NOTE: I’ve been promising and/or threatening myself to publish fiction here from time to time, since writing novels has been a significant part of my life. The other night I had a dream, and like most dreams it had some kind of beginning but nothing resembling an end. This story is what I think the dream was meant to be and to mean.
My grandfather had three brothers. And when America entered World War II, all four boys signed up, each in a different branch of the military. My grandfather and two brothers ended up remaining Stateside, handling the kind of numberless support jobs that armies count on to fight and win wars. My great uncle Charlie went to Europe for combat, first training in England for several months – and then landing on the French coast four days after D-Day. He never made it home.
I probably should thank what my family always called “that TV show” for letting me know about my great uncle at all. And even that show was set on eternal rerun by the time I came along. It was a sitcom, as it seemed most things were at that time, celebrating the sheer hilarity of being a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. My Dad and I were watching an episode together one time, me sitting on the floor beside his chair, when he announced almost nonchalantly, “Your great uncle Charlie was one of those, you know?”
Well no, Dad, I didn’t know. In fact, since I was maybe ten at the time, I didn’t even know I’d had a great Uncle Charlie. We watched the rest of the show in silence that night, laughing at how people who considered themselves the Master Race could be so bumbling and just plain dumb. But I asked my father about this great uncle as soon as the TV set was turned off.
“I figured you knew,” he said, an answer that made little sense to me then but sounds entirely reasonable now that I have kids of my own. “He died in the war. It was all a mystery, though. I guess my parents never had closure – though nobody had ever heard of that back then. That’s why, I guess, we all had a love-hate relationship with this silly TV show, since Charlie had been a POW and all.” My Dad looked to make sure I understood. Since I was ten, I didn’t. “A prisoner of war.”
I thought about that a while. “So, you mean, he wasn’t killed?”
“Eventually, they said he was. That’s how they did it. But they, meaning our government, looked for him a good long while, with the Red Cross and other people looking too. I had an uncle who went to Europe after the war, to find Charlie if he could. He couldn’t. But really, there were lots of ways Charlie could have died as a POW while Hitler’s Germany was busy falling apart. That had to be what happened to him, they all decided, after a year or two.”
I was still too young to mount a research operation of my own, so mostly I kept watching the sitcom. It was on one of those nostalgic channels that cropped up when I was young, nostalgic even then, with lots and lots of early TV shows. Most of them were pretty awful. But “that TV show” became special to me.
It was set inside a POW camp, probably in Germany. Nobody ever died in the camp, and the POWs – American, British, maybe a Frenchman since he always wore a beret – got away with everything. There was clearly a laugh track on the show, though I probably thought those were real people laughing. Everything was a joke, especially how inept the Germans in charge of the camp were. They mostly strutted around shouting at everybody in English with funny German accents.
There was one particular character my family thought was inspired by my great uncle, though no one could ever explain why any of us might deserve a royalty check. “That’s just like Charlie,” they’d all say and laugh, though after a few years no one still alive had even met the man. And there was one episode our “relative” had virtually all to himself. That was, of course, our family favorite.
Thanksgiving was approaching (so 1944, I suppose, almost six months after D-Day) and the ridiculous German commandant was refusing to give his captives a turkey. Charlie – his name on the show was Hank, but we always called him Charlie – decided to sneak off and steal a turkey from the nearby town. He’s caught, of course, with lots of wild-eyed mugging for the camera. And the catching is done by a blonde, buxom fraulein with a shotgun. Hilarity ensues, with each speaking crazy versions of each other’s language, until they realize they’re completely in love.
Star-crossed love, for sure. The commandant sends truckloads of troops to look for Charlie, implying he must be some kind of dangerous American spy. The fraulein hides him in a closet beneath the stairs and then behind a flowing curtain and finally under her bed, where of course a hulky German soldier sits her down to woo her. In the end, the troops give up their spy hunt and depart, paving the way for Charlie and his love to wave their wistful goodbyes. He returns to the POW camp, since that’s what escaped prisoners do on TV sitcoms, and even manages to bring a turkey for Thanksgiving. They invite the Germans to join them for the feast.
Of course, my great uncle Charlie did nothing of the sort. After Germany failed in its last big offensive around Christmas, the Third Reich started abandoning its prison camps ahead of the Allied advance. The Americans and British closed in from the west, the Russians pushing from the east. Guards would simply announce to prisoners they’d be walking somewhere in the morning. That meant ice and snow, often without food, water, shoes, socks or the slightest suggestion of an overcoat. Many prisoners died.
According to the Red Cross, my great uncle turned up in paperwork at three different camps between Christmas and the German surrender that May. And then… nothing. Someone suggested the Germans had been trying to reach the North Sea, where they could escape by ship. But there’s no reason to think Charlie did that, or that most Germans had any success doing that either. It’s much more likely Charlie died with most of his army buddies on some mud-churned road heading north, not having eaten anything like a turkey in months. And with no fraulein to wave him a wistful goodbye.
My son is two now. He has a sister three years older. When I think they are old enough, technology willing, I’ll find that old sitcom somewhere on the internet, see if the kids get any of the jokes and tell them in my own nonchalant way, “Your great great uncle Charlie was one of those, you know.”
When my father was born seven years after the war ended, he was named Charlie.
I am Charlie Jr.
