The Passing Of The Timberwolves

As is our custom now, my wife and I drove out to the assisted living facility where my parents now reside. On the table, along with other mail and magazines was a publication on slick paper, the size of an annual report, titled The Timberwolf Howl. Over the years, in different forms, be it tabloid newsprint or magazine, it would appear in our mailbox from time to time. It is the publication of the 104th (Timberwolf) Infantry Division Association.
The 104th, under the command of a rather flamboyant Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen, was originally formed from men from Washington and Oregon and was sent to fight the Germans. My father, 90 day wonder lieutenant, joined it as a replacement while it was fighting in Holland alongside the British. In fact it was attached to the Brits, and so the rations and ammunition they received came through British supply channels. This caused some logistical problems, particularly in ammunition, which was not issued in clips for the M-1, but had to be broken down and individually loaded into the clips. Eventually the division was moved further south to team up with the American Army, fighting across Germany from Aachen, through Marburg, where I would eventually attend school at the university there, liberating the concentration camp at Nordhausen and on to link up with the Russians.
After the war, my father wanted to put what he had seen behind him, and avoided joining any veterans' organization. Nonetheless, I assumed he paid dues, and over the years received the Howl.
As I opened it, I read the inevitable. The 104th Timberwolves had had their last reunion, and the association was being disbanded, its assets being given over to a new one, The Timberwolf Pups' Association. “Pups” is what all us baby boomer offspring of these reluctant warriors were called as they settled back into civilian life.
It had to happen. The youngest of them would be in their mid to late 80's and there were too few physically up to traveling hither and yon about the country to attend.
It struck me as very sad. Not only is a piece of history fast disappearing, but as the generation ahead of you passes on, so too does a piece of your own life.
When I was small, these men were the young adults, the fathers who coached our elementary basketball teams, were our scoutmasters and were the hot dog cookers and burger flippers at those family gatherings that continue in our memory. They drove us to town to see Santa Claus at Christmas and read “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” before we tried to sleep on Christmas Eve. They helped us build tree houses, taught us to swim, how to catch grounders with our Scooter Rizzuto gloves, and how to make telephones out of string and tin cans.
Now those that are left are old, many infirm, and sadly many cannot even remember the great things they accomplished. Soon they will all be gone and the 104th and all the other men of that generation will be nothing more than ranks of moss covered stones. Their army will have passed into the shades of history.
Time passes, and soon my generation will be at that same point in its journey. I doubt that history will mark our passing as it will my parents' generation.

Frauenberg

In the spring of 1967, a group of us Americans studying at the Phillips Unversitaet in Marburg Germany packed up a lunch of hard rolls, salami, cheese and a bottle of South Tyrolean red wine and took ourselves out along the road, out of town to a small rise in the floor of the Lahn River valley, a place called “Frauenberg.”
After a long, never ending German winter, days of incessant drizzle and darkness, it is easy to see why the Germans in the spring would take to the woods and fields in droves. “Wanderlust” is not a German word for nothing. And unlike the coast of Maine, Germany had a real spring: days when the weather was clear as crystal; the air warm and gentle but not hot; the grass the deepest green, like the fields of Ireland.
The Frauenberg, lady’s mountain, or more probably Mountain of Our Lady, was topped by the stone ruins of a medieval cloister, only the remnants of a stone turret. Around and within were lilacs or some bush of similar type, their buds at the bursting point.
We sat on the grass, opened our bag and brought out the food we had brought with us. One of us, probably me, had a jackknife with which to slice the cheese and salami, while my roommate had carried along a corkscrew and a pair of glasses, which we would share, having been close friends for nearly a year, sharing everything from teabags to germs.
We sat and ate, licking the grease from the salami from our lips and fingers, passing the glasses around to swallow down the bread.
Above the sky was an indescribable, rich blue; the grass below an equally lush green. Birds rode in circles on the thermals rising from the ground. Down the valley, far off in the distance were dots where villages and now and then a tractor in the fields were. They sky and the grass became hazy in the distance until they blended into one on the horizon.
It has been 42 years since that day, and it has never left my memory.