A Man Who Never Went to War

Introduction & Table of Contents

My grandson telling me what story to tell him.

I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious… And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped, — ugly, human.

― W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

I have already signed the form that sends my body to the university for study. And once the medical students are done with me, my entrails will then be burned to dust and buried in a jar at a plot at the old Tewkesbury Hospital asylum and farm, where my cousin once minded the chickens.

How much of his nakedness can a man reveal — to himself, to others? Can we see ourselves from the side, from the back? And of what interest are my entrails to you?

It is not only for the wise like Dubois to know my entrails. I must also study what’s inside. I am a white man of Pilgrim heritage born on the peaceful side of a world at war in 1939. Men like me have done great harm running from what lies within us.

There is a poem I have long loved and feared, of a man in decline. I used to fear it was my story. I used to believe the mermaids would not sing to me. But they have. I must be honest about that. I will try to be honest about the rest. Let us go then and take our visit.

1939: I am born

1940: I turn one

1941: I turn two

1942: I turn three

1943: I turn four

1944: I turn five

1945: I turn six

1946: I turn seven

1947: I turn eight

1948: I turn nine

1949: I turn ten

1950: I turn eleven

1951: I turn twelve

1952: I turn thirteen

1953: I turn fourteen

1954: I turn fifteen

1955: I turn sixteen

1956: I turn seventeen

1957: I turn eighteen

1958: I turn nineteen

1959: I turn twenty

1960: I turn twenty-one

More to come.