"Bad news Woody.
Uncle Bill died last night."
I accepted the news
with an air of resignation. William Kozmar, the Croatian, Catholic,
bookie, was a character who defied everyone's wishes that he, "just
be normal." My family, the Brandt's, never knew quite what to make
of him.
My earliest memory of
Uncle Bill comes from his post war days as a racetrack tout. He showed up
in front of my grandparents' house driving a lemon yellow Dodge
convertible. A yellow convertible would have been enough, but this one
also featured a midsection of red and yellow wood paneling making it stand
out from anything on the road. He had a rakish, tan, snap-brimmed straw
hat atop his head, and Ray Ban sunglasses shading his eyes. He wore a
hound's-tooth sport coat in rust and brown tones, rust colored slacks, his
feet decked out in two- tone wing tips of brown and custard yellow. A
lavender tie, and a lemon yellow shirt completed the outfit. I'd never
seen anything quite so peacock in style and color in our old world German
household.
"Hey, Butch,
what'cha up to?" he asked as he ran his hand over my head, my nose
picking up the scent of expensive after-shave. "What say you and me
take a little ride? Let me check in with the old lady here, make sure
everything's hunkie-dorie, then we'll go. OK" I barely had time to
nod an excited 'yes' in between his sentences.
As a kid, the
decorative items found in the house he shared with Aunt Betty fascinated
me: bronze and silver-plated statues of horses, Sea Biscuit, Man O' War,
and Whirl-away, An ashtray shaped like a horseshoe, a ceramic jockey
standing on top of the TV. He'd pull me away from family talks and tell me
tales about following the racing season, starting in late March at Pimlico
in Miami, north to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby: back east to
Baltimore's Laurel Park for the Preakness and then finishing the summer at
Saratoga for the Belmont Stakes and a couple of weeks of racing before
coming back for the fall season at Keeneland. "Butch, you hear all
this God damn bullcrap about Man O' War, but I'm telling you there was
something funny going on. I still think Coaltown was the better horse,
but, Jesus Christ, the old man who owned him wouldn't let the son of a
bitch run his best."
I'd nod my head like
I understood it all.
In reality I was more
enthralled with his language pattern. "So, you see, I got this little
side bet going on this damn filly, and the son of a bitch I'm working
againstI had the sense to not display my grasp of his vernacular in
front of my parents, but when I entered the army it put me at the head of
the class for barrack's talk. Unhappily, his talk, his religion and his
career as a bookie would be a source of friction that would lead our side
of the family to always judge him unfairly.
Uncle Bill upset the
balance in our family, by marrying Aunt Betty he inadvertently rekindled
the Catholic - Protestant resentments that had simmered in the family stew
pot for more than 30 years. The hard feelings would rest, like land mines,
just beneath the surface of all family activities. His hard living, brash
manner, and blue tinged language caused tongues to wag among the brothers.
I learned to pick up on the key phrase, "Now this is not to be
repeated anywhere outside this house" From time to time I would
catch a subtle jibe spoken in the presence of Uncle Bill by my dad or
Uncle Cliff, usually preceded by the comment, "I don't want to tell
you what you should believe" and then followed by the latest sore
point in the families' religious relations. Aunt Betty would take his
faults in stride, dispensing of them with an acknowledging sigh,
"Well, that's Bill for you."
However, family
get-togethers also provided Uncle Bill his moments to get back. He would
volunteer to serve as bar tender or short order cook in the kitchen while
the brothers and Aunt Betty would argue politics in the living room. These
bare knuckle, take no prisoners, discussions would get pretty lively, even
causing my normally mild mannered mom to get riled up enough to speak her
peace.
Uncle Cliff might
open with, "You ask me, those big corporations just don't care. You
get a Republican in the White House and we'll watch worker's salaries drop
like a rock."
Dad would counter,
"So instead we should have a situation like we have now, where John
L. Lewis and those damn coal miners are holding the whole country hostage?
Is that what you want?" and it would be off to the races.
Just when things
would get at their most inflammatory, someone would say something that
everyone could agree upon. For a few minutes things would become cozy,
everyone remembering a favorite story of how the family survived some
shared challenge. Uncle Bill would hear the calm and stick his head in,
"So what do you think of Truman breaking that coal miners' strike"
then he'd duck back into the kitchen and chuckle to himself as the Brandts
returned to hammering away at each other, totally unaware of how they had
been coaxed back into disagreement.
One snowy Christmas
Eve the brothers got into an argument over which theatre had been more
difficult on the troops, Europe or the Pacific. Uncle Bill had fought in
the Philippines and Okinawa, the rest all served in Europe. Late in the
night, a little too much Christmas cheer having passed their lips, they
began to challenge each other.
"Well, it was
always warm in the Pacific," claimed Uncle Cliff, "you guys
didn't have to live and fight in the snow."
"Yeah? Well half
the Germans couldn't wait to surrender. You see any damn Nip battalion lay
down their arms? You ask me, we had it tougher in the Pacific."
Uncle Cliff peered
out the window into the fast falling snow, "OK, this is what it
looked like in Belgium. You try sleeping in that. I bet you can't do
it."
"No
Problem," sniffed Uncle Bill, heading for the door. "I'll do it
if you'll do it."
Uncle Cliff took two
steps toward his bedroom, "Be right with you."
"For Christ's
sake Cliff, where you going? The doors this way."
"I'm getting a
blanket."
"Well you didn't
tell me you were going candy ass on me. Bets off."
On other occasions
the Brandt brothers would accept Uncle Bill into their circle and the
results were usually the stuff of family legend. My stout, tough,
German-Irish grandmother had to have a gall bladder operation. The
brothers decided to pitch in on a weekend and give her house a thorough
cleaning. They were finishing up just about lunchtime on Sunday. Uncle
Bill was sent out to pick up sandwiches. This was the era of "blue
law Sundays" and the open sale of alcohol anywhere but in a
restaurant was strictly forbidden. Uncle Bill returned with a sack full of
pork tenderloin sandwiches, a case of cold beer and a fifth of whisky. The
men gathered around, eating and drinking, when one of them discovered
Grandma's parakeet. Suddenly a mission of great urgency developed. Early
in the evening the mellow group left. On Monday afternoon Grandmother
returned from the hospital to find her home sparkling cleanif you
could ignore the parakeet that now talked like a sailor on leave, "Schwee
tah, crap! Schwee tah, God damn! Schwee God damn! Goddamn! crap! Schwee
tah!"
Marriage and kids
forced Uncle Bill to give up the race circuit he loved. The convertible
became a black Kaiser Manhattan sedan. Similar sedate cars followed. He
became a banker, specializing in auto loans. When the bank was bought out
he became salesman and later, sales manager for a car dealer. When the
dealership went under he sold caskets before returning to banking. His
ability to bring in business and to keep the customer satisfied, probably
honed in his days as a tout, kept him in demand.
Finally, it was my
turn to enter the army. Mom and Dad threw a family picnic the Sunday
before Labor Day, 1967. A good many war stories were aired out again and I
was given all sorts of advice on how to deal with enlisted men and tough
old sergeants. There was some confessed confusion as to Vietnam and what
was going on along with concern that I might soon end up there. For the
most part though, the brothers stuck together and talked about their army
days. It was Uncle Bill who pulled me aside, "Butch, don't get caught
up in all this army bullcrap. It isn't all craps and grins. You'll see
things you'll wish you'd never seen. I wish you didn't have to go at all,
but since you do just remember one thing: If you're going to wear that
uniform, wear it right. Don't let me hear about you walking around with
your hands in your pockets and your jacket unbuttoned. Wear it right and
be proud of it. Your men are gonna need that."
At that moment,
caught up in my own anxieties, I did not understand all of what he was
telling me about leadership and responsibility, but for the next 30 years
I tried faithfully to always wear the uniform correctly.
For several years, on
Veterans' Day, I made the habit of visiting the graves of Dad, Uncle
Cliff, Uncle Ray and Uncle Bobby and then driving over to Springfield to
visit Uncle Bill. We'd share war stories, family tales, and then get back
to whether Coaltown or Man O' War was the better horse. He was the only
man in the family, among all those war heroes of mine, who honestly asked
me what Vietnam was like. Maybe it was because he knew that war really
wasn't about sleeping in snow, or slogging through mud in tropic heat, it
was about your soul.
On those days I could
get him to talk about the day and the place when he almost died. "You
see, we'd been on Okinawa almost two weeks. The sons of bitches were dug
in everywhere, see, and we had to go in and flush 'em out one at a time.
We come up to this meadow and the sergeant wants me and Smitty to cross
first so he and the rest of the squad can go around the other way and I'm
thinking, 'some damn son of bitch is just waiting for me' and sure as
hell, I'm about half way across when he opens up with a light machine gun.
Knocked me down, stitched me across my legs and here in my side. I'm
looking up at the sky and thinking, 'Jesus Christ! This is it!' The rest
of the platoon, see, they had to go on. They had to get that God damn
machine gun before they could come back and get me. Crap, next thing I
know I'm back in the hospital." Then he stopped. "You know
Butch, I don't know if it was worth it. You look at all those good kids
that we lost there, really good kids, and I just don't think it was worth
it."
I thought about his
words while on duty during Desert Storm. I was working as a staff officer,
keeping track of spare parts for eight infantry and armor divisions. It
was intense, nerve- wracking work, but I slept each night in a soft, warm
bed in Alexandria, Virginia. A kind of football game mentality developed
within the office, a "let's get in there and kick some ass!"
enthusiasm for war. One night, just before the ground war was to kick off,
I saw a young private from the First Infantry Division, my old unit from
Vietnam, being interviewed. I knew that he would be among the very first
to leave the safety of his foxhole and push forward. He told the reporter,
"The Iraqis are just over there," nodding over his right
shoulder, "We see 'em and sometimes we can hear 'em talking and
moving around."
"Are you
scared?" the reporter asked.
"Yeah, I get
scared, but we're well trained and well equipped. When we do go, we'll do
all right."
I woke up from my
football dreams of glory with those words. I thought back to Uncle Bill
and I could imagine him saying the same thing as he rode to battle off
Okinawa's shore. It was in his brush with death that he gained the wisdom
to later tell me, "You know Butch we lost a lot of good men over
there. I don't know if it was worth it." He understood what the
generals, the politicians and the reporters didn't begin to grasp: the
importance of measuring a war's goals and results against its awful costs.
Bill Kozmar loved the
racetrack, hot cars and smart clothes. He could keep book, get you a
bottle of Old Forester on a "blue law" Sunday and run a string
of expletives together in any sentence, but he also understood the value
of human life better than most of us. I shall miss his wise counsel and
salty voice.
Forrest
Brandt
