War Heroes

It's appropriate that my first posting after a week of observance of the third anniversary of my love Karen's death is about war heroes. Karen was intensely interested in potential seeds of conflicts which lay ahead and the schematics with which various agencies may have placed them. Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy would have been good company for her.

So many people find themselves impressed with John McCain's war record. I want to take this moment to call upon the memory of two of my relatives: My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg Fisher and my great-uncle, Albert Greenberg. I never got to meet the latter because his plane was shot down in World War II.

John McCain:
As I understand it, John McCain graduated from the bottom of his class at Annapolis, but nevertheless was trained as a pilot. He had some difficulties and was shot down in action in Vietnam and brought to a prison in Hanoi where he claims he was tortured. In a story he wrote about his experience for US News and World Report in 1973, he actually admitted to being willing to give up State Secrets for Medical Care because he was afraid of dying.

Here's the selection:


"I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot down] that two guards camein, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guardmy injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of afootball. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejectedfrom his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood hadpooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us - a mandying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happeningto me. "When I saw it, I said to the guard, `O.K., get the officer.'" "An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to knowvery well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiendsthat we had to deal with. I said, `O.K., I'll give you military information ifyou will take me to the hospital

It turned out to be too late. They wouldn't make the deal.



I understand that in various publications, he has written about various kinds of torture he endured. At least one story -- the story about his having had his ropes losened by a guard on Christmas and the guard then making a sand in the cross -- was proven to be a lie. You can read about that here
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/the-dirt-in-the.html

But, let's grant that McCain was tortured. And, let's grant that McCain came home to write about it, get married several times, the last time to a beer heiress, have a career in the Senate and now run for president. He did all that without

1) Improving the quality of life for other veterans
2) Voting for better spending for veterans' issues/healthcare
3) Voting to increase spending to find POW/MIA's.


Sadie Greenberg-Fisher and Albert Greenberg

Grant me that I am putting this together from what my grandmother told me over years, what my mother told me and what I remember. But, the gist of the story is what matters.

Sadie Greenberg-Fischer came to the United States from a small town outside of Warsaw in the twenties, with the hopes of becoming a singer. Though she had a gorgeous soprano voice she was painfully shy and she couldn't break herself of this, so she resolved to work with her older sister, who had come to accompany her in her career, as milliners which they did until that industry died out. She was so beautiful that she also modeled hats -- she was fine in a line of other girls, so long as she didn't have to say anything and was on and off the stage quickly.
Albert Greenberg, slightly younger than Sarah, arrived to the United States during this period. A gifted mathematician and watchmaker, the family thought he could ply his talents somehow and also help his sisters. He found work quickly and did very well. Meanwhile, both girls got married. Sarah married her hometown sweetheart, Arthur Fischer who emigrated for that very purpose and because he was a friend of Al's. He, too, was a gifted mathematician and he hoped that he and Al could go into business together.

The group held together, even through the depression. Arthur worked by day behind the counter of the appetizer section of a supermarket and by night learned English and then Accounting. Al had a solid position in a Jewelry store and enough money to put into his side of business and was waiting for Arthur to catch up. His accounting was terrific, his English, slow moving. Arthur was getting closer and closer as the 40's started, but Al couldn't take the stories coming out of Europe about what was happening to the Jews and they knew from the letters from their family that they were suffering. Al was young and strong and he felt he owed a lot to the United States because he come a long way. So, they all talked it over and agreed that Al could enlist. Arthur couldn't because he was 4'11, flatfooted and had pneumonia the year before which had weakened his heart. Besides, he had two kids. I've never known if Al was married or not. My grandmother so loved him, it was hard to imagine that there was anyone else around him. Arthur didn't need the English lessons anymore, so he worked day and night, this time doing accounting work which paid better to save money for a store and the kids.

Al was selected by the Air Force and he flew many successful missions. He also spoke German, Polish, Russian, some French and, of course English. He was very handsome and charming and I'm sure could have been useful in many ways. He had black hair and blue eyes and an aquiline nose. From the pictures, he looks about 5'8" -5'10" and absolutely impossible to be mad at, ever. He had one of those faces and attitudes. His plane was shot down toward the end of the war and his body was never recovered. For his sake, I hope he was killed as soon as the plane was shot down because it happened in German territory, no place for a nice Jewish-American boy to be in 1944 or thereabouts.

My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg-Fisher, was broken by Al's death, the way John McCain says he was broken by his torturer's. She told me the story when I was 4. Some 30 years later, like it happened yesterday. About a year after Al died, her husband, Arthur, went out to play handball on a Saturday, like he usually did. He had a sudden heart attack and died right on the court. My grandmother and her sister were never the best of friends. She had just lost her only real connection on the planet and she had two kids to raise. She had agreed to give her brother to the war effort and her husband had perished in part trying to make up for what her brother could've contributed.

What's the difference among the three survivors?

John McCain survived and went on to a rich life.
Al Greenberg died as did most of his family in Europe. Out of 11 siblings, only 4 lived after World War Two and that was because three left before the war and ONE survived Aushwitz. The rest of the Greenbergs and the Champagnes (my grandmother's mother's family, responsible for the French) were all murdered. It was a huge family. I can't list them all. In dying, he left behind a family in America who also needed him.
Sadie Greenberg-Fisher raised two kids on her own, working most of the rest of her life as a Sales Manager for Kleins Department Store. They lived in the projects for a brief period -- the Nostrand Projects, created for the Veterans of World War Two by Democratic Administrations. Then, in 1970, my grandmother moved into a one bedroom apartment in a fancy building two blocks from the water in Sheepshead Bay.
Her body was riddled with arthritis and she never really had a person in her life she could confide in again. She preferred to be alone. She missed her family in Europe to the very end and she told me about them all the time.

WHO'S THE WAR HERO? IS JOHN McCAIN MORE OF A WAR HERO THAN MY GREAT UNCLE? THAN MY GRANDMOTHER?

As she used to say, "He lived. My brother died. And he wants ANOTHER MEDAL."