The war in Europe was officially over on May 8, 1945, but my father didn’t come home right away. The Germans had done pretty good job of destroying a lot of Europe, and the Allies had finished the war by destroying Germany. In those days, we knew that we couldn’t just walk away from all that destruction and all those defeated Germans, unlike in our more modern wars, where greedy, incompetent people saw a defeated country as a way to get rich.

So my father’s second photo album runs from May to December 1945.

Some places were not destroyed. This is a view up a street in Verviers, Belgium. This could almost be a photo of Broad Street in Rome, Ga, from the same time, except that Broad Street was wider.

This photo was not captioned. It looks like a vineyard untouched by war.

There are photographs of people.

Soldiers.

Kids.

Soldiers and kids.

American civilians at a going-home party, just shy of one person in this last supper for Betty.

None of these people are identified on the photos, except for “Betty” in the last photo. I have no idea who they were. People my father knew in passing? Good friends? Strangers? I suspect that no one alive today knows who they were.

My father went to Paris.

Is that Hemingway in the shadows?

I did an online search for Bar Hollandais in Paris, but I couldn’t find anything. Gone with the wind, I suppose.

My father, on the beach, France, 1945.

Without his trousers.

So soon after the war was over, and an artist draws the sea.

The sun sets on my father’s time in Europe.

But wait. I promised puppies, didn’t I?

There in no doubt that my father would have picked up a stray puppy in the streets Kornwestheim, Germany. Wikipedia says the town is six miles north of Stuttgart. My father smoked in those days. He told us that on the way back to the US, he was leaning on the railing of the ship, and decided to quit smoking. He threw his pack of cigarettes into the ocean, and he never smoked again. He was clean shaven by the time this photo was taken, and he never grew facial hair again, either.

My father knew how to type.

I feel certain that Hemingway was somewhere close by.

There are lots more photos in the two albums. Most of the people in the photos are unnamed, as are most of the places.

I sometimes think of those times, not all that long before I was born. The stories of all of those ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times and, perhaps, did extraordinary things, are fading. Maybe they told a few people part of their stories, and maybe someone remembers them. But it won’t be long before they are all nameless and forgotten, and it will be as if their stories never really happened.

My father was drafted prior to the beginning of World War II, because everyone knew the United States was going to be in a war. He told us that he went to volunteer at the recruiting station in town, but the men who were already there were such a rough-looking bunch that he decided to wait. So he waited until he was drafted.

He ended up in the artillery, which I think he liked. Probably because of things that go boom. When he first started training in 1941, the Army still had horse-drawn artillery, so he learned to ride a horse. Here he is in uniform, probably at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. He was there at what was known as Camp Carson for a while.

His riding pants here are somewhat different from some other photos I have of him.

Here he is with a fellow soldier at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They are wearing jodhpurs, with the baggy upper thigh.

In this case I’m sure of the location because the building behind them has a sign that says “Fort Sill Theater.” I cropped that part out.

The man on the left is wearing a dress cap. My father is wearing a garrison cap, which was also known by another less polite term. I like the old Army uniforms better than current uniforms. The boots were pretty cool, too.

Here he is in another shot. This one looks like it was also on the base, probably still at Fort Sill, which was known as the home of the field artillery.

Here he’s probably pretending to do some horsey kind of thing, like cleaning out a horse’s hoof.

They kept horse-drawn artillery long enough for my father to stop biting his fingernails, then switched to motorized artillery. My father used to talk about “high-speed tractors.” I think this is one. I’m pretty sure this photo was taken at the time of someone’s wedding on the base. I think the bride and groom might have been riding on the tractor.

He was transferred out of artillery and into infantry some time after this. He didn’t like the transfer, but it did earn him the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Even though he was in the infantry, he still got to work with cannons, although at a distance. He was a forward observer. He told us that he was able to bring an artilleryman’s viewpoint to the infantry, which tended to use cannons as if they were mortars (he said, with some disdain).

Here is another shot of …

No, wait, that’s me at age three in 1953. I have a vague recollection of this. A man went around the neighborhood with a pony, upon which little boys and girls were placed, with cowboy hats and other cowboy accoutrements. The pony looks pretty bored. I’m pretty sure I have another photo of my brother Henry on the same horse.

As you can probably tell, I’m still going through old photos. I am collecting a batch to send to my nephews. I have one with both of them taking a bath. I haven’t decided which would be more embarrassed. I’m leaning towards Russell, who is married.

I have been looking through old family albums again. There is a laundry basket full of albums that somehow ended up at my aunt’s. I wanted to share a few of them, not because they are particularly good, or because they have any meaning to anyone else, but because they are a window into the past.

The first is my kindergarten “graduation”.

I’m in a soldier costume second from the left of what appears to be a bride in the center of the picture. I have no recollection of a giant clown, but there he is.

I can vaguely remember this event. We put on a play at the end of the year. As I remember it, it seemed to have some elements of the Nutcracker, but probably other things as well. I seem to remember that it was at the American Legion building. I also seem to remember that the kindergarten itself was in the home of a woman who lived near downtown in a section called Between the Rivers.

The next is my first grade class photo.

I am at the left end of the back row, beside the boy with the striped shirt.

The photo was taken on the front steps of Fourth Ward School. My father lived two houses up the street and attended this same school. His mother worked in the lunchroom when I was there. The school is gone, replaced by doctors’ offices. My grandmother’s house is also gone, replaced at one time by offices, but now a vacant lot.

I can remember the face of almost every kid in the first grade photo, although I can remember only about eight names. I find the variation in how each kid looks kind of amazing. It’s funny how nature made us so distinctive.

I don’t remember anyone at all in the kindergarten photo.

The next photograph is my father’s mother and father. My father’s father died when my father was about five years old, I think, so this photograph had to be taken prior to around 1922.

I was going to say that this photograph almost made me cry, but the truth is that it did make me cry. I’m not sure why. Maybe because the photo caught them in such a purely spontaneous pose. Their affection is obvious. The stiff poses in most of my family photos hide almost any hint of personality, but I can see real people in this photo. My grandmother had a life long before I was born, and a husband she loved. I regret for my father’s sake that he didn’t get the chance to really know his father, and I regret for my sake that I didn’t get to even meet my grandfather.