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Aaron's Blog
Spam: It's what's for dinner
Jan. 29, 2009 -- An army travels on its stomach. That's what my former colleagues in the newspaper business would call a cliché, but like other World World War II clichés, such as "All hell broke loose," or a "million dollar wound," it has an air of validity when spoken by a veteran.
Which reminds me of a story. A lot of stories actually. I've been invited to speak at a D-Day Conference June 4-5 of this year at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., so I started producing a second set of D-Day-themed CDs to go with "The D-Day Tapes." In 1994 I interviewed Valentine Miele of Palisades Park, N.J., a veteran of the Big Red One, the famed 1st Infantry Division. Miele, a machine gunner, landed on Omaha Beach and made it through November, when he was wounded in the Huertgen Forest. At one point, he found a ham in a captured pillbox.
The ham didn't look very appetizing. In fact, it was moldy and had hair, Miele said. When one of his buddies asked what he was going to do with it, Miele said he was going to eat it.
That could kill you, he was told.
Now imagine a combat infantryman, a machine gunner who's had a grenade go off so close that it drove his head into his neck, been subjected to artillery that almost buried him, gone into a burning house to retrieve his weapon, worrying about being killed by a tainted ham.
The ham didn't kill him, and neither did the artillery barrage that left him wounded and dazed and lying in a field for a night and part of the next day when he heard someone say "This one's still alive," or words to that effect.
One of the stories that turned me into an oral historian was also about food. I don't know if it was the first story I overheard in the hospitality room at the 1987 reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion or the second, but I believe it was one of the first two stories that got me hooked on listening to these veterans. It was told by Reuben "Goldie" Goldstein, and it was about a rabbit.
I would hear the story many times over the years, and I still can't relate it the way Goldie did that day. The story takes place while he's waiting in a replacement depot to return to his outfit after being wounded in the Falaise Gap. Although I may not be the most sensitive person on earth, I should note that the first time I played the tape of this in my car for my stepdaughter, who was a teenager at the time, she got grossed out and made me turn it off. So be forewarned.
Ruby Goldstein and the rabbit real audio mp3
Valentine Miele and the ham real audio mp3
Thanks for reading.
-- Aaron Elson
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