Gratuitous Historickal Posting (TM) - Close To Home Divisional UPDATE

A few days back, I mentioned that I had recently learned my long lost uncle had served as a combat pilot aboard the U.S.S. Antietam during the Korean War.

In response, Chef Mojo informed me that his father had been a Marine aboard the Antietam during the same operations. He's now got some flight-ops photo scans up over at his place. Go check 'em out.

Doing a little more digging, and acting on a tip let fall by my sister, I discovered that my uncle was also, among other things, a minor published poet. What's the connection? Well, I stumbled across a relevant poem of his, published in a literary journal in 1970:

My Son Confronts A Former Naval Aviator With Evidence That Eighteen Years Are Not Enough

kids open drawers/ find boxes better left taped shut
play with ribbons/ ask questions
my almost man son reverently fingers battlestars/
decks himself in the fabrics of half truths from
a half true time/ dead and buried these eighteen years

as the tv announces the termination of our twenty-first/
triannual oriental ceasefire/and I wonder/ how/many
more years/how old he will be/ whose civil war/
we will be/ will he be

ribboned/ color his imagination/ striped redwhiteblue/
yellow/ black paleblue green/ redblue yingyang
of the
korean presidential unit citation
where are the wings/ blueeyed chearcheeked does he

imagine four rows of ribbons on the sanfrancisco pier
saying not unkindly little taste of action make a
man
of you little oriental pussy make you

imagine being too young old/too old young/ not
whining
we didnt whine/ in fact we/ just didnt/but/or
rather/rather/just went/ did/he

remember toy planes slingshotted blue and white
from a
toy ship/ over minature blue and white sea
sternfaced plastic pilot/sternly piloting
immoveable plastic radarman/ behind and slightly
below
18 cylinder pratt & whitney hearbeat filling plastic
veins with life/sotening rigid arms and legs
expanding/awakening to realize he has too soon
become
the fullsized too young old radarman
apprehensively
imaginging pale green toy land creeping up under the
nose
bright sweep on pale green eyeface facing his face
paints its outline creeping/ nearer nearer nearer
nearer/ with each turn of the unseen fourbladed
black yellowtipped propellor spiralling white vapor
ribbons/he

imagines to yellow plastic soldiers stiffly manning
toy
guns/riding toy trains/driving toy trucks
pointing
toyrifles at
snarling spitting sunshadowing firedemons slanting
down
the paleblue sky/raking
20millimeterhighexplosiveincendiaryautomatic-cannonfire
among stumbling quilted suddenly fullsized chinese
sees/ almost imagines/ blurred faces/ ribboned
tracers arcing up
cringes at threeinchrockets thunderclapping from
under
the wings
feels debris from hits hit thin aluminun skin
soars soars soars soars/ with quick release of/ two
four six eight 270poundproximintyfused-fragmentationbombs
fanning tightly springwound heavy steel casing
fragments
seeking meat among the holes
lazy darkblue endoverend thinskinnedaluminum
cigars sloping
down shallowly/easily/skid gush spatter
highoctane
sizzling sticking boiling blackorange billowing
obscene
convulsion of frenzied running rolling smearing
clawing
burning burning burning burning blackcrusted
stiffening
roastmeat charred eyesockets crying tears of
melted
plastic down obliterated anonymous faces/he

imagines fullsized soldiers spinning freeturning
crankwheels
following toy airplane silhouette caught in crossed
wires/sandaledfoot presing unseen treadle
orangeblack flackflowers blooming/quick ribboning
flackfingers reaching/him/pissing his flightsuit
with the/ sudden unreal bring hard ringing
slam of
someone he doesn't know killing him/ he

kicks out the door/ breathes cold silence of a/ stopped
engine/ cool true paleblue air/ small perfect
gloes of genuine pureblack highviscosity
prtt & whitney aviationgrade engineoil
toy coastline/ ships/ slowly growing/ larger/ slower
slower/ slower/ slower/ cant

remember the moment/ white nylon lifeblossom
exploding
wingless/ dunblue/ deathbottle/ smoketracking
orangeredgraygreen flamesmoke ribbons/ over
leadwater
gray ultimate receptacle of/ all human waste
crotchwrenching yank on the/ ribbons/ ribbons
saving
it all for/ another death/ he

becomes once again my son/ pushing forty/ stand-
ing in
my sons bedrooms nightmare litter of/ plastic
soldiers
ships/ planes/ toyrifles/ double rows of half true
ribbons/ timebombs/ wondering what they named
my
japanese sons/ or were they daughters
facing/ once/ again/ the/ question/ of/ hearing/ once
again the
rattle of/ miniature metal wings hit the table
patietly dying death number 000 of/ what might
have been
incipient case of/ combat fatigue/ they give you
two years free psychiatric treatment/ but eighteen
years are not enough

(Lack of capitalization, italics and lines in the original. The slashes represent spaces, which I can't reproduce here. I'm afraid all of his poems (on any subject) are written like this.)

Never actually having met the man, I put this up here for the sake of preservation and historical curiosity. I can only assume this was autobiographical, since we do know that he flew ground assault missions, was shot down and had to bail out over the sea during the war. The Mater says he never talked about his experiences.