My hero

The sad news is that another of the Greatest Generation has passed. The good news is that he was a good and honorable man. Merle Teel was one of my Grannie Annie's very favorite uncles. Allow me to share some recollections of his proud past.

When World War II started Merle had graduated from the High School in Curtis with a certificate to teach grade school. He taught two years in country schools in the Maywood and Tryon areas. Then the draft was nipping at his heels so he volunteered for pilot training in The Army Air Corps. He hitch-hiked a ride to his first training base in an old single-engine O-47. That didn't go well and the pilot ended up crashing -- might have been weather related. Merle remembered laying trapped in the wreckage with the strong smell of aviation gasoline dripping from the tanks.

He told me that every time after that when he crawled into a student training aircraft the hint of the smell of av gas would come back to sicken him. The training didn't go well and he washed out after a few rides.

Already a commissioned officer, he was assigned to a barrage balloon outfit in England. Barrage balloons were huge affairs inflated with helium and tethered to a cable to float a mile high. The concept was to protect sensitive military installations from low flying German aircraft. Hopefully the raiding aircraft would hit the invisible cable shear off a wing and crash. Sounds farfetched now, but state-of-the-art in World War II. Sadly, Merle witnessed one of his crewman get his arm tangled in the cable winding on a large drum. Traumatic.

A couple of days after D-Day Captain Merle landed on one of our invasion beaches to lead a platoon of infantry across France into Germany. Being the leader he was privileged to ride in the command jeep with an assigned driver.

Crossing the Rhine into Germany shortly before the end of hostilities his troop happened to liberate a Camp named Dachau. Capture, is a little misnomer as when the American Army approached the German guards changed into civilian garb and hightailed out of Dodge. Merle's troops were then confronted with the sickening sight of hundreds of emaciated Jews living in fetid dormitories awaiting the "final solution" their trip to the gas-chambers and still warm crematorium. When the inhumanity of the scene confronted his troops they were horrified and angry. His guys ransacked the German guard's quarters and "liberated" such supplies they could find and did what they could to comfort the poor inmates.

Next morning, Merle told of a young German boy, about 16 who came out from the nearby town to exclaim that "The local people in the town really didn't know what was happening in the camp. They were innocent! They didn't have anything to do with what was happening in the camp there!" Merle's first sergeant wasn't buying any of the kids spiel. A large tough man the 1st Sgt grabbed the kid and tossed him up on the large pile of dead bodies piled and awaiting the ovens. Merle told me that it wasn't a proper thing to do but he hoped that the young German remembered the horror of climbing down off that pile of dead humanity. It was a story that Merle could share once and I think only with me as I too had visited the camp.

I was a young cadet in 1957 when we toured the preserved Dachau Death Camp. To the credit of the post-war German government, West German at the time, they had preserved the place as a reminder of a sordid Nazi past. The concrete chambers, "showers," where the stripped naked inmates were herded in to be gassed to death were open for inspection. The ovens, cleaned of ashes, were on display. A representative of the dormitories was preserved with many pictures to show how the poor emaciated men, women and children were held before being executed. It was a sobering sight for a young group of us American youth about to become commissioned officers. Deny the holocaust, Ha! I witnessed the horror of it with my own eyes in and through the repressed memories of my hero who suffered the horror of experiencing the real thing.

Following the war, like thousands of his peers, went back to school. He earned a Ph D in agronomy and taught at university level in Upstate New York, Delaware and Perdue. His specialty was grass culture, practical production of hay and corn for silage and grain.

For me it was a pleasure to walk the pastures of his home place and have him identify each variety of the native grasses, their common name and the Latin name. A wonderful mind.

After his retirement from teaching Merle lived in LaFayette, Indiana. When we visited he proudly showed his stash of home grown giant gourds. He crafted bird houses and other artful items from the cleaned up and polished gourd bodies. An amateur musician he also crafted the ancient folk musical instrument dulcimer popular with Appalachian people. He cleverly used the gourd for the sound body of the instrument. Then he presented one of his masterfully crafted instruments to his favorite niece, Grannie Annie, along with copious instructions how to learn to play it. That never happened but today that dulcimer is one of her most prized possessions.

Now they are few, the great men who volunteered, donned the uniform and went off to win the most terrible war that the world has ever seen. Most then came back home to built the wonderful country that we are privileged to live in today. They each have a story that should be shared and treasured. May they rest in peace alongside their brethren who didn't come back.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail