WAR AND REMEMBRANCE ... REMEMBERED : 無料・フリー素材/写真
WAR AND REMEMBRANCE ... REMEMBERED / mrbill78636
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示 2.1 |
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| 説明 | ... yowzer, the title "War and Remembrance" has already been taken and that's a shame because in all of history and all over the world surely more than one person can have a memory of war. But, HEY, I'm OK because what I'm mostly remembering is a memory itself. The only reason I remember that day in 1945 in Antwerp, is because I had remembered it in 1973 (I believe) and made a watercolor of the visual I had from that remote time. I called it a sketch rather than a watercolor and put a price tag of $15 on it. It went to any number of art shows with me at a certain point it must have sold, but I have no memory of that sale.Twenty or so years later, my son Mark found it at a garage sale in Corpus Christi, TX and bought if for a couple of dollars. He gave it to me and I still have the original. Fast forward to last night 100209. Last night was one of my magic nights when everything was perfect and beautiful....no medications involved, nor alcohol..ok?Several days before the magic night, I had been going through six year old back-up CDs and found a perfect scan of the original wartime sketch, which always brings to mind that day in 1945 in Antwerp, Belgium when nothing particularily exciting happened but which for some unexplained reason became almost perfectly etched into my memory, but I'm digressing, back to the magic night.I took the sketch to PaintShopPro 9 and began to play with it. I wanted to remove the yellowness of the paper, but retain the detail and color and was very successful in that by simply lightening the entire image considerably. I used such intense color originallly that the lightening process still left me with a vivid color pattern.Then I thought about the memory itself and the nature of memory, how it fades, actually fades just like I had faded the image with the PSP brightnesss and contrast tool. I thought memories drift slowly into the distance, with no actual distance involved except in time, hence distant memories.I took the image to the "distortion" tool and chose the brush "pinch" which systematically pulls everything in the image toward the center of the design. I set it on 25 and began to click. At about 75 the image had been pulled way back into the distance. Now I looked at the sketch. The paper had been renewed to a pure white: the colors were still vivid; the vignetted composition was even more dynamic and the watercolor was even more the way I would have wished it to have been. I quit working and almost immediately was contacted by someone very special and the magic night began. If you ever hear that you'll have to hear it ffom them. That's their story. But I do want to tell you about the simple, mundane day in Antwerp that triggered this entire life transaction.There's really not much more to the story; it's very mundane and only explains why I was in Antwerp in the first place.When I was sixteen years old I finished high school early because I had begun kindergarden in Miss Summerall's Aransas Pass, Texas kindergarden. I was five when Miss Summerall signed me on and afrer completing a school term with her the powers that were deemed me a full fledged, bonafide, second grader. And that's how I happened to have been out of high school at such a tender age.At that tender age there weren't many jobs around except delivering newspapers and sacking groceries for the supermarkets, neither of which paid very well nor were very exciting. I was working as drill press operator at a machine shop and a temporary employee showed up and worked only a few weeks because he needed to go back to sea. He was a merchant seaman and told me all about the U. S. Maritime Service and also informed me you could sign up at age sixteen with parental consent....I couldn't wait.After consuming bananas to pass the weight requirement, I was sent to St. Petersburg, FL for sixteen weeks of Basic Seamanship training and left there as an Ordinary Seaman on the S. S. Duncan L. Clinch carrying a full load of bombs and ammunition destined for Hull, England. Back home again for two weeks of strutting around my home town in a freshly laundered uniform and I was back at sea aboard the S. S. William Grrayson, another Liberty Ship. This time we had a cargo of grain and other food stuff in bulk and in 100 pound sacks.On the trip across to Europe we had a collision with another ship and smashed our bow back completely to the forward gun tub, so upon arrival in Antwerp we went immediately to a location where they repair work could continue and we could unload the food. The repair took several months. I don't know the dates, but I know the battle of Antwerp was still fresh on everyone's mind and there were still uncleaned battle areas around the city. The Battle of the Bulge took place while we were being repaired and I also remember President Roosevelt died while I was in Antwerp. I was flabbergasted when dozens of Belgian citizens stopped me on the streets to express their sympathy for our nation. Belgians are very polite as a nation. Every time I've ever met a Belgian, whether in Belgium or Oklahoma, upon finding that I was in Belgium, they've told me their grandfather made them promise the thank every American they met for liberating their nation. That almost seems like a unique attitude in this day and time. I have, however, returned the the act of loyalty in that Hurcule Poirot is one of my favorite detectives on BBC.Now I could give the bloody, made up by a seventeen year old male who had many sixteen year old girls to impress and tell you about all the carnage we found on the battle grounds and in the destroyed Sherman tanks scattered about, but I have a feeling you're probably smarter than those sixteen year old girls, so I'll tell it the way it was.After we go the ship ready for the return voyage, we had all kinds of time off, so we took excursions, the bombed General Motors plant one day, crawling through the wreckage, another day spent seeing the sights in Brussels and many days picking through the battle areas around Antwerp. We crawled through a number of Sherman tanks, but never found anything although I ran my hands under the seats in the cockpit religiously, thinking surely one of the tank operators had stached a .45 cal. Colt army issued automatic. The truth is all we picked up was a few unexploded cannon rounds. These were dumped overboard one day at sea when I heard them rolling around in my metal locker. They still had unexploded war heads which were made to go off on impact and I wasn't taking any chances so without drawing the attention of the ship's officers, these were all quietly slipped over the side into the waiting bowels of the North Atlantic Ocean.We arrived in New York Harbor just in thime to celebrate VE day aboard ship. New York was crazy and we were not permitted to go ashore for two days after the big celebration. The Captain did not want to have to recruit a new crew at this particular time.I'll save you the story of the Nazi submarine that followed us several days out of Antwerp, just as the radio was declaring hostilities would cease at 1100 hours the following day.My wife, Sherry, if I should read this to her or get her to take the time to read it, would say, "Entirely TMII, Bill." The first time I heard that I, of course, had to ask and got the answer, "Too much information." Then she would begin to show me all the things I could leave out to make the narrative lean and mean and meaningful. Ok, so using those principles, I continue to make it leaner and meaner and leaner and meaner until all I have left is, "I was in Belgium." Now, I look at tht four word sentence and decide TDENTKT, or if she shoud ask, "They don't even need to know that."Actually, the stories I told when I got home were much more fun than the ones I tell now, but I can't remember them all now. So it goes.Work your way through the typos and left out words, I'll come back and edit in a day or so.Now, I am absolutley, utterly and completely through with this essay. I cannot think of another paragraph, sentence or word that I need to add. I have added every random thought that popped into my head as I was writing this presentation and I have decided it has ... are you ready for this, Sherry? ... EXACTLY the right amount of information. So there .... |
| 撮影日 | 2009-10-03 10:10:14 |
| 撮影者 | mrbill78636 , PFLUGERVILLE TEXAS, USA |
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