged as if he’d once limped home –in a driving rain- with oranges in them. The dulled and faded miniature of a military ribbon adorned the jacket’s left lapel. Under the jacket he always wore a white shirt so threadbare his sleeveless undershirt showed through. On his Western-style bolo tie, a walnut-sized, blood-red stone mirrored the man’s jutting Adam’s apple. Raising the stooped figure to perhaps five-feet six, a grey fedora hat rode. Now battered, sweat-stained and misshapen, the hat dated and characterized him as much as the liver spots on his pallid, papery skin.

I was able to catalog such small details because of his laborious gait. He’d plant the tightly clutched cane, then half-shuffle, half-slide his crippled left leg forward, and finally his still-spry right: tap, drag, step; tap, drag, step. Just watching him struggle along brought a dull empathetic ache to my hips and knees.

Neither his appearance nor his habits ever varied: he’d hobble past my table, spend a few minutes in front of the rifle collector’s display, then leave, unnoticed.

And then, one time, he failed to appear.

Just before the show ended that Sunday afternoon, I ambled over to the rifle table. On one end were a few P-17 Enfields and Springfields, a couple of SMLE’s, one or two ’98 Mausers and an Arisaka. At the other end were several .30 M-1 carbines, a Garand and even a rare Johnson rifle. It was interesting stuff, but I really wanted to ask about the old man.

“I heard he passed away last month,” the dealer said. “I’ll miss him.” He shook his head ruefully and looked down.

“You know anything about him? Your table was the only one he ever visited, as far as I saw.”

“Not much. But it wasn’t my table that he visited. It was this,” he said, pointing to the Garand.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s like this…the first few times he came by, I tried to wait on him. But he never spoke a word – like I wasn’t even there. He’d walk up, stand there a bit, and then he’d lightly touch the Garand. With just his fingertips, as though it was his lover or something, you know? Then one time I said, ‘You seem like you know that rifle personally. Carry one in the Army?’ He shook his head a little and kept right on caressing that rifle’s stock, but he said ‘Marines.’

“So then I looked at him a little closer. You know that little blue pin in his lapel? That’s the Navy Cross, and it’s the highest they give except for the Medal of Honor. And so I had to ask him where he got it, and he finally looked up at me. His eyes were brimming, as if some nightmare just came back to him, and he choked out one word: ‘Tarawa.’

“After that, I’d sell any rifle on the table, except that Garand. It would have killed him if I had. I never will sell it, now.” He stood silently for a second, then concluded, “Those two spoken words and that ribbon are all I know about that old man, but they’re all I need to know.”

As if drawn to it, I stroked the stock of the Garand and whispered, “Thank you.” I’m not sure if I said it to the dealer, to that rifle, or to the hovering spirit of that departed hero. Maybe all three. But I meant it.





A note: I read recently that as many as 2,000 veterans of World War II pass away every single day. That’s more than were lost on many days of the war. If you know or even meet a veteran from that conflict, thank them from the bottom of your heart…while you still can.

Printed in “The Big Show Journal” May/June 2005 © Rocky Raab



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thanks for posting that.


Dave

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I'm sure you have your reasons, Rocky. Maybe humility, maybe you don't want to appear self-promoting, but IMHO, it'd be a shame to retire such a nice piece of work.

Maybe you'll reconsider and we'll have the pleasure of reading about the old man and the Garand next May.

FWIW, my wife's grandpa was a Marine who also fought on Tarawa, though on a 37mm cannon crew.


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Friend Rocky,

Don't ever retired that piece. Please.

May God Bless all of our heroes; both those who returned and those who didn't.

Blessings to you on this Memorial Day,

Your friend Steve



"God Loves Each Of Us As If There Were Only One Of Us"
Saint Augustine of Hippo - AD 397







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I dont see a need to retiree this story! thanks for posting it again!


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Thank you.


Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
*Marvin Simkin* L.A. Times (1992)
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Thanks!! I would vote never to retire the story...


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Magnificent read. There are a lot of us new guys for whom this is the first read of that piece. I'm sure there will be more next year. Thank you.

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"Life is the childhood of our immortality"
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

As long as you continue to post this story, that hero's immortality is a given.
Friends
As is with all our heroes! Please share a story with a young person. Of a friend, yourself, or a familymember. So they may I turn share with their children in the future! Such traditions are the "councillors that freeingly persuade us who we are!"

Last edited by kaywoodie; 05/25/15.

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It's your piece, Rocky. Remember though, that every day that passes, there are fewer of those men to tell their stories. Before too many more winters, only the stories of them will be left.

This is a good one. A precise and succinct story.

It would be a loss if it too, were to pass into remembrance.


"The number one problem with America is, a whole lot of people need shot, and nobody is shooting them."
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Thanks for posting Rocky, I enjoy reading it every year.


Paul

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Trump Won!, Sandmann Won!, Rittenhouse Won!, Suck it Liberal Fuuktards.

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Rocky, we will be looking for that next year.

Thanks for this time and those gone by.


I am..........disturbed.

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A touching tale.. thanks for putting it up. Most of the vets from that era are gone now including my father and two uncles. One of my uncles carried a Garand in the Marine Corps in the latter stages of the pacific theater. In 2007, the year before he passed on, I brought over my DCM Garand that he had mentioned he wanted to see. He hadn't seen one in person or touched one since 1945 and he never hunted or owned any guns of his own, (unlike my dad and other uncle). I was amazed at how, after 62 years, he was still so familiar with an M-1. He said that as soon as he picked mine up it all started coming back to him. No B.S. involved; that man knew the M-1 well. He also spoke highly of them; as a lot of those who have carried them always have. One of the adjectives he used was; "ACCURATE". I wish now that we had all that conversation recorded. It would be a great piece of oral history.

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Thank you sir, for posting "One Fewer." Please don't retire it. Thank you, all who served.


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Several of you make a good point: that the piece continues to be new for some. I'll think about un-retiring it. Heck, my memory is getting bad enough that next year I'll forget that I even thought of retiring it...


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Thanks for the post and thanks for the tear rolling down my Cheek Rock...

truly shows this is a day of remembrance...

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Originally Posted by dogzapper

Friend Rocky,

Don't ever retired that piece. Please.

May God Bless all of our heroes; both those who returned and those who didn't.

Blessings to you on this Memorial Day,

Your friend Steve



Permit an ex-Aussie to post this as a tribute to all who have served & sacrificed to allow "us all" our freedom:

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

"Lest we Forget" !


Paul.

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Please don't retire that.


The government plans these shootings by targeting kids from kindergarten that the government thinks they can control with drugs until the appropriate time--DerbyDude


Whatever. Tell the oompa loompa's hey for me. [/quote]. LtPPowell


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Rocky
Mom and Dad retired to Air Force Village in San Antonio after Dad retired for the third time. There were lots of old fellows, WWII and Korea vintage. One of the old guys that interested me the most was a stooped old fella wearing a nylon leisure suit with a fanny pack on a belt. When he was talking to you he'd slip the fanny pack around and put his hand inside.
I asked Dad about his habit of putting his hand in the fanny pack. Dad explained that that fellow was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and spent the war in POW camps, etc.
He swore he would never be hungry again. He carried a pack of crackers in that fanny pack and anytime he felt anxious he'd reach in and hold them.

Jim


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always enjoyed this story Rocky. Thanks for posting it one more time.


Sam......

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