Tales from Hogwaller Holler: Old Soldier
© 2023 by Walter Reimer


Hm? Oh, it’s you again. Well, come up on the porch and have a seat. I was just sitting out here for a spell, watching the leaves turn.

What’s that? Why am I in my black suit? I just got back from old Tad O’Donnell’s funeral. The pastor said the right words over him, with Tad’s family around him as it should be. While I was there, his daughter told me his story, so that’s why I’m out here watching the leaves turning red and gold.

His story? No harm in telling it. He would want it to be told.

Tad O’Donnell is – well, was, now – Hogwaller Holler’s oldest surviving veteran of the Korean War. Like all the other young fellows in the Holler, the hound didn’t wait to get drafted; he volunteered for the Army, straight out of high school. He was too young for the war before that.

He made it through, did his service to his country, and was a cop here in the Holler and in a few other towns hereabouts for a lot of years before time caught up with him. Lived with his wife Doris until she passed away, back in ’90, and after that lived by himself until about five years or so ago. He had a talk with his daughter and son-in-law, and he put himself in a home.

The Holler would have him take part in the Fourth of July parade, although he started having a little trouble recalling where he was at times. It happens to a person sometimes when they get old, you know. Last year he was a sight to see; a bit bowed down, as you’d expect, and his headfur and the fur on the sides of his muzzle were bone white. Still, he looked all right for ninety-three.

Anyway, about a week ago, Tad calls up his daughter. “I have to get something off my chest,” he says, “but I want to tell it to you with the Old Man and the Wise Woman there, too.” See, Tad’s from the Holler, and they follow some of the old ways up there.

So Mary – that’s Tad’s daughter – calls May Watt, and May says she’ll set things up, and a few days later Mary and her husband Jim come and pick Tad up at the home.

They get up the road to the Old Man as far as it’ll go, and there’s Chief Watt, May’s son, with two of his boys. The opossum says to Mary, “Ma said that Tad might need a paw getting up the trail.”

Before Mary can say anything, Tad says from the back seat of the car, “I’d be grateful for the help, Chief,” and that’s that. The Chief has his two sons pick that old hound up in what the old first aid books call a chair carry, and everyone sets off up the trail.

Now, it was a chilly day that morning, and I think half of Tad’s weight was coats and sweaters. It didn’t take much time for him to get carried up the trail to that big old oak tree, and they set him down in one of those folding chairs you see when you go camping. They set him down, and for a while all he does is look up at the Old Man’s branches, and the sun shining through them. His eyes close, and I guess they thought he was falling asleep.

But then his eyes open, and they’re the clearest they’ve been in many a year, so his daughter told me, and he looks at everyone around him before looking back up at that ancient oak tree.

And then he says, real quiet-like, “I’m sorry.”

And his breath hitches, and he starts to cry.

Mary goes to him and hugs him, and May swishes her tail and says quietly, “The Old Man is listening, Thaddeus O’Donnell. Please tell us.” May’s the Wise Woman in the Holler, you understand.

Tad takes his time, and after some minutes he finally stops crying, wipes his eyes and blows his nose. “I’ve kept this,” he says, “to myself for so many years. But I felt I had to tell it, and get the weight off my shoulders.”

Mary wipes her eyes. “Tell us, Dad.”

“I will. I was sent overseas when I was in the Army, and we were moving fast. We had the North Koreans on the run, and they knew it, so they ran and we chased ‘em. Chased ‘em so far that they went over the border to China, and we stopped.

“We never expected them to come back, but when they did . . . they brought their friends.”

“The Chinese hit us like a tidal wave, and now it was our turn to run.” Tad huddles into his coats and sweaters. “It was so cold . . . I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again. For a week, we ran; no sleep, you didn’t dare sleep. I had a buddy fall asleep beside me one night, and in the morning he was dead, frozen stiff.

“So we kept on running, fighting as we ran, the Chinese wearing us down.” Tad pauses to wipe his eyes again. Mary and May are wiping their eyes too.

Tad says, “One morning . . . the sun wasn’t even up yet, and some of the guys caught a Chinese soldier trying to sneak up on us. A scout, maybe. Anyway, the Captain – we’d lost most of our officers and sergeants, but we still had this ugly pug-nosed crossbred fox leading us. He tells us that we’ve still got to run, and we can’t take him with us, so he has to die.”

Chief Watt bows his head for a moment, and his two sons do the same.

“No one wanted to do it,” Tad says. “We were trained that way. You don’t shoot an unarmed guy. Well, the Captain just gets angry and tells us that whoever will do the job will get a weekend in Tokyo.”

Tad pauses and looks up at the sky through the Old Man’s branches.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he says, “I didn’t, but I was so tired, and so cold, and hungry, and – and scared, because we were still on the run – and I thought about Jake, my buddy who’d fallen asleep and never woke up.

“I stepped up to the prisoner.”

“He was feline, kneeling in the snow and dirt with his paws tied behind his back. I brought my rifle up, and he looked me in the eyes as I aimed.

“And – and I shot him.”

“I shot him in the face,” and Tad puts his face in his paws.

Mary’s got tears running down her cheeks by now, and May’s resting her paws on Tad’s shoulders, eyes closed and lips moving, and he says, “We made it, and got evacuated, and the Captain was good to his word. I went on R&R in Tokyo and spent two of those three days asleep, I think, under a pile of blankets. Trying to get warm.”

Tad pauses and shakes his head. “What a way to get leave.”

“I’ve seen those eyes in my dreams for so many years now,” he says through his tears. “I never told your mother,” he says to Mary, and he takes her paw in his, “but I think Doris knew that something was troubling me. But I wanted to tell someone, before I go.” He looks up at the Old Man. “You hear so many stories,” he says to the tree, starting up crying again, “and I thought one more wouldn’t be so hard.” He laughs around his tears. “What a way to get leave.”

That was all he had to say, so the two Watt boys carry him back down the trail and put Tad in the back seat of the car, and Mary and her husband take him back to their house for lunch. After that, they took him back to the home, made sure he had dinner, and made sure he was warm in his bed before they said goodbye.

Tad passed away in his sleep that night.

We had the funeral for Tad O’Donnell today, with his children and grandchildren, and a few great-grandchildren, to see him on his way, and Pastor Kincaid said the right words over him. The local Legion post sent over an honor guard, and they had a fellow play Taps, and they shot off twenty-one rounds from their rifles, and they folded the flag on his coffin and gave it to Mary. The Ladies’ Auxiliary, bless them, made sure that Mary’s family didn’t want for anything.

Well.

A while back you asked me what the difference was between Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. I said at the time that Memorial Day was for those who died in wartime, and Veteran’s Day was to remember those who made it through, and made it back.

But always remember that some of them carry a weight on their shoulders that you can’t see, but they can feel. Thank them for their service, as that’s right and proper, but try to understand that they might have seen things and done things that might be hard for other people to understand.

Yes, even to get a weekend’s leave.



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